by Charles Augustine
What started out as a mere notion – a cute chi-chi clique – “Tax Wall Street to Bail out the U.S. Economy” has taken on a life of its own and has become the hot new political movement. And as it gains momentum many Americans are finding themselves swept up in its wake; and on Sept. 15, a group of 1000 nurses, calling themselves “National Nurses United (NNU) threw their hats into the ring.
NNU Co-President Deborah Burger, RN, feels that taxing Wall Street trading ventures could raise hundreds of billions of dollars.
At a speech in San Diego, NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro is quoted as saying, “We heard a lot about hope in the last election. Where is that hope? It is right here, right now. What we have to say to Wall Street is you have taken and taken and taken, and you have given nothing back. You have abandoned this country, and you have abandoned the people. There should be no hungry people in America, and no people without jobs in America.”
The NNU sponsored Sept. 15 rally that took place in front of the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco at Main and Market follows on the heels of similar actions held by labor and community groups a 60 Congressional offices in 21 states on Sept. 1.
Also voicing their disapproval or the way Wall Street skirts paying its fair share of taxes, and by doing so, contributes to the growing number of evictions and home foreclosures, was San Jose (SJ) based “Refund and Rebuild California” campaign coalition which met in front of a blighted SJ Tropicana-neighborhood bank-owned property.
Coinciding with the action which took place in front of the Federal Bank Building in SF Sept. 15, this group of homeowners, community and faith leaders, and students held a press conference which the theme of was: “a new report documenting the devastating costs of the foreclosure crisis to neighborhoods throughout San Jose.”
They then went door to door to make residents of the blighted area aware of the new movement that is underway – to use Taxing Wall Street as a means of helping to aid the government in digging itself out of the current economic crisis that the US economy is in. They also discussed the benefits of and invited them to join in the campaign.
The rally cry was, “It’s time to make Wall Street pay” for its part in destroying the job market and neighborhoods with its short-sighted put making a profit before all else – even human beings – approach to doing business.
