Tax Day at a bank near you

New Yorker Gabe Falsetta reports that he just got back from a MoveOn.org Tax Day action in midtown Manhattan’s Bryant Park across the street from Bank of America Tower.

Some 250 to 300 people attended, and thousands of passers-by saw the rally.

“We had separate trials for each corporation that didn’t pay their fair share of taxes,” he said.

“We wanted to be fair about these trials, which is why each corporation was tried separately. We didn’t want to be accused of being partisan in any way.”

“After listing the charges and listening to their defense, the audience/jury rendered a guilty verdict and pronounced all the corporations on trial guilty as charged!”

Here is a short list of those corporations put on trial:

Bank of America
Citibank
General Electric
Exxon Mobil

Also in the dock were billionaire CEOs.

Across the river in Long Island City, Queens, about 50 people at rallied at CitiCorp.

These were among 300 “Make Them Pay” events MoveOn members organized around the country today. Some were small, some bigger – but like a prairie fire, they are sparks that can ignite to turn our country around.

MoveOn says, “The right wing is on the attack: slashing public services, eliminating workers’ rights, and destroying jobs. Their excuse? ‘America is broke’ – and yet big corporations and the wealthy are raking it in, and continue to get tax break after tax break. Something doesn’t add up.”

No indeed, it doesn’t add up.

As MoveOn correctly says, “America is not broke. The right wing wants to convince us we’re broke so that they can push through their radical agenda.”

The Republican-tea party radical agenda is a corporate greed agenda. Slash public services, privatize, de-regulate, destroy unions, drown the government in the bathtub – as one of their ideologues once said. Take us back to the Robber Baron age of 100 years ago. Capitalism in the raw.

Tax breaks and tax avoidance for the super-rich and corporate giants – followed by cries of “deficit” – is part of this agenda

And tonight, Gabe reminds us, peace activists will hold their annual tax day rally at New York’s main post office. They call attention to another piece of the problem: a bloated military budget that sucks up over a quarter of every tax dollar we pay.

Make the corporate tax dodgers pay up. Tax the rich. Cut the war machine. If you haven’t joined a rally, signed a petition, called your senator and representative, do it today. And tomorrow. And the next day. And bring a friend. Two friends. Keep it going.

As Gabe says, “Wage peace. Fight for a just society.”

Photo: The Consumerist CC 2.0