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Dewey Square takeover might be the smaller protest on Friday: Bank of America targeted for afternoon sit-in

As the Occupy Boston forces gear up to occupy the space in front of South Station on Friday, participants in another protest will be marching around the Financial District - before settling down for a sit-in at Bank of America's Massachusetts headquarters on Federal Street.

Take Back Boston says it will have as many as 1,000 people in a march that starts at 3:30 p.m. at the Parkman Bandstand on the Common. The protest march will visit Verizon, embroiled in a contract dispute with workers, Hyatt, which fired those 100 workers, NStar and Fidelity before arriving at Federal Street, where 40 of the protesters - many people from Dorchester who have lost their homes to foreclosure - will stage a sit-in. In a statement, organizers say:

As of March 2011, Bank of America had more homes in foreclosure than any other bank in Boston, with two-thirds of these in "majority minority" neighborhoods. 61% of Bank of America's subprime mortgages were concentrated in these same neighborhoods, revealing a pattern of pushing bad loans on People of Color and the poor.

One of the organizers of the march is City Life, which has been at the forefront of anti-foreclosure protests in Dorchester and which recently dumped ten bags of trash on the front steps of the home of the president of the bank's Massachusetts operations that it said came from a foreclosed property the bank was letting fall apart in Malden.

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Comments

That's all I'm saying. The Needham train has enough problems....

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Screw you and your commute.

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and stop blaming the rest of the world for your bad decisions.

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Needing housing, food and transportation? Needing to hold on to low-wage jobs because there is no alternative? Deciding to be laid off?

Deciding to be born poor or as a member of the shrinking middle class?

You can only make good decisions if there are good decisions to make.

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I fail to see how BofA, NStar, Fidelity and Verizon are responsible for this (OK - the banks screwed up and should have been made to pay the price but got bailed out in part - the alternative was we'd all be eating dirt right now - there were two choices - bad and Armageddon) - BofA isn't exactly whistling Dixie these days as they get sued for a few billion every time they turn around. Hyatt I buy - what they did was downright sleazy, necessary perhaps, but still sleazy.

If you don't like the way they do biz and think you can do better - start your own. That's what I did - small but growing and going toe to toe with the biggest baddest boys in town simply by doing it better AND cheaper.

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There was no good reason to keep this institution around once it got into financial trouble. After it failed, the FDIC could have broken it up into all of the small local banks (such as BayBank) that it had been assembled from.

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Are you telling me that you don't know anyone who was has been subjected to a layoff through no fault of their own?

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Yep, that's the way to win others over. Not by emulating the knee-jerk extremist right-wing nut jobs incapable of doing anything more than grunting insults and...

Oh, er, never mind. Didn't recognize you all the way over there to the left for a moment.

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"This situation calls for a really futile and stupid gesture to be done on somebody's part.."

"And we're just the guys to do it!"

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How would this mess up your commute? Teh T might use it as an excuse for fail, but ...

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These people lost their homes, so they are probably a little more put out by that than you are about how long it takes you to get to work, so be nice. That said, it would probably be more effective for these people to protest in front of, say, the State House, where laws regarding the regulation of banks and mortgage lenders could get passed. Protesting in front of this bank isn't going to get it to change its behavior or get any other bank to do so either. In fact, Bank of America didn't originate most of the loans that it is now dealing with. It acquired them when it bought Countrywide a few years back (who probably also didn't originate the loans). Its now going through the motions of dealing with all the bad loans it bought. Its response to this is probably going to be something along the lines of "what am I supposed to do?" If the protesters are more of the ilk of "protesting" capitalism, the most we can hope for is to see some well made street puppets and that they clean up after themselves.

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So I have a BofA mortgage. I bought a house I could afford. I got a low interest rate. I did research on being a first time home buyer, went to 3 different banks, and BoFA matched the lowest one and had the lowest closing cost. I also have a great credit score because I've paid my bills on time for the last 15 years and didn't go into debt and worked through college.

So...what was the problem with BofA again? Poor people who got interest only mortgages or adjustable rate mortgages and then didn't realize they'd have to pay the bills?

If someone could advise me why a 'bailout' is bailing out stupid people who can't interest simple financial concepts (or birth control because they all have 4 kids from different dads) etc, maybe I'd understand the protest.

Why Verizon? Aren't unions destroying America? Why Hyatt, aren't we against illegals now? Or is that just Cambridge?

I really need some education - I got a good education, paid it off, went it something that I knew would be stable and married someone who did the same and invested wisely through the 90s...why should I protest? My family wasn't wealthy, or normal (for that matter) but I looked around as a teenager at people lying on the street, or having to shop at thift stores and thought...I never want to be like that. So...should I show solidarity for the stupid? Isn't this some sort of social Darwinish?

Forgiving all debt is a joke. These protests are a joke. If you don't like the law makers STOP VOTING THEM INTO OFFICE. If you don't like BofA - DON'T BANK THERE. I don't like Verizon, I use RCN and AT&T....does everything have to be an affront to my sensibilities?

If we lived in a utopia, we'd all be thin and healthy - oh wait, people sue cigarette companies because putting a toxic stick in your mouth and inhaling fumes and making you sick is someone else's fault.

Land of the free, home of the stupid.

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"So...what was the problem with BofA again?"

They lent ridiculous amounts of money to people knowing it would not be paid back, expecting the FDIC or some securitized bondholders to take the loss, committing multiple counts of fraud in the process, and then dumped the problem at the laps of the taxpayers.

For starters.

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Does that phrase ring a bell? Originators got fees for writing mortgages - so they found special ways to tell people who weren't qualified how wonderful home ownership would soon be their American Dream.

Like falsifying documents: http://dtc-systems.net/2011/09/wells-fargo-fined-8...

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that BOA has instituted a $5/month sit-in fee. 3) Profit!

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Now that is funny, and clever.

WINNING.

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You want to make an impact? Picket Scott Brown. His office, his home, whatever county fair his talentless daughter is performing at,anywhere he might be.

The guy is bought and paid for by the exact institutions these idiots want to protest against. Most of the places these people are picketing are populated by people just like them. People who are just doing their jobs and have little or no say in the company policies.

According to Rachel Maddow, Elizabeth Warren now has about 900K on hand for her Senate bid, while our pickup truck driving everyman has close to 11 million in his war chest. The majority of it coming from the exact people these protests are supposedly against.

You want to protest effectively, start with the guys who let the bankers off the hook, guys like Scott Brown. I hope to God Brown debates Warren. It'll be a slaughter!

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How long has Brown been in office? How about kerry? How about Frank?

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would love to see both of them voted out also. Brown is an even emptier suit than even those two, though.

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