With all the recent threads about OWS and BoA, here’s a pretty funny and well written article I thought you would all enjoy. An excerpt:
The new neighbors, Bank of America, show no such interest in their investment. They rarely mow (although they’ve had a string of shady contractors “managing” the property, who each show up once to indifferently run a riding mower over everything, but never come back to repair the downspouts, or clean the gutters, or mend the fence). They don’t rake. They don’t shovel the sidewalk. They ignored the city’s notices about the broken sidewalk slabs for two years, until the city sent in its own crew a few months back (the expense, I’m told, will be tacked on to their property taxes, which Bank of America – still in the guise of Countrywide – keeps current, according to county records).
And yet the house doesn’t collapse. Who shovels Bank of America’s snow? We do. (I alternate with a firefighter who lives across the street.) Who hauled away the tree that fell in Bank of America’s yard? We did. Who called DTE when scrappers stole the exposed copper gas line off the back of the house, despite that line still being live? We did. We gently broke into Bank of America’s house so that DTE could enter and shut off the gas before there was an explosion. We locked up when we were done. Who mends the fence in order to deter future scrappers? We do. Who broke into the house again that winter to drain the pipes when Bank of America and their nominal contractors proved unwilling to winterize a now unheatable house? We did.
But there are only so many hours and dollars we can invest in maintaing the Bank of America’s house. There are saplings taking root in the gutters, there is an ever-growing population of cats under the deck and vicious red squirrels in the attic. I noticed yesterday that, beneath the healthy bed of moss on the roof, many shingles are beginning to peel back. Maybe not this winter, maybe not even next, but soon water will be coming into the attic, and that’s the beginning of the end.
Money quote: “What’s Occupy Wall St. doing for us? First off, it’s Occupying Wall Street – which is nice, because Wall Street has been occupying my neighborhood for three years, and we’re no better off for it.” Read the whole thing: http://annarborchronicle.com/2011/11/16/in-it-for-the-money-occupation/