SAN FRANCISCO, MARCH 19, 2009, NOON---Over one hundred protesters demonstrated on Montgomery Street in the City’s downtown Financial District, angry at the behavior of a bailed-out local bank and the international insurance behemoth AIG.
At issue was the fact that Wells Fargo Bank, after receiving a $25 million Federal bailout, has joined other financial institutions to fight the Employee Free Choice Act introduced by Bay Area congressman George Miller and Senator Ted Kennedy in February. According to Nick Flynn, a spokesman for the organizing entity, Change That Works, the San Francisco rally was one of 105 allied demonstrations across the country. Most of those at the rally were representatives of the Service Employees International Union, but there were also supporters from Unite Here (Local 2), Hotel Workers Rising and CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice).
Rally participants, many wearing purple and yellow “SEIU for Obama” t-shirts (one even wearing a priest’s black robe and collar), held signs reading “No War Except for Class War” and others supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, held aloft two giant-sized checks, labeled “Reality Check” . They chanted slogans such as “Banks get bailed out/People get sold out”. A low-key handful of police helped assure sidewalk and street access around the peaceful, well-organized protesters. 
After forty-five minutes at the Wells Fargo Bank location, protest organizers led the group on a brief march to a building on nearby California Street, the second-highest skyscraper in San Francisco and the former headquarters of Bank of America, where the original group was joined by another group holding signs and chanting. At this second location, the protest shifted its full attention to a condemnation of insurance behemoth AIG and its controversial executive bonus program. Apparently, AIG maintains offices in that building and others in the surrounding blocks.
Protesters chanted, “AIG, you can’t hide/We can see your greedy side”. Today being a glorious, sunny day with temperatures in the 70s, a multicultural group of workers from inside the building sat on the building’s wide, distinctive, carnelian granite steps, quietly eating their lunches. When asked if the noisy protest disturbed their break, one group of young office workers shook their heads, saying “Of course not! We agree with them.”
One young woman in the group, commenting on the bonuses, suggested that “There should have been more research before they gave the banks that money. This whole thing was done without our voices”. A young man suggested that the fault for the country’s financial mess rested with the Federal Reserve Bank, “They should go to that building over there, the Fed. It’s their fault. They created this mess…all this “free” credit; they were taunting people with money and the idea that there would always be more money.”
Asked if the nation’s financial difficulties and the bailout controversy had in any way dimmed their support for the new President, the entire group shook their heads. They did not blame the current administration at all. Another member of the lunchtime group spoke up, “No, it’s not his fault. He just got in there. Let him do something first; let him work first.”
Emotions surrounding the crisis are not only impacting younger, low-level workers. One middle-aged, high-level financial executive, returning from lunch, said she understood the emotions behind the protest. “Workers and taxpayers, we have a right to be pissed off. It’s taxpayer money! Thank God we’ve got Obama. At least he’s smart enough and principled enough to find the middle road in all this.“
She continued, “I work with a lot of Republicans and frankly, I am a little concerned with the tenor of the conversation now. Democrats are happy with the new President’s efforts. But these people (her Republican co-workers) blame Obama for not having had a quicker, more complete fix, and they resent any solution that includes tax hikes, because they feel an unfair burden is being put on higher-income earners. They believe they’re entitled to their high incomes and bonuses, and transferring wealth to their families, and feel they should not have to support the rest of society, or as they call them those who ‘don’t work, won’t work or can’t work’. I’m different; for example, I have no problem supporting schools, even though I don’t have children. I just don’t understand their selfishness, if that’s the right word for it. This whole thing is making my work environment so stressful for me, I have to get away at lunch every day just to meditate and calm down.”
At the conclusion of the rally, as I walked the few blocks to public transit, I encountered the annual San Francisco protest to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the Iraq War, led by Vietnam War protester Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame. As Mr. Ellsberg and several other protesters laid down in protest on the streetcar tracks of busy Market Street, effectively stopping traffic in all directions, like-minded demonstrators from Code Pink and Iraq Veterans Against the War held signs and softly sang, “We shall not/We shall not be moved…”
Jo Lawrence, a protester who emerged from the street, observed that this year’s event attracted far fewer participants than in years past. “I think it’s because people feel more hopeful because of Obama. Obama’s for change. Well, we want change now…(Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton is potentially more accessible than Condoleeza Rice ever was. Time will tell if she can make things better.” Also noting the economic impact of the war, she continued, “Forty-nine percent of our taxes goes to war. People don’t have basic medical care in this country. Why spend the money on war?”
Originally published inProtests Across Country Focus on Workers' Strife, Citizen Journalists Report in The Huffington Post, March 20, 2009.
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