Bank Transfer Day 2011: Los Angeles
Today is Bank Transfer Day. I added the “2011,” because demographics, Social Security funding and viability, the retirement of Baby Boomers, and the failure of large corporations to re-invest their HUGE piles of cash in job creation all seem to be colliding in a way that will make the Occupy protests ongoing events for the foreseeable future. In Los Angeles (L.A.), hundreds of protesters expressed their frustrations with Wall Street in a march through L.A.’s financial district. At one point, a pushing and shoving contest with a counter-protester occurred.
Was he one of the top 1% of income earners? Or merely an opinionated person who doesn’t read…? 
Bank Transfer Day was a national effort in the U.S. to motivate people to move their money from large corporate banks to smaller banks and credit unions. We made that move YEARS ago when what we thought were excessive FEES at Wells Fargo coincided with a change in policy to open the UNCLE Credit Union to non-government employees in Livermore and with our need for an affordable car loan. Although the transfer from one bank to another is painful (something that banks COUNT upon), it is well WORTH it, if you have done your research!
The march in L.A. was organized by an alliance of community organizations that are fighting foreclosures with labor unions. Protesters from nearby Occupy L.A. added to their numbers. Vivian Sepulveda, age 27, of the coalition that sponsored the event, Good Jobs L.A. had pulled her money out of Bank of America (apparently the LAST to decide against charging people for debit card use). She felt that BofA had contributed to the foreclosure crisis by not helping homeowners in South L.A. with loan modifications. Sepulveda said:
“If you walk around South Central, there’s a lot of empty houses, a lot of houses boarded up.”
Sepulveda said that it felt good to walk out of Bank of America with 10 other people who had similarly withdrawn their money.
If you missed Bank Transfer Day, don’t fret! There is always Monday!
(Note added November 11, 2011: Bay Area TV news said that, since September, 90,000 Californians (650,000 people in the U.S.) have moved their accounts from banks to credit unions! Nationwide, that represents $4.5B in new deposits to credit unions.)
-Bill at
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