Portfolio at NYU

Posted 03.31.03
Nader Takes it to the Street

By Mike Woodsworth

Some two thousand demonstrators spiced up the lunch hour on Wall Street yesterday, rallying in front of the Stock Exchange to denounce corporate greed. Led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, the crowd demanded government protections for the pensioners, investors and workers who have been hurt by the recent wave of corporate scandals.

"If there's one thing Americans agree on now," Nader said, speaking beneath the statue of George Washington on the steps of Federal Hall, "it's that they want law enforcement to catch those crooked corporate bosses and send them to the penitentiary."

Other speakers included Phil Donahue, Patti Smith and Stanley Aronowitz, the Green Party candidate for Governor. They were joined by an anti-corporate gospel choir and the Billionaires for Bush comedy group, who sipped martinis and waved fake $200 bills. A 30 foot-high inflatable pig floated beneath a massive American flag plastered to Stock Exchange's imposing facade. "Hogtie Corporate Gluttons," read a banner stuck to the pig.

Nader said the Stock Exchange has turned into "a speculative casino riddled with corruption, deception and crime." In the hope of restoring the integrity to American capitalism by cracking down on corporate crime, he announced a new 12-point plan, which he challenged all congressional candidates to endorse. The plan calls for expanded disclosure practices, pension reform, protections for financial consumers, and limits to executive compensation packages. Above all, it aims to curb special interests' influence on politics.

"Corporations are busy planning our political future, our economic future, our military future, our environmental future and even our genetic future," Nader's voice boomed along Wall St. "It's time that we in this country start planning our own future. It's up to us Americans to stand up and get corporations out of politics. We the people should own and control our own resources."

The diverse crowd of teenage anarchists, aging hippies, trade-union activists and downtown workers on their lunch break were treated to amusing pieces of absurd political theatre between speeches. A preacher roared "Halleluiah! Stop Corporate Crime!" into a megaphone while his purple-clad gospel choir belted out a chorus of "Stop Shopping." The Billionaires for Bush, dressed in furs and slinky black dresses, held up signs saying "Jail Is Just For Little People" and "Shame On Enron For Getting Caught." The group was later "arrested" by a group of Green Party activists, who led them to a fake prison cage set up at the base of the Federal Hall steps.

"Every day the list of corporate scandals grows," CUNY professor Frances Fox Piven told the crowd. "Corporate executives are looting our biggest companies. As they loot, jobs are lost and the economy is dragged down."

Other protestors insisted that the infamous corporate scandals of the past year, such as Enron, Global Crossing and WorldCom, are not just aberrations in an otherwise sound system. On the contrary, corporations left free from legislation will always recklessly seek profits, harming people and planet, they argued. Now more than ever, the protestors say, the corporate agenda has entered the inner halls of government, where a Presidential Administration with strong ties to the energy and defense industries has shown it will go to great lengths to protect corporate privilege.

"Let us remember that it is the very corporations that put us on our fossil fuel addiction who are the ones wanting to drag us into war," said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange, a San Fancisco-based activist group. "The very corporations who want us to re-write international agreements to have unfettered access to the world's resources want to reinforce their power with military might."

Nader repeatedly called on Wall Street executives to leave their offices and address the crowd but none took the stage to give their side of the story. Some businessmen could be seen wading through the crowd and chuckling along with the street theatre.

The rally, though small compared with anti-corporate protests held in New York last February and in Washington last month, illustrated the emerging alliance between radical leftist groups focused on globalization and more mainstream figures worried about war in Iraq.

"The anti-corporate globalization movement has to merge with the peace movement," Benjamin said. "Just as we are saying to corporations that they cannot rape and pillage the planet for the benefit of the few, we are telling George Bush that regime change begins at home. We want a political system that doesn't trample on the bill of rights and the constitution and we believe in a community of nations based on the rule of law and the UN."

Members of the Not In Our Name peace coalition circulated among yesterday's crowd to publicize a major peace rally planned for Sunday in Central Park. Jeff Hermanski, 18, held an American flag and a handful of pro-peace pamphlets.

"Wars are perpetuated by corporations and if corporations were out of government we'd have less war," Hermanski confidently asserted before changing his tone. "I truly am proud of the people who built this country and who fought for it. But the only reason we're preparing to fight this new war is because a couple of guys want more money. Bush is not representing what this country is about."