SEIU's Answer To Nina Easton

On Sunday, when hundreds of taxpayers went to Bank of America lobbyist Greg Baer's home to ask him to stop foreclosing on their neighborhoods, we received a mixed welcome. Some folks actually came out and applauded us, giving us thumbs up as we went past. Most people just stood and watched. Baer himself tried to blend in with the crowd until a neighbor pointed him out and he stormed away.

But there was one woman that everyone remembers. She came running outside while Mark Freeman was preparing to tell how Bank of America is trying to kick him and his family out of their home. The bank jacked his payments up until he could no longer afford them - then foreclosed on him. As he was getting ready to talk, a woman came storming across her lawn, screaming at us to shut up and go away - telling us we had no business being there.

That woman was Nina Easton, Washington editor of Fortune magazine. The next day, she got on the phone with Stephen Lerner, head of SEIU's banking reform project, and ranted some more. And, today, she's continuing her rant in an article for Fortune magazine and CNN Money.

Ms. Easton paints a terrifying picture of a "mob" with pitchforks and torches outside her window. The problem is, her story doesn't quite mesh with the facts. More on that in a minute.

The really interesting question here is: why is Ms. Easton so angry? And why has she decided to use her position as a member of the media to air her own personal rant at the people who showed up to share their foreclosure stories?

Nina Easton's husband's firm has Business Roundtable as a client, a special interest group that counts giant banks like Bank of America as members.

One Google search clears it up pretty quickly. Her husband is Russell Schriefer, Republican strategist and consultant to several big corporate interest groups. In fact, her husband's client list includes the Business Roundtable, a special interest group that counts Bank of America and other Wall Street banks among its members.

Ms. Easton's husband used to be a corporate lobbyist himself, before he started his own consulting firm for Republican politicians and corporate interest groups like the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce. Now, according to his website, he helps garner positive media for "a wide range of corporate clients including Fortune 500 companies and national associations."

And with his wife's Bank of America apologist piece today, he can chalk up another victory for his clients.

So, it's becoming clearer why Nina Easton decided to use her position as editor to write a personal rant. Her family profits off Bank of America's success. The next question is, why would any self-respecting news outlet choose to run it?

That's what we're trying to figure out now. We have a call in with her managing editor but, so far, have gotten no response. See update above.

Even if you ignore the obvious personal bias, the article is rife with hyperbole and distortion.

Ms. Easton uses her article to criticize the police for their "belated" response time and says they were too scared to arrest us. The truth is, the police actually followed us to the event to help keep the peace. They were on the scene when we were. The reason they didn't make any arrests is because nobody did anything illegal. In fact, the police went on record as saying it was a "very peaceful" event.

She also seems to suggest that we shouldn't have tried to talk to Baer because he is a "lifelong Democrat." This is ridiculous. The foreclosure crisis has nothing to do with political party and everything to do with banks and their lobbyists using their influence ($$$) with politicians of all stripes to keep things the way they are.

That's why we were there and why people will continue to stand up to the banks and their lobbyists, who continue to do everything they can to keep Wall Street profiting at Main Street's expense.

If Nina Easton really wants to see "personal intimidation," she should head outside her posh neighborhood and follow along next time Bank of America forecloses on a family. Unlike us, they won't be there just to talk to them. They'll be there to take away their home.

This picture is from their website - doesn't this look like trespassing to you?

Read Nina Easton's article here

Nina Easton on SEIU's Protest of Private Home

Nina Easton was not some reporter who was invited to cover the protest.  She was minding her business, in her own home, putting her young child down for a nap.  She lives across the street from the house that was surrounded by these thugs.  14 buses of people showed up at a private home to do nothing more than to intimidate this man.  Instead, a 14 year old boy was home alone, he became so terrified that he locked himself in the bathroom.  He didn't know if these people were going to break into his home and hurt him.  People say that what is happening in Greece can't happen here, oh yes it can.  This is beginning.  This is not activism, this is purely intimidation.  Sadly, the police decided that they couldn't do anything about because it may incite them.  We are all to quickly becoming a nation that willfully ignores the law. 

Power Play by Nina Easton



What's really behind SEIU's Bank of America protests?


By Nina Easton May 19, 2010: 6:15 AM ET










(FORTUNE) -- Every journalist loves a peaceful protest-whether it makes news, shakes up a political season, or holds out the possibility of altering history. Then there are the ones that show up on your curb--literally.






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.






Baer, on his way home from a Little League game, parked his car around the corner, called the police, and made a quick calculation to leave his younger son behind while he tried to rescue his increasingly distressed teen. He made his way through a din of barked demands and insults from the activists who proudly "outed" him, and slipped through his front door.






"Excuse me," Baer told his accusers, "I need to get into the house. I have a child who is alone in there and frightened."






When is a protest not a protest?


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.






What's interesting is that SEIU, the nation's second largest union, craves respectability. Just-retired president Andy Stern is an Obama friend and regular White House visitor. He sits on the President's Fiscal Responsibility Commission. He hobnobs with those greedy Wall Street CEOs -- executives much higher-ranking than my neighbor Baer -- at Davos. His union spent $70 million getting Democrats elected in 2008.






In the business community, though, 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.






When I asked Stephen Lerner, SEIU's point-person on Wall Street reform, about these tactics, he accused me of getting "emotional." Lerner was more comfortable sticking to his talking points: "Millions of people are losing their homes, and they have gone to the banks, which are turning a deaf ear."






Okay, fine, then why not continue SEIU protests at bank offices and shareholder meetings-as the union has been doing for more than a year? Lerner insists, "People in powerful corporations seem to think they can insulate themselves from the damage they are doing."






Other reasons why SEIU might protest


Bank of America officials dispute Lerner's assertion about the "damage they are doing," citing the success of workout programs to help distressed homeowners, praise received from community groups, the bank's support of financial reform legislation, and the little-noticed fact that Bank of America exited the subprime lending business in 2001.






SEIU has said it wants to organize bank tellers and call centers -- and its critics point out that a great way to worsen employee morale, thereby making workers more susceptible to union calls, is to batter a bank's image through protest. (SEIU officials say their anti-Wall Street campaign has nothing to do with their organizing efforts.) 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.





But SEIU's intentions, and BofA's lender record, are ripe subjects to debate in Congress, on air, at shareholder hearings. Not in Greg Baer's front yard.






Why the media wasn't invited


Sunday's onslaught wasn't designed for mainstream media consumption. There were no reporters from organizations like the Washington Post, no local camera crews who might have aired criticism of this private-home invasion. With the media covering the conservative Tea Party protesters, the behavior of individual activists has drawn withering scrutiny.






Instead, a friendly Huffington Post blogger showed up, narrowcasting coverage to the union's leftist base. The rest of the message these protesters brought was personal-aimed at frightening Baer and his family, not influencing a broader public.






Of course, HuffPost readers responding to the coverage assumed that Baer was an evil former Bush official. He's not. A lifelong Democrat, Baer worked for the Clinton Treasury Department, and his wife, Shirley Sagawa, author of the book The American Way to Change and a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, is a prominent national service advocate.






In the 1990s, the Baers' former bosses, Bill and Hillary Clinton, denounced the "politics of personal destruction." Today politicians and their voters of all stripes grieve the ugly bitterness that permeates our policy debates. Now, with populist rage providing a useful cover, it appears we've crossed into a new era: The politics of personal intimidation.