Welcome to the showdown.  We’re gathered here today to send a message to the bankers meeting inside, and the message is this:

 Business as usual is over.  We are shutting it down.  You work for us—not the other way around.  Your job is to be stewards of our savings—to put and keep working families in homes, to lend the money companies need to create jobs.  And you have failed.  You’ve turned the American economy into your own private casino, gambling away our financial future with our money, driving us to the brink of a second Great Depression, then sticking out your hand for taxpayers to bail you out.

And Bankers, let me tell you this:  We didn’t put you back in business so you can pay billions in bonuses to the suits;  those bonuses have to go.  And we didn’t put you back in business so you could pile money and lobbyists into Capitol Hill to fight the financial reform we so desperately need—while we’re losing jobs, losing our homes, losing our retirement savings, losing it all—because you treated the money we worked so hard to earn like Monopoly money.  Let me tell you—this is not a game. It’s our lives.  And we are not going to let bankers rule our lives or our country.

Sisters and brothers, we are here to mark a new day, a day when we demand accountability from our financial system.  We demand accountability for the pain the Big Bankers have inflicted on families who face financial ruin, for joblessness, pensions wiped out, foreclosures and bankruptcy.  And we are here to support President Obama's call for tough new regulations to force these bankers out of their Wild West mentality, out of their arrogance, out of their contempt for the public they’re supposed to serve.

How do you like the Obama team’s cutting the shreds out of those banker bonuses?  I say, good start—now bring on the rest.  Bring on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency to grind out predatory lending, mortgage rip-offs, outrageous overdraft fees, and sky-high credit card interest rates.  Bring on some real risk regulation, so the Big Banks can’t ever, ever shove the American economy to its knees again.

No more financial institutions that get “too big to fail,” too complex or too interconnected.  No more asking the banks to regulate themselves.  It’s time to either reform the Federal Reserve or ask the Fed to step aside and have a real public agency protect our economy from the banks.

Bring on a spotlight for those “shadow markets,” the unregulated hedge funds, private equity funds and derivatives that need real regulation before they suck even more money into the black hole of greed and speculation.  Bring it on.

Our economy has been all but destroyed.  We have to build a whole new one based on good jobs, not on bad debt with America investing in and exporting technology and world-class products, not financial crisis;  where hard work is rewarded, not colossal failure;  where workers have a real voice because they have the freedom to have a union if they want one;  and where all of us have the health care we need.  That’s what we can do when we get these bankers and their treachery under control.  When we put people first.

The American Dream isn’t a dream just for the richest 1 percent.  The American promise isn’t a promise that a few can live well off their assets while the many can barely live.  Today we are here to redeem the real promise of America—our America—a stronger America that provides everybody the opportunity to work, to contribute, to succeed.

That’s why you’re here—not just to get angry or outraged, although there’s plenty to be angry and outraged about.  You’re here to make a difference—to clean up Wall Street’s reeking garbage that is contaminating Main Street.

I want every single person here to commit to call their members of Congress, not just today, but every day, and tell them these four things:

One: Give us the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Two: Reform the Fed or create an agency that’s capable of stopping systemic risk.

Three: Regulate the shadow markets before they do more damage.

And four: Reform corporate governance and CEO compensation to protect working people who are long-term investors, not speculators.

Will you do it?  Will you make those calls?

Thank you.

Now, Sisters and Brothers, there’s someone else here I’d like you to meet.  Armando Robles is president of UE Local 1110 at what previously was Republic Windows and Doors here in Chicago.  He was a maintenance mechanic at the factory for eight years, but last year on December 2, he and his 260 co-workers learned their factory would close in three days.

Bank of America—which had received billions in taxpayer bailout funds—cut off the company’s line of credit.  The workers were about to lose their jobs and their promised severance and vacation pay.  But instead, like David, the union workers united to face down a giant.  They staged a six-day sit-in that inspired the country and won support from their neighborhood to the White House.

 If they didn’t have a union, Armando and his co-workers would have gone home empty-handed.  If the Big Banks had their way, these workers would have nothing.  Instead, they won a $1.75 million settlement from Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase.

I’m honored to introduce a working family hero: Armando Robles.