PEOPLES MOVEMENT

While on a peaceful march near Union Square in downtown Manhattan, multiple female protestors were penned up in the street by orange mesh baricade, then maliciously maced. The women were peaceful and unarmed. They were secured by barricade with an overwhelming police presence. And they were then sprayed directly in the face with pressurized mace… WeAreTheOther99 continues to peacefully occupy lower Manhattan to begin a dialogue with the Top 1% with the goal of a peaceful transition of power back to the People. This can no longer be stopped. But be advised, this will not be televised

Wall Street crashed our economy, destroyed jobs, ignited a national foreclosure crisis that hit millions of homeowners and destroyed city and state budgets across the country.

Despite the economic crimes perpetrated against America not one CEO has been charged with a crime. Instead of being held accountable, Wall Street became the recipients of trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts and now, back on top earning billions and awarding record breaking bonuses to CEOs and senior executives.

But on Main Street, as unemployment and foreclosure rates remain at record levels, millions of hard working families, including tens of thousands in New York City, are in the midst of devastating and long-term financial turmoil.

It’s time to stop demanding more sacrifices from union workers, firefighters, and teachers or greater cuts from programs that support social services for our children, our elderly and resources for public libraries!

It’s time to take action and implement policies that will reverse New York City’s economic inequality!

New Yorkers’ are hurting and enough is enough! Put an end to budget cuts that threaten teaching and FDNY jobs, demands reduction in services for seniors and children and calls for the closures of fire stations, senior centers and libraries.

Labor-Community Coalition activists march down Wall Street during a protest against budget cuts and bank practices in New York, May 12, 2011.   (Photo Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

At the end of each week, Working In These Times rounds up labor news we’ve missed during the past week, with a focus on new and ongoing campaigns and protests. For all our other headlines from this week, go here.

—On Thursday, 15,000 protesters from eight separate marches converged on Wall Street to demand that the rich pay their fair share of taxes. Corporate profits are skyrocketing while public budgets are stretched to the breaking point. One of the catalysts for the protest was Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s budget plan, which would lay off over 4000 teachers. The demonstrators urged New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to reinstate a millionaire’s tax worth $4.6 billion a year.

—Activists in San Francisco kicked off a city-wide campaign against wage theft on Thursday. Wage theft is a $30 billion problem nationwide, and especially pervasive in the hospitality and construction industries. The San Francisco Board of Supervisers is considering legislation to help prevent wage theft in the city.

—For many students, summer jobs are a source of income and work experience. However, the poorest students have the hardest time finding summer jobs and racial disparities are rampant, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. In 2009, only 20 percent of low-income African Americans aged 16-19 and not enrolled in school were employed, compared to 31 percent of poor Hispanic teens and 36 percent of poor white teens. Among middle-class teens of the same age, employment rates were 55 percent for whites, 56 percent for Hispanics, and 40 percent for African Americans.

—National Nurses United celebrated the 191st anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, the founder of the modern profession of nursing. During the Crimean War, Nightengale led the first recorded nurses strike, refusing to allow her nurses to disembark from a ship until the hospitals were in working order. Nigthingale also made original contributions to epidemiological statistics.

By a vote of 237-192, the House of Representatives this afternoon voted to pass final legislation dramatically changing the rules that govern the financial industry. Nineteen Democrats joined 173 Republicans in opposing the legislation, which, in addition to limiting the risky practices that lead to the 2008 collapse, will create a new federal agency dedicated to protecting consumers from predatory financial products, and bring to a close the Troubled Asset Relief Plan — the bailout program created by the Congress in the midst of the financial crisis. Three Republicans voted for the bill, and four members (two Democrats, two Republicans) did not vote.

The Senate is set to take up identical legislation shortly after they return from next week’s Independence Day recess. Democrats had hoped to send the Wall Street reform bill to President Obama by weeks end, but last minute hiccups in the Senate — objections of key Republicans and the death of Robert Byrd — ultimately made that impossible.

There’s still a nightmare scenario for Democrats: An unforeseen reneging by one of the three Republicans who helped shape the final compromise on the legislation could leave them a vote shy. And at this point, they have few if any means of changing the legislation.

But the Democratic authors of the legislation — House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd — have both implied that the deal is done.

Frank told reporters last night that the House would not proceed to the bill, as they did today, unless they’d received the proper assurances from the Senate that the legislation would certainly pass.

We’ll see if he’s right in two weeks.

The last thing Democrats want is for Congress’ long-promised Wall Street crackdown to become a rerun of health care reform. That is, the House passes a bill, only to see grueling negotiations grind to a halt in the Senate, as health care legislation did last fall. But as Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chair of the Senate banking committee, prepares to release his proposal for financial reform this week, House lawmakers who have worked on the issue tell Mother Jones they’re worried that the talks will once again paralyze the Senate and produce only flimsy restrictions on financial firms.

Exhibit A for these anxious House lawmakers is the battle for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, arguably the lifeblood of any financial overhaul. The CFPA, to borrow an analogy, would protect consumers from subprime mortgages and unfair credit card policies in much the same way as the Consumer Product Safety Commission scrutinizes faulty toasters and dangerous toys. It’s an essential piece of the puzzle that experts say would rein in the predatory practices and disastrous products that toppled the housing industry and dragged the economy down with it.

In December, the House’s major financial reform bill featured such a stand-alone consumer protection agency. But in the Senate, the CFPA has run into serious trouble. Senators like Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the banking committee’s ranking Republican, and other GOP colleagues have sought to neuter or outright kill the proposal for an independent body, suggesting that a consumer agency could instead be folded into an existing department, like the Treasury. Even Dodd, who’s led the Senate’s negotiations for months, had expressed doubt earlier this year whether a CFPA could make it into the final legislation. And now that Shelby has reportedly rejoined the Senate’s main talks, the fate of an independent CFPA is even further in doubt. So contentious is the CFPA that it’s been cast lately as financial reform’s “public option,” threatening to derail the entire bill.