To say that Nicole James isn’t a Barack Obama fan would be an understatement.
The San Francisco native has been making routine trips to Manteca over the course of the past six weeks with leaflets, handouts and oversized posters of the 44th President of the United States sporting a Hitler moustache.
While some might view likening a chief executive with the Fascist leader of the Third Reich is overboard, James doesn’t. She believes that Obama’s actions as President of “being in bed” with Wall Street and London to the tune of $24 trillion and “standing idly by” while the nation is headed towards bankruptcy, more than merit the comparison.
“Right now Barack Obama is staging a coup d’état with what he’s doing with Social Security, and in his policies people are expendable to help the empire,” she said. “People are fed-up. People are losing everything. And people realize that Obama has to go.”
With a table full of literature from the Political Action Committee formed by longtime political activist Lyndon LaRouche, James and fellow San Francisco resident Alli Perebikovsky believe that they’ve found a captive audience here in the Central Valley.
With a sky-high unemployment rate and a foreclosure crisis that is still evident in neighborhoods throughout San Joaquin County, both James and Perebikovsky have found supporters by holing up outside of the Manteca Post Office downtown with their signage and their literature. Some of it calls for the 25th amendment to be invoked.
They figured a change of scenery couldn’t hurt on Thursday. A few occasional honks could be heard by motorists as they passed by the annex on Industrial Park Drive – always answered by a wave or a shaking fist from one of the two young activists.
But pointing out a glaring problem without offering a solution wouldn’t be much of a help to anybody.
That’s why they’re pushing for the reenactment of the Glass-Steagall Act – also known as the Banking Act of 1933. The combination of two bills, the act introduced banking reforms during the Great Depression and was on the books until 1999 when it was repealed by the Gramm-Bleach-Bliley Act – which allowed commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms and insurances companies to consolidate.
Some – like James and Perebikovsky – believe that repealing the Glass-Steagall Act directly resulted in the Financial Crisis of 2007.
And even though their approach might be somewhat extreme to the layperson, James sees the current times as somewhat of a call to arms for all Americans to stand up for what they believe in before it’s too late.
“What they want is to get you out of the way. And people think that they’re just going to wait it out, or take it to the ballot box in 2012,” she said. “But if we don’t fight on the higher idea, the only other way is to bankrupt the financial institution.”
San Franciscans make pitch in Manteca against Obama policies