Workers target Wall Street for April 3-4 actions

On March 16, 2008, Bear Stearns, the fifth largest investment bank in the U.S and a decades-old fixture on Wall Street, collapsed under a mountain of souring mortgage-backed securities and other bad debts, marking for many people the start of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

In the year since, workers and oppressed people have borne witness to one of the largest upward transfers of wealth in human history, as the U.S. government’s response to the crisis has been to give the wealthiest members of society unfettered access to trillions of dollars of tax monies in the U.S. Treasury, in the supposed hope that it will get banks to “start lending again.” Meanwhile, the working class continues to suffer through record-breaking numbers of foreclosures and evictions, mass layoffs, and draconian cuts to vital social services.

For millions of workers and oppressed people, there is no time to wait for a stimulus plan to “trickle down” through the economy. For them, survival is hanging in the balance. In cities and towns across the country, the multinational working class is becoming painfully aware of the fact that there is no band-aid solution to this gaping economic wound.

That is why workers and activists from across the country are preparing to converge on Wall Street, the nerve center of finance capital, on April 3 in order to directly confront the billionaire bankers and financiers. Demonstrators will demand an immediate moratorium on all foreclosures and evictions, and money for jobs, health care and education, not bank bailouts and war.

Buses for the April 3-4 protests on Wall Street will be leaving from a number of U.S. cities. Frank Neisser, an organizer from the Boston branch of the Bail Out the People Movement, BOPM, reported that sign-up sheets for transportation to the protest were filling up quickly. “The bankers on Wall Street are getting billions of dollars in bailout money because the workers are not being heard from. They are going to hear us on April 3!” he said.

Sharon Black, a BOPM organizer in Baltimore, said phone lines at the regional organizing center there were abuzz with inquires about the demonstration. “We are getting calls and mail everyday. There are growing numbers of people who want to fight back on issues like foreclosure and layoffs, which are having such a devastating impact on their lives and communities.”

Groundswell of outrage

Across the U.S there is a groundswell of popular outrage over the numerous attacks being perpetrated against workers and the oppressed by the very same banks and corporations that are raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money.

Larry Holmes, a BOPM organizer in New York, said, “People are angry at the banks that are forcing families from their homes, angry at the bosses that are stripping workers of their livelihoods, and angry at the government that is handing out trillions of dollars to financial institutions. People are angry and they are looking to take united action.

“The BOPM was founded with the goal of helping to build a progressive movement capable of winning tangible gains for poor and working-class people who are suffering. The BOPM was founded to combat against the phony populism and right-wing demagogy of the ruling-class politicians and blowhards like Lou Dobbs, who want to obscure the real cause of this crisis and want to divide the working-class movement with racist scapegoating,” said Holmes.

Indeed, the announcement that the insurance company AIG, which has received more than $170 billion in bailout money, has paid out more than $165 million in bonus payments to executives, has aroused much hostility. Not only are workers angry over this giveaway, it has also drawn a chorus of faux populist invective from a host of pro-capitalist politicians and pundits.

Lawrence Summers, former chief economist at the World Bank and current chief economic advisor to President Obama, feigned indignation, calling the AIG bonuses “outrageous.” (ABC News, March 15) Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke recently stated that the unabashed greed he has seen at AIG over the past year has caused him to slam the telephone down in anger a number of times. (CBS News, March 15)

There is certainly no shortage of greed at financial institutions like AIG. And it is certainly possible that Bernanke slammed a phone or two. But the put-on indignation and phony populism being spouted by the ruling-class politicians and pundits is used in service of their larger goal of obscuring the true cause of this crisis.

By trying to convince workers that the economic meltdown resulted from the unchecked greed of a few “bad apples” at companies like AIG, they are also advancing the idea that this type of crisis can be avoided in the future with better regulation in the financial markets and a move into some sort of mythic “post-bubble” capitalism.

But the reality is that the kind of economic crisis that workers around the world are currently suffering through is inherent to the capitalist system. There is no such thing as capitalism without crisis. Crisis is written into the very DNA of capitalism. Because of the economic laws of capitalism, whereby each individual capitalist is compelled by competition with other capitalists to continuously expand production irrespective of the workers’ ability to pay for the commodities that they produce, crises of overproduction are inevitable. As long as capitalism exists, these destructive crises will persist.

The only way for workers to escape this vicious cycle of glutted markets, job loss, bankruptcy, poverty and misery, which have afflicted poor and working people since the advent of capitalism, is to demolish the capitalist system and replace it with planned production. With the growth of working-class consciousness, internationalism, unity and solidarity, this tall task becomes more achievable by the day.

The March 16, 2008, collapse of Bear Stearns is remembered by many as the beginning of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Workers and activists across the country intend to ensure that April 3, 2009, marks the beginning of a new chapter in the mass struggle that will help put an end to economic injustice and crisis, once and for all