On this year's Valentine Day, environmentalist action group Rising Tide and housing justice organization City Life/Vida Urbana are proposing to the American public to close their accounts at the Bank of America, on account of the fact that the financial institution keeps foreclosing homes of poor families, which have nowhere else to go, and also finances the practice of surface mining, which is devastating to the environment and pollutes creeks and streams, especially in the Rocky Mountains states.
The two groups decided to join their efforts in an attempt to reach as many people as possible, and their representatives say that regular protest, such as chanting or holding signs, would have no effect or response on and from the bank management.
However, by depriving the bank of its liquidity reserves and forcing it to give money back to people, they say that the institution can be sufficiently destabilized for it to collapse for good.
Thus far, the largest protests are expected to happen in Boston, where the largest number of accounts is expected to be closed as well. Average citizens feel that their right to affordable housing is being violated by the bank, which took no concrete action over the critics it received. Over the past couple of months, activists have been asking the institution to change its foreclosure policies, and to allow people who were evicted from homes to pay their rents directly to the bank.
The only response that came from the management was that the bank will "review policies and procedures," which basically means that they took no commitment to change anything, while people continued to lose their jobs and their homes.
Political analysts say that the teaming up of such different organizations is a worrying trend, because it's economical situations such as this one that offer the perfect background for the emergence of extremist groups. Already, several human and civil rights groups have joined forces with left-leaning activists, as long as they share the same goal.
It's possible that the next time frame will see even more such "unions," as people attempt to take matters into their own hands, and avoid losing their rights to a fair planet and a place to live. If the situation is not resolved promptly and the scheduled boycott succeeds in destabilizing the Bank of America, then the future could, most likely, see similar actions taken against other major banks as well, because they simply refuse to serve the interest of the people.
Some say that this type of behavior coming from the banks is inhumane and ill-intended, and that they are well within their rights to respond back the same way. "If they take away our homes, why can't [we] take away their money?" a concerned citizen asks.
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