SEIU Healthcare Michigan Members Fight Wall Street Greed

 Washington, D.C. – SEIU Healthcare Michigan member activists took to the streets of Washington, D.C. to protest the big banks that crashed our economy.  Big bank lobbyists spend over $1.4 million per day from their cozy offices on K Street fighting against common sense reform.  Fifteen members from Healthcare Michigan joined thousands of SEIU members and other activists from around the country for the event.

Members visited the homes of Wall St. lobbyists to tell them to stop fighting reform, closed down bank branches across the city, and then closed down K Street and marched to the headquarters of Bank of America.  “I’m here because big banks don’t care about working people anymore”, said Barbara Thompson, a home care worker from Bay City, “all they care about is bigger and bigger profits at our expense.”   

Big banks caused the economy to crash in 2008 due to their reckless behavior, but they still don’t get it.  Big banks and their lobbyist allies continue to take from working families.  Big banks have taken $4.7 trillion in taxpayer dollars, while taking $140 billion in bonuses for themselves and charging us outrageous overdraft fees that cost taxpayers over $38 billion in 2009.  “It’s time to make banks pay, I don’t think we should give them another dime after they took big bonuses and left us with a bad economy”, said Matt Taylor, a CNA from Willowbrook Manor in Flint.

Click here to view pictures of the protests.  For more information visit www.seiu.org/bigbanks.