Watch: Occupiers Set Up Living Room in Bank of America


Occupiers have tried to squat in bank lobbies before, but never with as much style as this crew from Occupy Wall Street: 

Notice how the occupiers look like they are having fun, instead of foaming with anger? “That was completely conscious,” says Nelini Stamp, an organizer with Occupy Wall Street whose mother lost her home to Bank of America in 2006. “This is not a shutdown. We want to make light of the situation but also carry the message that this is a serious thing.”

The creators of the video are members of Occupy Wall Street’s Fight BAC group (BAC stands for “Bank of America), which formed two months ago to highlight the bank’s foreclosure practices and too-big-to-fail business model. They’re coordinating March 15th protests against the BofA in Manhattan; Phoenix; Danbury, CT; and Sarasota, FL. Many of them come from the anti-foreclosure group Occupy Homes, which is holding a national week of action starting today. The #M15 events are online at FTheBanks.org (“F” stands for “Foreclose”—or “a different thing if you use your imagination,” Stamp says).

And yeah, in case you were wondering, $230 billion is how much taxpayers spent bailing out Bank of America.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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