It's Time for Wall Street to Pay Us Back

by Charlotte Hill · 2010-04-28 06:00:00 UTC
Topics:

"Good jobs now!" That's the message thousands of activists will be shouting through the financial district during an AFL-CIO-sponsored march through New York City's financial district on April 29.

Join in the march — register today! Not on the East Coast? Sign up as a virtual attendee, and a marcher will carry your name to Wall Street.

The federal stimulus package and accompanying bank bailout may have saved our economy from utter ruin, but sky-high unemployment figures are still looming for American workers, and while white Americans are seeing slight recoveries in the job market, for everyone else — especially black workers — the recessionary hole just keeps getting deeper.

Wait — I take that back. Not everyone's suffering. In fact, Wall Street execs are doing better than ever; last year, investment firms pocketed a gut-wrenching $20.3 billion in bonuses. With a snap of their fingers and a click of their heels, big banks have escaped the financial mess they created, leaving low-income Americans to shoulder the burden of a jobless economic recovery.

Enjoy the ride, Wall Street, 'cause it's almost over. We, the people, refuse to silently watch as power-hungry executives greedily pay themselves billions while homeless Americans starve and suffer on sidewalks.

Tomorrow, April 29, thousands of union and community activists will take to the streets, demanding that the financial industry pay its dues to the American people. The AFL-CIO has outlined a set of four proposals that would use Wall Street funds to get our economy back on track: imposing fees on banks to pay back bailout costs, levying executive bonuses, closing the loophole that lets hedge fund and private equity managers get away with paying next-to-no taxes, and placing a tax on all financial market transactions, including those nasty derivatives we've been hearing so much about.

Taxpayers bailed out investment banks in their time of need. It's high time they did the same for us. Join the Good Jobs Now rally, and make Wall Street pay.

Photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Charlotte Hill currently serves as the social media fellow for EARN, a California nonprofit that helps low-income workers save money to create long-term prosperity.
PREVIOUS STORY:
A Call for Free Voice Messaging
NEXT STORY:
Is the NCAA Putting Student Athletes at Risk?

COMMENTS (2)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.