Black NJ: Bail Out Homeowners, Not Bankers

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Saturday was a day for summing up Presidential Debate number one. It was also the day that members of New Jersey’s People’s Organization for Progress (POP) delivered a summation of their own. They had watched two presidential candidates stand in front of a huge national television audience, hemming and hawing about bailing the US financial system out of economic catastrophe and not saying a whole lot about how the country got in this mess.

So Saturday at one, two dozen POP members wearing their trademark yellow t-shirts rolled out at Broad & Market, the historic and commercial center of Newark, to say “Save Our Houses, Don’t Bail Out Billionaires.”

Folks clambering off NJ Transit buses took in the scene and stopped for a bit to hold a sign, join the line, chant for a time, before heading off to do their weekend shopping. A television crew showed up to film it and the Newark Star Ledger featured it in a report on their website.

The plan for the protest was settled only two days earlier at the weekly Thursday night General Assembly of POP, as members expressed outrage at the bailout. After watching–and protesting–as hospital after hospital in north Jersey closed for “lack of funds” in recent years, they were already mad. Now, just let the big banks and finance companies get in trouble and the government ponies up $700 billion in a few days. Members also highlighted the additional hundreds of billions pumped into the war since 2002.

Crossposted from Fire on the Mountain with the permission of blogger Rahim on the Docks.