Showdown on K Street

Showdown on K Street

SEIU 503 Member Lobbyist Turns up the Heat on Big Banks

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The very next day after the star-studded Leadership Conference awards ceremony, we were treated to a discussion panel here at SEIU International Headquarters on the incredibly important subject of Wall Street Reform.

Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law professor and Chairperson of the Congressional Oversight Panel overseeing the TARP fund. Since I am a huge fan of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, I knew who Elizabeth Warren is, and was, of course, very excited to see her in person. She did not disappoint. Ms. Warren is a law professor and perfectly brilliant, but she is also very funny. She is very good at taking very technical financial information and presenting it in an easy to understand and even interesting way. She spoke to us as a prelude to the massive “K street" rally that we and several other Unions and organizations staged on the next Monday.

On the Sunday before the huge rally, we took part in a few hours of training, after which we boarded two chartered buses and went to stage a peaceful protest in front of the homes of two of the biggest banks’ lobbyists: Greg Baer, Deputy General Counsel for Corporate Law at Bank of America (a fancy way to say head lobbyist for B of A) and Peter Scher, one of the top executives and chief lobbyist for JPMorgan Chase.

Alas, contrary to several false accusations, our buses did not make it on time to the first site, the home of Greg Baer. There has been much made about our involvement in scaring the 14 year old son of Mr. Baer, who was apparently at home by himself that afternoon—Glenn Beck recently devoted an entire hour to defaming us for this action. But, our bus drivers did not get us there to be a part of that peaceful demonstration. It was only our partner organization National People’s Action, an association of groups whose goal is to build grassroots power to promote the causes of racial and economic justice, who made it to Mr. Baer’s house that afternoon, but it was all over the conservative press that it was SEIU who frightened the teenager. And even at the home of the other big bank lobbyist that we did make it to, no one acted at all like a thug. I was there; we did have a lot of energy for our cause and the point we were trying to make, but no one made any threatening gestures whatsoever. We were boisterous, but peaceful.

We started off our big day of protest in downtown Washington D.C. with a visit to the corporate headquarters of CCA, Corporate Corrections of America, which is a privately owned prison system that profits greatly by incarcerating undocumented workers across this country. This prison corporation is the fourth largest prison system in our country, right behind the states of California, Texas and New York.

We started off there to draw attention to this corporation and how it is profiting greatly from our broken immigration system. Our new President Mary Kay Henry spoke to the crowd assembled in front of CCA. I am proud to report that my fellow Member Lobbyist, Gabriel Acosta, from SEIU Local 32BJ in Hartford Connecticut got to speak to the crowd and introduce Mary Kay. Our message here was clear, “we are greatly offended by the corporate greed that perpetuates our broken immigration system, and we are calling for an end to this dehumanizing practice.”

Following the action at CCA, we hopped back on our buses and headed for another part of downtown DC where we began our march around the main financial lobbyists’ district of our nation’s Capital—K street. We were divided into two teams, purple and yellow. My team, the yellow team, walked around past two different banks and attempted to enter their lobbies, just to stop business there briefly to make our point. At the first Bank of America that we attempted to enter, a few of us, about 20 people, made it all the way into the lobby of the bank, then the guards shut the bank down so that no one could get in or out. At the second location, one of our group’s members was hurt, not badly, when a huge, burly guard pushed several people back as they tried to enter. She was able to shake it off and continue on.

At about noontime, both the purple and yellow teams met up in McPherson Square. We were joined there by several hundred other marchers from several other organizations: NPA, National Peoples’ Action; Pico, People Improving Communities through Organizing; IAF, Industrial Areas Foundation, AFL-CIO, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations; AFSCME, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and AFT, American Federation of Teachers.

It was raining fairly hard, but it did not dampen our spirits. The crowd was electric as we stood there waiting for the mini program to begin. The crowd continued the chants we had been blasting out all morning long. When the speakers took the stage they stated and described our reasons for coming together—to urge Congress to push forward with much needed Wall Street Reform.

After the speakers finished the whole crowd began marching down the infamous Wall Street Lobbyist row, K Street. We marched en masse toward the intersection of K and 15th streets. Once there, we took the intersection! Crowd marshals supplied by the bigger organizations linked hands and cordoned off the entire intersection, where we were joined by a 30 foot high “float” depicting a “K Street” Lobbyist holding a caricature of a Congressman like a puppet on a control bar.

The entire day was exhilarating—truly a dream come true for me. All accounts put the size of the crowd participating in the “Showdown on K Street” at about 2000. I know that the crowd was totally animated and electrified. It was an event that I will never forget.

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