On Saturday, at 10:30 a.m., Occupy Brunswick will march from the gazebo on the Brunswick Mall to the Bank of America, where we will stand from 11 a.m. to noon with our signs and banners protesting against the theft of our democracy by the big banks and the large corporations. At the bank, we will have free plants to hand out to people who wish to stop and talk to us about Occupy and why we are protesting there.

We decry the fact that Brunswick does its business with Bank of America. The bank has brought tens of thousands of Americans to foreclosure court using bogus robo-signed evidence. It has sold worthless mortgages to dozens of unions and state pension funds, thus draining them of hundreds of millions of dollars in value.

It has caused the bankruptcy of insurance companies that were forced to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in claims for fraudulent mortgages.

The government rewarded this bad behavior by bailing out the bank to the tune of $45 million. This allowed the bank to grow so big that its collapse would imperil the whole economy.

Last year, the Federal Reserve allowed Bank of America to move a large portfolio of dangerous bets into a side of the company that is FDIC-insured. That means that now we are all on the hook for as much as $55 trillion.

In February, the Justice Department’s foreclosure settlement rewarded the bank with a legal waiver that will allow it to escape billions of dollars worth of lawsuits.

In 2008, Bank of America bought fraudulent mortgage lender Countrywide Financial and investment bank Merrill Lynch, known for cutting regulatory corners. These purchases put the most careless mortgage lender, Countrywide; the most dangerous mortgage gambler, Merrill; and the most relentless packager of mortgage pools under the same roof.

The huge salaries and bonuses that Bank of America personnel pay themselves were stolen from us, the taxpayers in the TARP bailout.

Even though Merrill lost more than $27 billion in 2008, executives paid themselves $3.6 billion in bonuses. Six hundred ninety-six executives received more than $1 million each.

In the years since the crash, the bank has issued more than $44 billion in FDICinsured bonds through the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. If the loans are not paid back, we, the government, will be on the hook for them.

The bank has also borrowed billions in low-interest emergency loans from the Fed — an ongoing hidden bailout to the banks.

There was a time in this country when there were laws that restrained a bank from becoming too big to fail. The McFadden-Pepper Act of 1927 and the Douglas Amendment to the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 made it illegal for a bank holding company to own and operate banks in more than one state.

The purpose of the laws was to prevent an undue concentration of banking and financial power, and to keep the private control of credit diffused as much as possible.

But in 1994, the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act swept away all state barriers to interstate banking, and in 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed Glass-Steagall, tearing down the walls between banking, insurance and investments.

Bank of America’s manipulations have caused one of the largest reverse transfers of wealth in history: from pensioners to financiers.

Bank of America paid a $137 million fine for sabotaging the government contracting process — colluding with other banks to fix the bids for managing the moneys of cities and towns.

This makes the bank an admitted felon, yet the bank receives billions in federal aid and dominates the electoral process with campaign contributions.

Compare that treatment to the treatment of a street felon who, in some states, is prohibited from even voting after he gets out of prison.

At the same time that the bank paid out $35 billion in bonuses and compensation in 2010, it claimed losses of $5.4 billion, so it didn’t need to pay a cent in federal taxes.

Occupy Brunswick demonstrates at the bank every Saturday from 11 a.m. to noon. On the Occupy Brunswick website, occupybrunswick.wordpress.com, there are many videos of interviews conducted with local citizens who have articulate, informative and interesting things to say about the Occupy movement. I invite readers to watch them.

Selma Sternlieb lives in Brunswick.

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