 
Organizer Bruce Hartford for A New Way Forward,
speaks to demonstrators outside the San Francisco Federal Reserve yesterday.
The protest was held to rally opposition to the Obama administration’s
bailout of failed banking institutions.
Photos by Luke Thomas
By Luke Thomas for NewSplink
April 12, 2009
As many as two hundred mostly mature and educated demonstrators yesterday flaunted witty, well-crafted signs of outrage against the Obama adminstration’s bailout of banks, calling for failed banking institutions to be broken up, nationalized and regulated.
Richard Tamm, 61, a retired former Federal Reserve computer programmer, said: “Some of these companies are bankrupt and they won’t admit it. We need to wake up to what actually is happening — to force Obama to do the right thing,” adding that trying to support the existing “failed financial oligarchies” is a move in the wrong direction.
“What we need to do is take over some of these large investment banks and break them up like we broke up Standard Oil and Ma Bell,” Tamm continued, “because they were too big to fail.”
Richard Tamm holds up a hand made placard
in front of the San Francisco Federal Reserve
that read in part: “Stop pouring $$ into mega bankrupt holes.”
Passing motorists honked their horns in support of the national day of action protest effort, organized by A New Way Forward. Bruce Hartford of the same organization said: “Abraham Lincoln told us that government should be of the people, by the people, for the people. But what we have today is government of the powerful, by the lobbyists, for the wealthy – and it’s our fault to a certain degree because we have let them get away with it. It’s time that ‘we the people’ started saying ‘we want to exercise people power in counter to the money power of the lobbyists.”
About 20 law enforcement officers were present but made no arrests.
“We are here to say loudly, as a nation, that we want to bail out the people, not the banks and the CEOs,” said Nancy Mancias, of CodePink Women for Peace. “There are lobbyist groups and corporations that are pulling the strings of our President and Congress.”
Nancy Mancias (right), CodePink Women for Peace.
Luke Thomas
Luke Thomas is a former software developer and computer consultant who proudly hails from London, England. In 2001, Thomas took a yearlong sabbatical to travel and develop a photographic portfolio. Upon his return to the US, Thomas studied photojournalism to pursue a career in journalism. In 2004, Thomas worked for several neighborhood newspapers in San Francisco before accepting a partnership agreement with the SanFranciscoSentinel.com, a news website formerly covering local, state and national politics. In September 2006, Thomas launched FogCityJournal.com. The BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, New York Times, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, 7x7, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Weekly, among other publications and news outlets, have published his work. Thomas is a member of the Freelance Unit of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, TNG-CWA Local 39521 and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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