Days Of Rage' Heads West, Targeting Banks & CEOs

Just a week after occupying Wall Street... we have learned that the West Coast is the next stop on the extreme Left's "Overthrow America Tour".

Starting on Monday, host of "events" have been planned at banks and the homes of bankers in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. (You read that correctly, protesters will be brought to the HOMES of banking executives.)

Nowhere on this flyer (distributed at a protest on the Berkley Campus last week) is anything said about bringing the protests to the homes of the banking execs. That information is (hardly) hidden... on the Facebook page of a group called "Make Wall Street Banks Pay California."

On this page you can learn about the schedule for the coming week, including Monday's planned "Move Our Money" event.

Aside from the gathering site at Snow Park, the only other posted details stated;

Join us to divest and Move Our Money out of the big banks and kick off the week of actions!

(I don't know how successful this action will be, to date only one person has responded saying; "I wish I could, but I'm in LA working.")

The West Coast plans extend past the coming week, with more actions slated for the first week of October. The protest organizers seem to be taking a page out of the SEIU playbook, under the list of events on this Community page is a plug for two visits to the homes of banking execs.

Unlike the protests in Lower Manhattan this week, the radicals are actually planning to bring their intimidation to the homes of the CEOs. On Tuesday and Wednesday, bank executives will have to be concerned for the safety of their families as protesters are being invited/directed to "visit a Wall Street Executive At Home." The "more info" section of the post also includes the following statement;

Wall Street executives are destroying our neighborhoods. We’ll be visiting the home of a prominent Wall Street executive and his/her neighbors to tell them “Its time for Wall Street Banks to Pay”

That does not exactly sound like a friendly gathering.

And what about the expressed threats to neighbors? "We'll be visiting the home of a prominent Wall Street executive and his/her neighbors to tell THEM 'It's time for Wall Street Banks to Pay'

The threat of vandalism is also part of the plans for the protests as one of the scheduled events for October 5th is called "Taking Trash To The Bank"

The reason/explanation of this action is also posted on the page;

The banks are foreclosing on our neighborhoods and leaving blighted houses with trash behind. We’ll be collected trash from one of these South LA houses and delivering it to the responsible bank.

A full calendar of the events currently planned by Make Banks Pay is available on their website. You can see the information about Monday's vigil at the Oakland Court House as well as daily plans all the way up to the big finish - Taking Trash To The Bank.

Additional Background on Make Banks Pay California

Aside from one name, Dave Lagstein, the man who authors the posts on their website, little information is available about this group on their home page.

Mr. Lagstein is best known in California as the former San Diego Chief Organizer for ACORN. In October of 2009, Lagstein was caught on tape, bragging that the investigation of ACORN would be "whitewashed" by then Attorney General Jerry Brown. His statement to a crowd gathered at a public meeting to discuss the situation;

“the fault WILL be found with the people that did the video — not ACORN.”

As predicted by Mr. Lagstein, Attorney General Brown did not find fault with ACORN... but he also did not charge filmmaker James O'Keefe with any crimes.

The folks at Make Banks Pay California seem to have a solid organization behind them, however nowhere on their website can you find a formal affiliation with a large group like SEIU. There is a small mention on the very bottom of the page, claiming that the site created using something called NationBuilder.

NationBuilder is also part of something called 3dna, a group that states they provide;

According to the NationBuilder FAQ page, the organization does not take sides. . .

Since we have a lot of political customers that cross the ideological spectrum, sometimes we get asked this.  In a nutshell, NationBuilder is like Drupal or WordPress in that it is a platform available to everyone. NationBuilder is different as it is used to organize people, not content, but we don't discriminate at all based on what you are organizing them to do.

Translation: NationBuilder is just in it to make a buck.