Mass. Labor-Community Coalition Protests Corporate Tax Scofflaws at Financial District Demonstration
BOSTON/Financial District - Over 500 union members and community allies held a protest on the Rose Kennedy Greenway adjacent to the 1 International Place complex on Thursday April 14th to protest corporate tax breaks and demand a progressive tax system and job creation programs in Massachusetts. Organizers said they held the event near International Place because it houses or is near the Boston headquarters of State Street Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Barclays. They pointed out that State Street was about to receive an $885 million dollar tax refund despite $1.55 billion in profits a short time after being bailed out by the US government, and that major corporations like General Electric will be paying zero taxes this year - even as American government is struggling to make ends meet at every level for lack of funds.
Darlene Lombos, co-executive director of Community Labor United, was the first of several speakers to address the crowd, “All of you here today are people that we’re working with to build a united front to confront and challenge the corporate bosses and landlords that are sitting over there thinking that we don’t have a voice. But do we have a voice?! [crowd cheers] What are we here to do today? We are here - this diverse group of religious, community, labor, housing, environmental organizations - we’re here to send a united message to those bosses, those banks who sit there and profit from our own misery. We are here today to say it is our time. It’s time to pay back what we bailed you out. It’s time to create jobs and invest in our communities.
Bob Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO then called for action on behalf of Bay State working families, “Can you imagine we gotta yell at buildings yet once again to the attention here in the City of Boston. I want to thank the Boston Globe. I want to thank New England Cable News and WBZ and any other media folks that are here. This is the kind of reporting that we need in our community. We need our message out. The message of working families in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We didn’t cause any of these problems. Wasn’t brought upon because you happen to have a union card in your back pocket or your purse. There’s plenty of money in the United States of America. There’s plenty of money here in Massachusetts. And yet I spent the whole day today up at the State House talking to the Speaker, talking to the Majority Leader, because they want to take health care out of collective bargaining.
“Because you have too good a health care plan. Because the private sector doesn’t enjoy the same kind of benefits that you have. Now isn’t that something. In the State of Wisconsin and Indiana and Ohio and Florida in New Jersey in New Hampshire and Maine we’ve got to destroy the labor movement to save the United States of America. Father Pat, please close your ears for one second … that’s bullshit and you know it and I know it and everyone else knows it.
“The Bush tax cuts - we needed to extend the Bush tax cuts in the United States of America because people making 250,000 dollars couldn’t increase their marginal tax rate from 36 to 39 percent. Do you have any idea how much money that is? We could close every single budget deficit of every single state in the United States of America and yet the Congress of the United States of America extended the Bush tax credits. Do have any idea the inequity that exists in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? We have 137,000 millionaires here in Massachusetts. Yet we don’t have enough revenue to pay our teachers, our firefighters, our police officers, our AFSCME members, our SEIU members, our health care providers. We don’t have enough money in Massachusetts because we cut the income tax and then raised the sales tax - raised the sales tax, the most regressive tax in our state. We’ve got to figure out how to get revenue up in Massachusetts. We’ve got to figure out how to have internet taxes, and service taxes, and understand the way the economy’s changed. Look at these people in these buildings. They took our money - our pension money that Paul Barrett talked about, our building trades pension monies, our health care pension monies - and they sold these excessive,. exotic financial instruments all over the world. They didn’t just bankrupt the United States and our cities and towns and state governments. They bankrupted essentially the whole world. And we’re going to blame working people for the problem. We’ve got to fight back. [unintelligible sentence] We’ve got to get in the State House. We’ve got to be in the White House. We’ve got to be in the Congress of the United States. It’s time to fight back and make a difference.”
The protest was organized by the April 14 Coalition which includes the Greater Boston Labor Council and its affiliate unions, Chelsea Collaborative, Chinese Progressive Association, City Life/Vida Urbana, Coalition Against Poverty/Coalition for Social Justice, Community Labor United, Jobs with Justice, MassCOSH, Massachusetts Community Action Network, Neighbor to Neighbor, New England United 4 Justice, Project RIGHT, and Working Massachusetts.
The event concluded peacefully. There were no incidents, no counter-demonstrators and no arrests.
A coalition of housing activists is planning another rally on related themes in downtown Boston on May 14 at 10 a.m.
