We probably wouldn't know about this if Fortune writer, Nina Easton, didn't live next door to the BofA Exec who was stormed by the SEIU last week.
If this had been Tea Partiers, you know it would have been emblazoned across the front of every newspaper and would have led ever telecast for at least a day or two. But I'm guessing that 99% of you had never seen it until now. I'm a news junkie and I hadn't.
So what do you think? Does it cross the line to storm a person's private home with an organized, loud, and threatening protest? And why wasn't this as newsworthy as a Tea Party event?
If this had been Tea Partiers, you know it would have been emblazoned across the front of every newspaper and would have led ever telecast for at least a day or two. But I'm guessing that 99% of you had never seen it until now. I'm a news junkie and I hadn't.
So what do you think? Does it cross the line to storm a person's private home with an organized, loud, and threatening protest? And why wasn't this as newsworthy as a Tea Party event?
What's really behind SEIU's Bank of America protests?by Nina Easton
(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. . . .
More here:
What's really behind SEIU's Bank of America protests - May. 19, 2010