Wall Street: You’ve Got Hate Mail

Some 400 Occupy Wall Street protesters got into costume Friday, but the occasion wasn’t an early observance of the beloved pagan-inspired holiday that is Halloween. Rather, the messengers from among OWS ranks paid visits to big bank headquarters in Manhattan to deliver mail from thousands of Americans who claim to have been negatively impacted by the financial shenanigans that contributed to the Great Recession.

AP via CBS News:

One group of protesters headed down a Fifth Avenue sidewalk, chanting, “You’ve got mail! You’ve got mail!” About 50 police officers accompanied them, on foot and in vehicles.

The marchers stopped at a Citigroup office on Park Avenue. A building employee accepted a few letters but declined the rest. So the marchers folded them into paper airplanes and tossed them at a Citibank sign out front.

One message, from LaShuna Garcia, in the Tucson, Ariz., area, told how her parents lost their jobs through downsizing and budget cuts.

“Savings are difficult to accrue when the ends don’t even come close to meeting,” Garcia’s letter said. “Please help keep the American people alive.”

Jeremy Wattles, in the Geneva, N.Y., area, wrote that he was concerned about a U.S. Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing the free speech rights of corporations, which many protesters say has encouraged corporate campaign donations.

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