May 12th Protesters Identify a Stumpf Problem
As thousands of protesters marched through Downtown Manhattan yesterday, I had a difficult task – explain why Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was such a threat to GED students in New York City. The connection was not so straightforward, but May 12th was a day in which the parts of the City that normally operate in isolation were brought into comparison and conflict with each other. The more than 10,000 protesters made sure this was literally the case as bankers were forced to squeeze past housing rights activists and Wall Street “power-couples” shot disturbed glances at homeless rights advocates. It was a day for all the contradictions in our City to come face-to-face with one another.
I was positioned in Teach-in Zone 2, right on the edge of Pine and Water Street. My topic was education, but my approach was not typical of other education teachers. Most would discuss the high-profile cuts – big number layoffs for teachers and the next in the seemingly never ending gutting of the public higher education system. My focus was to look at smaller budget cuts. Though small, these cuts threaten to devastate critical support programs, further dislocating poor and working class New Yorkers.
My lead in was John Stumpf. He’s a dapper man who prefers dark suits that contrast with his gently graying hair. And Stumpf has a problem, a really serious one. One that I presented to the students at my open-air teach-in. How can you spend $8,500 an hour? That’s how much he received in compensation from Wells Fargo bank last year. The crowd shouted out all the typical working class fantasies – go on a long vacation, buy twenty pairs of jeans, pay off my student loans… Yet, none of these captured Stumpf’s dilemma. He simply cannot spend $8,500 an hour.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There is a plan for Stumpf and his fellow CEO’s. First, the cuts.
The education budget is clearly a target for Bloomberg. And with education we know which way the human feces rolls. The Federal Government has ended important funding streams to New York City’s education system. Simultaneously, budget-cutting New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has also withdrawn funding from the system. And Mayor Michael Bloomberg has gone right along with them by proposing to cut $461 million from the system.
A good chunk of that comes from the previously mentioned teacher layoffs. These firings will send class sizes
