BofA targeted by new direct-action group

By Matt Kennard in Washington

Published: February 25 2011 21:48 | Last updated: February 26 2011 02:02

A direct-action group targeting “tax-dodging” big corporations and banks plans to bring thousands of Americans to the streets on its first national day of action on Saturday.

US Uncut has protests planned in over 50 cities against making “unnecessary and unfair cuts to public services”, arguing that forcing financial institutions and companies to pay more taxes would be a fairer way of bringing down the fiscal deficit.

The group, which started in the UK, has seized on a 2008 congressional study that found nearly two-thirds of US corporations do not pay federal income taxes thanks to use of loopholes and offshore tax havens.

Their first target is Bank of America which has been chosen as a place for “co-ordinated sit-ins and protests” across the country on Saturday. BofA is the biggest bank by deposits in the US. It received $45bn in federal bail-out money in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

“I don’t know they are protesting against us,” said a bank spokesman. “The bank paid back all of the Tarp [federal bail-out[ money in 2009 with interest. Our practice is to follow all relevant tax policies and pay taxes when taxes are owed.”

The group’s British analogue and inspiration, UK Uncut, has made headlines since it began five months ago after targeting retailer Topshop and its owner Philip Green, as well as mobile phone company Vodafone, with spontaneous demonstrations at stores in London and around the country.

“In the UK, it’s a wildly successful model for compelling people to organise themselves,” said Rizvi Qureshi, an organiser for US Uncut based in Washington. The group calls itself a “decentralised, horizontally arranged network of people”, using US Uncut’s website as a messaging hub.

The organisers of the movement, which has received the backing of intellectuals such as journalist Naomi Klein and linguist Noam Chomsky, hope to channel the union and worker demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin to create a wider “progressive Tea Party movement” and shift the emphasis away from an attack on entitlement programs to corporations and banks.

US Uncut wants to turn its protest sites into symbols of public institutions being cut in the latest 2011 budget. “One idea is for people to to use props and turn the bank into a school to protest the cuts in funding for the vital Pell grant,” said Mr Qureshi. Pell grants help support undergraduate education for students from low-income families.

Like in the UK, which saw hundreds of people come out on the streets for protests, the organisers said they have been inundated with interested people who have found out about the demonstrations through social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. The US Uncut site has been live for just a few weeks but has already received thousands of visitors, say organisers.

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