Sandy Survivors Day of Action and Citywide Convergence #D15 - Rebuild the City: Restore Power to the People!
FEMA ISN’T LISTENING. THE MAYOR ISN’T LISTENING. WHERE ARE THEY? PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE SHOULD SERVE THE PEOPLE.
#ReclaimNYC – #D15 – Facebook Event
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15th – POST-SANDY CALL TO ACTION
12pm actions in affected communities
5pm convergence in Manhattan @ Bloomberg’s house
Two months after Superstorm Sandy the disaster is not over and relief needs are still great. Homes are uninhabitable with black mold taking hold, heat and sanitation are still absent in many places. Yet the government response has been glaringly absent. As with Katrina and other recent disaster-and-recovery events city, state and federal agencies have handed off reconstruction resources and responsibility to corporations and markets.
That hand-off has pushed affected people further out of their communities, further into crisis and vulnerability, and further from the decision-making tables that allocate public resources. Where government has failed, Occupy and other groups stepped in.
But we now understand that climate change has turned a corner: we will be hard hit again by extreme weather events. And so we ask whose interests our government serves? Is it polluters, predatory lenders, and disaster profiteers? Or can we build a stronger, better, resilient New York where all of us, regardless of race, class or power, can weather future storms?
12PM COMMUNITY RALLIES
Staten Island
1128 Olympia Boulevard
Across from St. Margaret Mary’s Church
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced today in a press release that it has recently moved its primary banking relationship to Amalgamated Bank, America's Labor Bank. The DNC will use Amalgamated Bank's cash management services to handle its day-to-day banking needs.
Amalgamated Bank was founded in 1923 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America so that workers, labor unions, and progressive organizations would be able to bank with an institution that represented their interests. Today, Amalgamated Bank's largest shareholder is Workers United, an SEIU affiliate.
In announcing the new alliance with Amalgamated, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, "We are proud to join forces with Amalgamated Bank, an organization with a 90-year legacy of reflecting the values of our nation's middle class. Amalgamated and the Democratic Party share a common heritage of advocating for positive changes in our economy and society to help working men and women achieve their fair share of the American dream. Furthermore, at the DNC, we have a fiduciary responsibility to those who invest in our party; it is critical that we honor their efforts to strengthen our infrastructure and build our organization by partnering with an institution that shares our commitment to standing with America's working families and small businesses, who we believe are the backbone of our country."
Today, actor Mark Ruffalo, star of the current movie "The Avengers," released a video calling on Americans to join the campaign. He was joined in the video by Coldplay's Chris Martin and Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello. The video, above, www.robinhoodtax.org, features Ruffalo drawing a Robin Hood mask on a dollar bill and calling on others to do the same.
Dozens of national organizations, celebrities including actor/director Mark Ruffalo, Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello and Coldplay's Chris Martin, renowned economists including Jeffrey Sachs, former Goldman Sachs executives and global leaders including Desmond Tutu joined today for an unprecedented coalition, calling for a "Robin Hood Tax" on Wall Street.
In New York, Founding Fathers and notable figures will start showing their support for the Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street at statues in major squares in Manhattan, donning them with Robin Hood hats and masks
In 15 cities across the country, including New York, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles, America's biggest nurses union, National Nurses United, along with students, climate and AIDS activists, and faith leaders, will visit branches of JP Morgan Chase Tuesday, coinciding with an appearance before Congress by JP Morgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, whose trading loss of more than $2 billion caused many to underscore the need for new regulation and taxation of the financial sector to prevent future incidents.
"The Robin Hood Tax campaign that launches in the US today offers us a solution to kick-start our economy, to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, to help those who have lost out as a result of the financial crisis they did nothing to cause - not just here in America, but around the world," said Ruffalo.
Economists estimate that we could generate hundreds of billions of dollars annually by placing a small tax on stocks, bonds, derivatives and currencies. Experts also suggest that such a policy would help limit the reckless short-term speculation that threatens financial stability. Over 1,000 leading economists have endorsed the policy, including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs and Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute.
"Wall Street and the big banks are exploiting tax loopholes while generating record profits and being rewarded with billions in bailouts and bonuses. Most of the recovery thus far has benefited the top 1%, not the 99%," said Jean Ross, RN and co-president, National Nurses United. "The Robin Hood Tax is easy to enforce, tough to evade and won't touch the bank accounts, pensions or savings of the vast majority of the American people."
"The Robin Hood Tax is a tiny tax with a big ambition – to get us back on our feet through nothing more complicated than asking Wall Street to pay their fair share," said Leigh Blake of Act V, an AIDS advocacy group.
"People with AIDS are rejecting austerity budgets. A Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street could literally end the AIDS pandemic," said Jennifer Flynn of Health GAP (Global Action Project). "We simply can't afford not to implement it."
"The Robin Hood Tax will not just begin to bring basic tax fairness to Wall Street, it will help curb the destructive gambling that drove the crisis and, as we see so clearly at JPMorgan Chase, continues to threaten our economic stability and security," said Liz Ryan Murray, Policy Director of National People's Action.
"There are huge, quick transactions that add to the churning and speculation in international markets that has helped to bring the world economy to the perilous state that it's in right now," said economist Jeffrey Sachs. "The time has really arrived to put a Robin Hood tax in place. Many countries around the world are doing so. It's time for the United States to do the same."
From 1914 until 1966, the United States enforced a Robin Hood tax that raised revenue from every sale or transfer of stock. Forty countries have employed this practice—and the policy is expected to be adopted in Europe this year.
