Carnval Against Capital in Boston
More than 100 activists joined in a Carnival Against Capital in front of Bank Boston in the center of the city's financial district. Hundreds more watched, costing the bankers many thousands in lost "productivity."
Dancers/actors from Forum of Progressive Artists performed first a south Asian-song inspired dance against patriarchy, and then a skit against exploitation of cleaning women who work in homes and offices — at the end, they quit their jobs.
Music and drums filled the streets, the sounds echoing off the brick towers of capital as people danced and chanted.
Giant puppets — one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse representing the World Trade Organization, a huge-jawed and top-hatted banker's head representing the Wold Bank, a tiger as the IMF — livened a moving picket in front of the bank. Thousands of flyers were handed out explaining J18 and why we oppose neoliberal capitalist depradations.
Then two bankers appeared, Cad Gifford and Terror Murray, representing the two banks merging as FleeceBoston, appeared to denounce our protest, to mock our struggle, to maintain they had crushed workers' resistance like dried twigs, that resistance was futile.
Up leaped a Zapatista, shouting that resistance is not futile. He exposed the connection between BankBoston and International Paper (investments, shared directors) in the efforts to pillage Chiapas and displace the people — but they had met resistance. Resistance flowering across the planet, closing financial districts. The bankers by now were tied with ribbons from our June Pole to a streetlamp. The Zapatista warned the bankers, as he sprayed them with a tall can of Greedo, that they would have to change their tune.
The bankers of FleeceBoston repented, explained their centuries of exploitation, and promised to stop. As a token, they offered for people to get in line at the bank to obtain an application for a grant of up to $100,000, a sign that the Bank would chance its was. Twenty people went into the bank and got in line. Some "regular" customers joined in, asking if the grant was real — ask the bank, we said.
But once freed and away from the crowd and the dissolving power of Greedo, the bankers went back to their old ways, reneged on their promise, and denied the grants.
The crowd promised to return, far stronger than before, to end the rule of capital over our lives.
Reported by Boston Encuentro — contact the Encuentro at <midnotes@aol.com>