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In solidarity with Save the Post Office Coalition’s action at 11:30 AM on Tuesday, December 4, participants of Occupy Bay Area United (OBAU) are staging an overnight occupation of Blum Capital Partners, at 909 Montgomery Street, starting at 4 pm Monday, December 3rd. 

The owner of this firm, Richard Blum, UC Regent and husband to Senator Dianne Feinstein, is also Chairman of the Board of the politically entrenched real estate firm CB Richard Ellis (CBRE). Through leveraging his position as UC Regent, Mr. Blum has brought outsize benefits to Blum Capital Partners by exploiting UC’s sizable investment portfolio. He has directed a multitude of university build projects to his very own real estate company, even going so far as to construct a building named after himself on the UC Berkeley campus from which he personally profited. Thanks to his wife, Senator Feinstein, Blum’s real estate firm CBRE won contracts from the FDIC to handle the state’s residential foreclosures at above market rates, despite the firm’s weak track record in the field. As part of the nationwide threat to public services, the closing and selling off of California’s historic post offices have been contracted out to none other than Mr. Blum’s own CBRE, allowing him to profit from the public’s great loss of priceless buildings and works of art housed in them. 

Richard Blum and his companies exemplify the intractability of corporate influence on public policy, the marriage of wealth to politics and the incestuous twining of the two. In today’s political discourse, privatization is too often pitched as the only alternative, as necessary “reform”. “We are here today to stand for real reform: the removal influence over public policy by the 1% and their corporate allies, the establishment of true public accountability, and the preservation of public services,” stated OBAU member Jane Smith. 

Occupy Bay Area United is committed to nonviolent direct action. You can find more information, including schedules of our events, and information about our weekly General Assemblies at www.obau.org. Follow #OBAU on Twitter at @occbayareautd