By Miranda Leitsinger, msnbc.com
A coalition of nurses’ unions is taking their call for a “Robin Hood” tax on Wall Street -- which they say could generate up to $350 billion a year -- to Chicago in the first major protest ahead of this weekend’s NATO summit.
Their pitch: impose a tax of 50 cents on every $100 of trades of stocks, bonds, dividends and other financial transactions, which are not currently taxed. The U.S. would join more than a dozen other nations that already have a financial transaction tax, according to National Nurses United (NNU).
“We’re focused on building a social movement that actually enacts change and to get the attention of the national leaders,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, NNU’s executive director. “We want the end of austerity in our country and in … other countries.”
The nurses’ call echoes last fall’s outcry by the Occupy Wall Street protesters over income equality, corruption and corporate greed. Proceeds from the tax would support social services, education and healthcare.
“Their fundamental issue has been about the same thing ours has been … which is taxing Wall Street and restoring community and (the) economy in America,” DeMoro said.
The financial transaction tax is not a new concept. The U.S. had one from 1914 to 1966, and several politicians called for another one after the Wall Street crash in 1987, National Nurses United said.
Supporters include Nobel Laureate economists Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, and Joseph Stiglitz, the former World Bank chief economist -- both of whom have spoken out in favor of such a tax in the past.
A bill introduced last November by two U.S. Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. Peter DeFazio, calls for a tax of up to 0.25 percent – or 25 cents on every $100 – on the value of stock trades in addition to taxing transactions in other financial instruments.
Others, however, are against what has been called a “sin” tax on Wall Street.
“Our research shows unambiguously that higher trading costs depress the prices of stocks and bonds,” business school professors Yakov Amihud and Haim Mendelson wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “A transactions tax will end up punishing Main Street, hurting the economy and reducing U.S. Treasury revenues in the next few years. It will thus exacerbate the effects of the financial crisis.”
The nurses are involved because they have seen the impact on health, with a growing number of uninsured and impoverished Americans, Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank, wrote in an op-ed for the Chicago Sun-Times.
The tax proposal protesters were initially targeting the G8 summit of global financial leaders that starts today. But when that meeting was moved from Chicago to Camp David in Maryland, they opted to carry on their demonstrations here anyway to take advantage of the large number of protesters converging on the city for the NATO summit.
So far this week, protesters have demonstrated against the shuttering of local schools and mental health clinics, the loss of homes through foreclosures, and environmental issues surrounding the controversial “Tar Sands” pipeline, and they stormed the building that houses the headquarters of President Obama’s campaign.
Nam Y. Huh / AP
Demonstrators rally against the Keystone Pipeline and the Alberta Tar Sands outside of the Canadian Consulate in downtown Chicago on Thursday.
The city has assigned 3,100 officers plus hundreds from other cities to guard against the kind of violence that broke out in the streets of Seattle at the World Trade Organization meeting in 1999, NBCChicago.com reported, and officials have warned of massive travel disruptions.
They’ve also imposed limits on how close the protesters, which include dozens of unions and anti-war, environmental, education, healthcare and civil liberties’ groups, can get to the convention center where the summit is being held -- within “sight and sound” of it, according to the Chicago Tribune -- raising the ire of the demonstrators.
The National Lawyers Guild, which is sending out legal observers to the demonstrations and aiding those who are detained, said late Thursday that at least 20 people have been arrested so far this week. Occupy Chicago said 11 arrests occurred Wednesday night at an area home – though it’s not clear if those 11 were included in the guild’s tally.
Organizers are hoping for large turnouts at the “Robin Hood” tax demonstration in the city’s Daley Plaza and at another rally led by anti-war activists on Sunday, in which a group of 9/11-era veterans plan to return their service medals to protest the "war on terror."
Todd Gitlin, a former leader of the 1960s-era group Students for a Democratic Society and a Columbia University sociology and journalism professor, said the Wall Street tax was an obvious focus for protesters.
“It’s concrete. It might be winnable. It has global resonance because you’ve got … several national governments in Europe that support it,” he said, noting that it clearly distinguishes between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, and had an “intrinsic fairness” about it. “It’s a reform that rings sensible to large numbers of people but a lot of work has to be done… . Most people right now I think don’t get it.”
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