A new campaign by a national network of activists kicked off Monday morning with a splash as it led hundreds of fed up homeowners in a series of protests that brought business to a halt at a major bank and the House speaker's office.

The National People's Action network picked Monday to launch the "Make Wall Street Pay" campaign thanks to another show in town: the National Association of Attorneys General's Convention in Washington, D.C.

But they didn't stop there.

Moving from the meeting of all 50 Attorneys General, the crowd made their way to a Bank of America branch on Pennsylvania Ave. While about 300 stood outside, another 300 moved indoors, filling up the lobby and bringing business to a standstill.

Then, they went to see if Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was available, filing into his Capitol Hill offices to send an unambiguous message: Wall Street must pay.

"They delivered the message that we have a revenue crisis and that Wall Street must pay its fair share," George Goehl, executive director of National People's Action, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview.

"Attorneys General from all 50 states have launched an investigation into annual foreclosure fraud," he continued. "American homeowners need this opportunity to save people's homes, so people have been organizing all across the country, really heavily in about 15 states, to put pressure on AGs to get them to push for strong settlements on this stuff. That means principle reductions on mortgages and criminal penalties for bankers that are breaking the law."

'Make Wall St. Pay' campaign debuts by occupying bank branch, House speaker's office

elsewhere .....

Look at the outrage in Madison, Wisconsin. Look at the crowds in DesMoines, Iowa. Look at the demonstrations in Indiana and Ohio and elsewhere around America.

Hear what they're saying: Stop attacking unions. Stop making scapegoats out of public employees. Stop protecting the super-rich from paying their fair share of the taxes needed to keep our schools running.

Stop gutting the working middle class.

Are we finally seeing average Americans stand up and demand a fair shake in an economy now grotesquely tilted toward the wealthy and the privileged? Are Americans beginning to awake to the fact that our economy now delivers a larger share of total income to the very top than at any time in living memory? That big corporations are making more money and creating more jobs abroad than in the United States?

That this concentration of income and wealth has so corrupted politics that corporations can extort whatever they want from the government - tax breaks, loan guarantees, subsidies - while the super-rich can take most of their income as capital gains (taxed at 15 percent), and the rest at the lowest top rate in 25 years? And that because of this our kids are crowded into classrooms, our streets and highways and bridges are falling apart, and our healthcare bills are out of control?

The Tea Party grew out of indignation over the Wall Street bailout - an indignation shared by the vast majority of Americans. But the Tea Party ended up directing its ire at government rather than at big business and Wall Street. Was this because billionaires Charles and David Koch and their like funneled money to the Tea Party through front organizations like Dick Armey's Freedom Works, and thereby co-opted it?

Now we may be seeing the birth of a genuine populist movement. Call it the People's Party. Like the Tea Party, the People's Party doesn't have a clear organization or hierarchy or single address. It doesn't have lobbyists in Washington. It's not even yet recognized by the mainstream media.

But the People's Party seems to be growing in numbers and in intensity. And it's starting to push elected officials - first at the state level - to listen and respond.

The Birth of the People's Party

The Wisconsin Senate voted Wednesday night to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from public workers, approving an explosive proposal that had rocked the state and unions nationwide after Republicans discovered a way to bypass the chamber's missing Democrats.

All 14 Senate Democrats fled to Illinois nearly three weeks ago, preventing the chamber from having enough members present to consider Gov. Scott Walker's "budget-repair bill" - a proposal introduced to plug a $137 million budget shortfall.

The Senate requires a quorum to take up any measures that spend money. But Republicans on Wednesday separated from the legislation the proposal to curtail union rights, which spends no money, and a special committee of lawmakers from both the Senate and Assembly approved the bill a short time later.

The unexpected yet surprisingly simple procedural move ended a stalemate that had threatened to drag on indefinitely. Until Wednesday's stunning vote, it appeared the standoff would persist until Democrats returned to Madison from their self-imposed exile.

"In 30 minutes, 18 state Senators undid 50 years of civil rights in Wisconsin. Their disrespect for the people of Wisconsin and their rights is an outrage that will never be forgotten," said Democratic Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller. "Tonight, 18 Senate Republicans conspired to take government away from the people."

Miller said in an interview with The Associated Press there is nothing Democrats can do now to stop the bill: "It's a done deal."

The lone Democrat present on the special committee, Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, shouted that the meeting was a violation of the state's open meetings law. Republicans voted over his objections, and the Senate convened within minutes and passed the measure without discussion or debate.

"The gig is now up," Barca said. "The fraud on the people of Wisconsin is now clear."

Walker had repeatedly argued that collective bargaining was a budget issue, because his proposed changes would give local governments the flexibility to confront budget cuts needed to close the state's $3.6 billion deficit. He has said that without the changes, he may have needed to lay off 1,500 state workers and make other cuts to balance the budget.

Walker said Wednesday night that Democrats had three weeks to debate the bill and were offered repeated opportunities to come back, but refused.

"I applaud the Legislature's action today to stand up to the status quo and take a step in the right direction to balance the budget and reform government," Walker said in the statement.

The measure approved Wednesday forbids most government workers from collectively bargaining for wage increases beyond the rate of inflation. It also requires public workers to pay more toward their pensions and double their health insurance contribution, a combination equivalent to an 8 percent pay cut for the average worker.

Police and firefighters are exempt.

BREAKING: Wisconsin GOP Rams Anti-Union Bill Through

so those who earn over US$250,000 a year aren't rich, but teachers who earn just $50,000 are overpaid? Jon Stewart compares the hypocrisy of news commentators.

Greedy teachers and poor Wall St Traders

The International Commission for Labor Rights (ICLR) sent a notice to the Wisconsin Legislature, explaining that its attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers is illegal.

The ICLR is a New York-based nongovernmental organization that coordinates a pro bono network of labor lawyers and experts throughout the world. It investigates labor rights violations and issues reports and amicus briefs on issues of labor law.

The ICLR identified the right of "freedom of association" as a fundamental right and affirmed that the right to collective bargaining is an essential element of freedom of association. These rights, which have been recognized worldwide, provide a brake on unchecked corporate or state power.

In 1935, when Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the NLRA, or the Wagner Act), it recognized the direct relationship between the inequality of bargaining power of workers and corporations and the recurrent business depressions. That is, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners, the economy fell into depression. The law therefore recognized as policy of the United States the encouragement of collective bargaining.

While the NLRA covered US employees in private employment, the law protecting collective bargaining in both the public and private sectors has developed since 1935 to cover all workers "without distinction."

Assault on Collective Bargaining Illegal, Says International Labor Rights Group

meanwhile .....

Police estimated up to 100,000 people turned out in Madison, WI yesterday to protest Gov. Scott Walker's (R) assault on unions, making it bigger than any protests the city has witnessed, even those during the Vietnam War. The Madison rally is part of a much larger Main Street Movement of average Americans demanding fairness in labor laws, social spending, and taxation that has emerged in Ohio, New Jersey, Florida, Michigan, and elsewhere. But yesterday's rally in Madison is noteworthy because at 85,000-100,000, it was bigger than the biggest tea party protest, the September 12, 2009 rally in Washington, D.C., which turned out only an estimated 60,000-70,000.

Madison Rally Bigger Than Biggest Tea Party Rally

And, of course, nary a word about any of this from our world class media .......

Vice President Biden gave the Obama administration's most forceful statement of solidarity with organized labor in its current battles around the nation on Thursday, encouraging activists to continue fighting for workers' rights.

"You guys built the middle class," said Biden in a virtual town hall conversation hosted by the AFL-CIO. "I would just emphasize what Hilda [Solis] said and say it slightly different: We don't see the value of collective bargaining, we see the absolute positive necessity of collective bargaining. Let's get something straight: The only people who have the capacity - organizational capacity and muscle - to keep, as they say, the barbarians from the gate, is organized labor. And make no mistake about it, the guys on the other team get it. They know if they cripple labor, the gate is open, man. The gate is wide open. And we know that too."

The e-mail announcement for the call went out to labor activists, including members of the growing advocacy group Working America, and it pitched the call as a conversation with 100,000 supporters about "Republican assaults on collective bargaining in at least a dozen states." AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis joined Biden on the call, where listeners were also allowed to ask questions (although Biden had to leave before that portion).

Vice President Biden Fires Up Union Activists: Organized Labor Keeps 'Barbarians From The Gate'

The ham-handed self-serving greediness playing out in the background of Governor Scott Walker's attempt to make Wisconsin into the central battle zone in the Koch Brothers' attempt to end collective bargaining in this country, roared to the forefront Sunday night when the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that the supposedly financially imperiled state had enough money to hire State Senator Randy Hopper's mistress.

Valerie Cass, a former Republican legislative staffer, was hired Feb. 7 as a communications specialist with the state Department of Regulation and Licensing. She is being paid $20.35 per hour. The job is considered a temporary post.

A lot of things in Wisconsin - especially those pertaining to one of Governor Walker's State Senate henchmen - appear to be temporary:

His estranged wife, Alysia, issued a statement to WTMJ-TV (Channel 4) accusing Hopper, 45, of beginning an affair with Cass, 26, last year. He filed for divorce in August.

Oh but this gets better and better. How did Ms. Cass wind up being hired by the state with no money, away from a Madison firm called "Persuasion Partners." Surely Governor Walker with his dedication to saving the Wisconsin's residents every dollar he could find, could not have known about this!:

Cut the Unions, Hire the Girlfriends

The phrase consent of the governed has been turned into a cruel joke. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. Civil disobedience is the only tool we have left.

We will not halt the laying off of teachers and other public employees, the slashing of unemployment benefits, the closing of public libraries, the reduction of student loans, the foreclosures, the gutting of public education and early childhood programs or the dismantling of basic social services such as heating assistance for the elderly until we start to carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience against the financial institutions responsible for our debacle. The banks and Wall Street, which have erected the corporate state to serve their interests at our expense, caused the financial crisis.

The bankers and their lobbyists crafted tax havens that account for up to $1 trillion in tax revenue lost every decade. They rewrote tax laws so the nation's most profitable corporations, including Bank of America, could avoid paying any federal taxes. They engaged in massive fraud and deception that wiped out an estimated $40 trillion in global wealth. The banks are the ones that should be made to pay for the financial collapse. Not us. And for this reason at 11 a.m. April 15 I will join protesters in Union Square in New York City in front of the Bank of America.

"The political process no longer works," Kevin Zeese, the director of Prosperity Agenda and one of the organizers of the April 15 event, told me. "The economy is controlled by a handful of economic elites. The necessities of most Americans are no longer being met. The only way to change this is to shift the power to a culture of resistance. This will be the first in a series of events we will organize to help give people control of their economic and political life."

If you are among the one in six workers in this country who does not have a job, if you are among the some 6 million people who have lost their homes to repossessions, if you are among the many hundreds of thousands of people who went bankrupt last year because they could not pay their medical bills or if you have simply had enough of the current kleptocracy, join us in Union Square Park for the "Sounds of Resistance Concert," which will feature political hip-hop/rock powerhouse Junkyard Empire with Broadcast Live and Sketch the Cataclysm. The organizers have set up a website, and there's more information on their Facebook page.

This Is What Resistance Looks Like