Josh Eidelson takes on the New Haven Savings Bank, attacking their racist lending practices and planned orgy of capitalist insider trading. Meanwhile, the bank is unveiling new lending practices aimed at inner city neighborhoods. Neither Scott Marks nor John Destefano is particularly impressed. Quoth Destefano

"This is what they should have been doing all along," he said. "What are we supposed to do, applaud them for doing their job?

"The bottom line remains they are taking hundreds of millions of dollars of assets out of this community that are not going to be available to be reinvested in New Haven."

The IMA

may ask depositors to withdraw their money from the bank if regulators fail to impose a two-year-moratorium.

"The clergy members join Mayor DeStefano in his demands issued on Monday that NHSB insiders do not profit from the deal, that the bank end its discriminatory lending policies against working class and African-American and Latino families, that the bank increase its commitment to the community and change the make-up of the board of directors," read a statement from the group.


Today's the hearing on the bank's demutualization. It's being held in HAMDEN at a time when no working person could possibly get there. Still, the mayor and CCNE are bringing shitloads of people. Give 'em hell!!!

The YDN also picked up the UOC-GESO teaching fora. Professor John Felstiner sez:

"This sort of event happens all too seldom, if ever, especially concerning places where the teaching is assumed or declared to be excellent," he said.

Felstiner said prospective Yalies, current students, parents, and two Yale graduate students participated in an "intense" discussion about the nature of undergraduate classes and the conditions of teaching.

"I think the high school seniors, in those two hours, moved from simply assuming that teaching just 'happens' as a matter of course to recognizing what personal and professional concerns might really be involved in their teachers' work," he said.

Today's opinion/letter page made me happy. Besides Josh takin on the bank, we get Jared Malsin on the Antiwar Movement, Cara Berkowitz on consumerism, feet, and shoes, and Max Neuvians on the roots of the Rhodes Scholarship in colonial genocide.  ¶ 4:11 PM