Steven Mantz getting Coverage in NY Times + Big Protest Tomorrow Bloomberg and the Banks Stay Tuned

Steven Mantz posted in Taxpayers Take Action 2011. Steven Mantz 10:36pm May 11 May 12 already getting coverage in NY Times!!! wow!! We must not let the passage of time dim our ire at those who have yet to be held responsible for causing this financial crisis. We must register our dissatisfaction — in the streets if need be — with a system that rewards the fat cats for their outrageous behavior at our collective expense and that re-established the status quo on Wall Street without a moment’s reflection on whether the system itself needed an overhaul. Now, it seems, some people are sufficiently fed up to “fight back,” as they are saying. This Thursday, after a week of demonstrations, including at Goldman Sachs’s new headquarters on West Street in Manhattan and at Bank of America’s New York new headquarters on West 42nd Street, a group calling itself onmay12.org has organized a series of protests on and around Wall Street itself to “make big banks and millionaires pay.” The group is a coalition of labor unions, community and progressive groups that were catalyzed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed city budget that cuts childcare services, teachers and public safety, among others, while continuing to give tax benefits to corporations that remain in the city. “We are connecting the dots from the big banks that crashed our economy, destroyed millions of jobs and foreclosed on millions of family homes to the human impact here in the financial capital of our country,” said Michael Kink, the executive director of Strong Economy for All Coalition and one of the event’s organizers. In an interview, he cited similar protests being organized in Chicago, Charlotte and Oakland, and cited specifically his outrage at how Oakland is forced to close its public libraries — in order to save $5 million a year — at the same time the city still pays Goldman Sachs $5 million a year for interest-rate swaps. He wonders, where is the shared sacrifice? “This is a national effort to hold banks accountable,” he said. Don't Let Go of the Anger opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com One of the most frustrating facts of the recently abated financial crisis is that those who might have been partly responsible for it have got off scot-free. The only two people prosecuted criminally — the Bear Stearns hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin — were found not guilty by a ...