March 8: International Women's Day! Rise up and Occupy Bank of America!

Thursday, March 8, 2012
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
A call to rise up and occupy Bank of America!
101 Market St. 10:00am
San Francisco, CA
(march to a local Bank of America)

“Someday the workers will take possession of your city hall, and when we do, no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit!” – Mary Harris “Mother” Jones

Since its inception in the early twentieth century, International Women’s Day has been rooted in the struggle for economic justice, growing out of local demonstrations by women workers demanding shorter hours, better pay, voting rights, and an end to discrimination.

This International Women’s Day, Women Occupy calls on women across the globe to rise up against the big banks that have caused the current economic crisis. Women Occupy is a coalition of activists who are joining forces to coordinate powerful actions across the Occupy movement, starting with International Women’s Day. In the United States we are supporting collective efforts initiated by Occupy activists, particularly the women-led campaigns of Public Citizen and Rainforest Action Network, to hold Bank of America – the biggest of the big banks – accountable for the predatory economic policies that are destroying our families and communities.

Join WomenOccupy in a day of mass action on International Women’s Day targeting Bank of America.

-Women have long been the prime targets of predatory bank policies and economic collapse: women are 32 percent more likely than men to receive sub‑prime mortgages and Latina and African-American women borrowers are most likely to receive sub‑prime loans at every income level.

-Women make up 51% of the world’s population but 70% of the world’s poor. We perform 66% of the world’s work, produce 50% of the food, but earn 10% of the income and own less than 1% of the world’s property.

-Our work continues to be unpaid, underpaid and undervalued, making us invisible to economic indicators and ineligible for the rewards reaped by the most “productive” members of society.

It’s time we turned the tables and started going after the big banks! And what better suspect than the biggest of the big banks – Bank of America?

Bank of America not only leads the pack in illegal foreclosure practices, faulty loans, and tax evasion, it also pillages its customers with exorbitant fees and denies them their right to free speech! Plus, as the official bank of the US military, BofA has been accused of improperly foreclosing on active-duty troops.

We demand Bank of America:

Break up into smaller, safer pieces that won’t take America down with them if they fail.
Invest in the planet and stop funding coal projects that are polluting our communities and ruining the climate.
Pay the statutorily required 35% corporate income tax instead of draining the government of revenue through off-shore tax shelters, loopholes, and scams.
Stabilize the housing market and revitalize the economy: reduce principal for all underwater homeowners to current market value. This would end the foreclosure crisis, reset the housing market, pump billions of dollars back into the economy, and create 1 million jobs a year.Invest in small businesses, the main source of jobs in the U.S.


This International Women’s Day, our work will be visible.

We are the 51%.

Expect us.