Today is Divestment Day with the Occupy Wall Street movement, so I hauled my tired self out of my warm bed and hopped on the bike to head down to McKeldin Square for a march and rally. Big banks in Baltimore have engaged in predatory lending in our communities, devastating individuals, families, and neighborhoods. They accumulate our wealth by their theft. They make money off the money we put in there by lending it at high rates (higher to some than others–part of that predatory business) to others of us, charge us to take our cash back to spend it, and charge both sides every time we use our cards at businesses, whose owners pay a percent back to those banks for a specious service. It has all become so normal, it’s like we’ve forgotten that those are our resources, not theirs, and today was a day to take our money back and to let others know they should take their money back too. I snapped this picture of the dragon bank that marched through the streets, with its money-hungry eyes and open mouth that cannot be satiated. Awesome. We walked along, declaring ourselves the 99%, whose streets, our streets, this is what democracy looks like, we don’t want your pity/we want money for our city, etc. And it just felt good to be out there, and when that one Bank of America branch was closed “due to circumstances outside of our control?” Well, that was just awesome. There weren’t that many of us, but it feels like something’s changing when the bank closes to avoid confrontation. We circled back to the square and started to part ways. An older woman passed me, looked straight into my eyes, and said, “that felt good, didn’t it?” It doesn’t always, but today it did, it really, really did. And I’ve got to say, yelling in the streets gets easier the more you do it. Highly recommended. There were more events and teach-ins and actions, but I sat myself on my bike and rolled back up the hill to rest for a bit. There’s another one on Monday. See you there.