The 99 percent were on the streets of San Francisco today, greeting the shareholders of Wells Fargo Bank and its $19 million a year chairman John Stumpf. Here's the Chronicle report. My friend the Rev. Gloria Del Castillo is quoted:
A lot of "all of us" were represented in actions that took much of the day: organized tenants, clergy, unions, Occupy stalwarts, and the usual lunch time crowd, attracted by spectacle and sun."After banking with Wells Fargo for decades and having a great credit score, I asked them for a loan modification so I could stay in my home," she said. "Wells Fargo denied it."
She said she was praying for the bank's shareholders and executive officers.
"What affects one affects us all," Del Castillo said. "If we don't act like that, we will all suffer."
Here are a few random photos from a quick walk through the scene.
Bet the police got a lot of overtime for this day. Bet they sometimes felt silly in all that armor, also.
Big aspirations for this movement …
and much marching about.
Customers had to find another ATM machine today.
Police barricades and locked wrists can really gum up a business district.
I hope this movement can avoid the radical element that turned the anti-war, Vietnam movement into such a violent time where hate spilled out both ways.
ReplyDeleteWe watched 'Across the Universe' last night which calls itself a rock musical using Beatles songs and depicting our country when Vietnam pulled us so far off course that we are not yet beyond it. That was a time where frustration led to violence so many ways including assassinations.
We thought (most of us) that we had gotten something from those years-- a learning. That you can be against the war without hating the soldiers. That you will never again fight a war without end. Yet, here we are and it appears we didn't settle anything-- worse we see our government literally molesting children supposedly in our name. It makes one feel sick and a bit hopeless.
I believe the Occupy movement is right (at least to their central points), but if they get frustrated and turn to bombs themselves as happened in the 60s, who knows what will happen. We humans just don't seem to learn or move ahead and that is very frustrating.
The response to this kind of confusion and disagreement is that one segment of our culture has turned off and simply accepted one agenda without thinking where it's taking them. The question I have is how big is that one segment?