The following speech was given by Erin K., of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (a steering-committee member of the ANSWER Coalition), on May Day 2012.

While the government rules the people, it is the banks that rule the government!

Why else would the government have been so quick to act with trillions of dollars to stop the banks, including Bank of America, from going under? 

The over one trillion dollars that were given to the banks could employ 20 million people at $50,000 dollars a year, ending the unemployment crisis that denies about 13 million Americans the right to work. 

Why isn’t this happening?  The people aren’t the priority of the ruling 1%: profits are.  Meeting workers’  needs are not what creates profit for those at the top. 

And who created the wealth that was given to the banks?  And who creates the wealth that the banks hold? It’s our class, the working class, which is the source of all value in society. If all of the bosses in Syracuse didn’t show up to work for a week, no one would know the difference. It would be business as usual. But if just one sector of the working class, lets say the sanitation workers, if they didn’t show up to work for a few days, everyone would know. That’s because we are the ones who actually labor.

But it’s not our class who is in control. The ruling class, the 1% has control. We don’t live in a democracy. We live in a dictatorship of the 1%. How many workers are in the House of Representatives, or in the Senate? How many workers are in the Supreme Court? The answer is zero.

Although it was the banks and their system (capitalism) that caused the economic collapse, they got everything and the people, the victims of capitalism, got absolutely nothing. 

We can see through this and all of the other injustices against the working people of the U.S. That there is no kinder, gentler version of capitalism and in order to meet the needs of the people and create a system that is truly FOR the people, capitalism, and the dictatorship of the 1% has got to go.

Instead of the massive profits of the banks staying in the hands of the ruling class, the money should go where it really belongs: to the people! That’s why we say “Seize the banks!”

Rather than lining the pockets of the already super rich, we need to fund a program to provide everyone with a job, eliminate student debt, and stop banks from evicting people from their homes and provide affordable housing for everyone! This, and more is possible, if we seize the profits that we created! Seize the banks!