AIDS Activists Join 15,000 In Wall Street March To Protest Funding Cuts

The fine folks at Housing Works, whom regular readers here know well, joined an estimated 15,000 activists Thursday afternoon in Manhattan’s financial district, protesting the chummy relationship New York City’s Mike Bloomberg — and our nation’s lawmakers — have with the banks and financial institutions, while they cut funding for basic social services.

Holding signs that read, “Tax the Rich,” “Make Banks Pay,” and “AIDS Housing Saves Lives,” while chanting, “Pay Us Back,” and “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Wall Street greed has got to go!,” protestors say they “rallied against a system that has allowed banks continued tax breaks while Mayor Bloomberg plans brutal cuts to education and services for the poor.”

Via the Housing Works blog:

“Our system is not working, everything is going to the rich people, nothing is going to the people like me,” he said. “I want to see a big change, a huge change.”

Low-income people living with HIV/AIDS are among those who could lose critical services in 2012, and Housing Works clients and staff stomped through the streets. The mayor proposes cutting more than $5 million from supportive housing services at the HIV/AIDS Services Administration, a reduction which would hurt the agency’s most vulnerable clients. He’s also proposed a $1.3 million cut to rental assistance for HASA clients, as well as a cut that would shut down the Momentum Project, a 25-year-old meal program.

As the rally ended, a group of students, AIDS activists and others shouted at one end of Wall Street—and bankers crossed politely in front of the protest line to leave work for the day. “There’s plenty of money,” said Heather Stepanek, 29, from the Bronx. “It’s not a revenue crisis, it’s a priority crisis.”

 

Housing Works video by David Thorpe//Housing Works