Showdown In Chicago

by digby

I have been remiss in failing to write about the protests that have been going on for the past three days at the yearly meeting of the American Bankers Association. The nation has been covering it and it’s quite inspiring:

On Tuesday morning, in Chicago, the unions came to town. It was the final day of the rolling protest dubbed The Showdown in Chicago, a confrontation with the American Bankers Association, whose members had gathered for their annual meeting. With a crowd estimated at 5,000, it was without a doubt the largest demonstration against Wall Street’s ravages since the economy crashed a year ago.

From the desperate manufacturing sector came members of the Sheet Metal Workers and the Machinists and the Steelworkers. From the collapsed housing market came the Carpenters and the Painters and the Insulators. There were laid off workers from shuttered factories – Republic Doors and Windows, whose battle over severance pay was captured in Michael Moore’s new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, and Quad City Die Casting, whose hundred employees all lost their jobs with far less fanfare last month. Pulling up the rear, a large contingent of garment workers from Hart Marx, suit makers to the president, who successfully fought off a shutdown threatened by creditor Wells Fargo, saving some 3,500 jobs. And, of course, a vast purple army from the Service Employees Union, SEIU.

When I wrote about Capitalism: A Love Story, I was hopeful that liberals would see it and recognize the necessity of properly defining this problem or we’ll end up being blamed for it. The teabaggers are certainly working hard to do just that.

This protest was hardly covered. (But then it didn’t have an entire news network flogging it relentlessly.) But it happened:

Check out all the blog posts and the slide show. It’s a start.

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