Bank Action WG - 20 June 2012

= Bank Action Working Group Meeting - 20 June 2012 =

Attending: Ridgely, Michelle, Dana, Steve, Randy

Short-term Action Planning
We made signs for 7/2 (and 7/9) and discussed plans for the action.

In the past, we discussed petitions ("sign our petition to help get Bank of America another bailout.") We decided to go with two petitions: one to bail out BofA, and another to let BofA go under. Let's see which one gets more signatures.

Steve will design and print petition forms. Ridgely will bring two clipboards to the actions. The petition forms should have space for email addresses (recruiting).

Besides petitioning, what else will we do during the action? Carry signs, hand out flyers, and `sell' cupcakes. Cupcakes are zero down, but we'll take your house if you miss your first payment.

Michelle volunteered to bake a lot of stuff. Maybe ten dozen cookies and some brownies.

Commitments:


 * Dana. Both Actions
 * Ridgely. Both Actions
 * Michelle. July 2nd (only)
 * Steve. July 9th (only)

Try to show up at 4:15pm. The action is planned for 4:30 - 6:30.

ADDRESS: we'll demonstrate at the Big B of A building, on the corner of Franklin and Federal St. (The address is 100 Federal St, Boston).

Dana set up a brand new website for our working group. It's http://bostonoccupybanks.org. We need to add content, and update the site on a regular basis.

Dana would like to invite CLVU to our action. CLVU doesn't like BofA, because of their forclosure practices. CLVU recently did a BofA action in Belmont.

Ridgely will try to bring in people from Occupy Natick.

Steve will try to bring in people from Occupy Arlington.

Handouts. We'd like to keep handouts short, simple, and easy to digest. We can take material from http://fthebanks.org.

What to wear? We previously discussed tuxes. Folks handing out baked goods can wear aprons. (Dana had a very nice homemade BofA apron). There's also a website where you can buy BofA apparrel, see http://www.bankofamericastore.com/Store/Browse/APPAREL.

Event Publicity. Here's a list of places where we can promote our action:


 * Occupy Boston Calendar
 * Occupy Boston Website (i.e., blog post)
 * Press Release
 * OB Community forum mailing list
 * OB Popular assembly
 * act-ma mailing list.

Ridgely texts Murphy, to see if we can have use of OBs red wagon, to transport things to and from our action. John will bring it.

Longer-Term Planning
After we do our two BofA actions, then what?

We can repeat the general theme with other banks (JP Morgan Chase).

We could do coordinated actions. Have a collection of smaller BofA taking place at the same time, at different branches.

We can research where cities and towns have their money. If BofA, then try getting them to move it.

Do a mobile casino as street theater (in the spirit of how banks are gambling with our money).

Wheel of Misfortune.

Theatrical trial of Bank of America. This is another example of street theatre. Occupy Salem was going to do something like this. Ridgely will try to contact Occupy Salem, to see what they did, and how it went.