Oh Boy: SEIU Stages Protest to BofA Exec's Family For Both Lofty Goal of Denouncing "Greed" And Also to Intimidate Bank Into Forgiving Their Own Multi-Million $ Debt, But Mostly That Part About Forgiving the Multi-Million $ Debt

Actually, we don't know they're trying to renegotiate the terms of a loan via terrorizing a man's family. That is surmise on Nina Easton's part.

Not even surmise, really. Insinuation.

But it's a pretty good insinuation.

I think she's had enough and wants these thugs to go away. (They're right in front of her own house, as they're "protesting" her neighbor and his family.)

Last Sunday, on a peaceful, sun-crisp afternoon, our toddler finally napping upstairs, my front yard exploded with 500 screaming, placard-waving strangers on a mission to intimidate my neighbor, Greg Baer. Baer is deputy general counsel for corporate law at Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), a senior executive based in Washington, D.C. And that -- in the minds of the organizers at the politically influential Service Employees International Union and a Chicago outfit called National Political Action -- makes his family fair game.

Waving signs denouncing bank "greed," hordes of invaders poured out of 14 school buses, up Baer's steps, and onto his front porch. As bullhorns rattled with stories of debtor calls and foreclosed homes, Baer's teenage son Jack -- alone in the house -- locked himself in the bathroom. "When are they going to leave?" Jack pleaded when I called to check on him.

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Now this event would accurately be called a "protest" if it were taking place at, say, a bank or the U.S. Capitol. But when hundreds of loud and angry strangers are descending on your family, your children, and your home, a more apt description of this assemblage would be "mob." Intimidation was the whole point of this exercise, and it worked-even on the police. A trio of officers who belatedly answered our calls confessed a fear that arrests might "incite" these trespassers.

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In the business community... SEIU has a reputation for strong-arm tactics against management, prompting some companies to file suit.

Now those strong-arm tactics, stirred by supposedly free-floating (as opposed to organized) populist rage, have come to the neighborhood curb. Last year it was AIG executives -- with protestors met by security guard outside. Now it's any executive -- and they're on the front stoop. After Baer's house, the 14 buses left to descend on the nearby residence of Peter Scher, a government relations executive at JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500).

Targeting homes and families seems to put SEIU in the ranks of (now jailed) radical animal-rights activists and the Kansas anti-gay fundamentalists harassing the grieving parents of a dead 20-year-old soldier at his funeral (the Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on the latter). But that's not a conversation that SEIU officials want to have.

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Lerner insists, "People in powerful corporations seem to think they can insulate themselves from the damage they are doing."

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Complicating this picture is the fact that BofA is the union's lender of choice -- and SEIU, suffering financially, owes the bank nearly $4 million in interest and fees. Bank of America declined comment on the loans.

Powerline has more. Big Government suggests an alliance between Media Matters, the Huffington Post, and the SEIU -- as far-fetched as a Sunni-Shi'ite alliance, of course. Michael Barone thinks it's time for terrorizing protests of people's homes to stop.

Bear in mind, this isn't merely a protest. Three people with signs would be a protest-- that would communicate the message.

500 people is a mob, and it's inherently threatening. And it's meant to be. This is a case where the medium (an angry mob) is in fact the message.

Correction: I thought the loan was for $4 million -- nope, that's merely the interest and fees on a much bigger loan.

Commenter Lex Luthor guestimates the loan at $75 million. I don't know, so I went with "multimillion."

posted by Ace at 04:38 PM

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