My YDN piece about tonight's state hearing on the New Haven Savings Bank Conversion is here. ...In its lawyer's letter to the FDIC, the bank offered a perverse plea to circumvent a vote by the bank's depositors because of the danger from "politically aligned" groups "regularly engaged in anti-business activities." It warns, "Requiring a depositor vote will serve their interests by providing them with another forum to assert their political views." What's splashed across the pages of the letter is a thinly-veiled contempt for working people -- and for any democratic process that gives them voice -- all too commonly displayed by corporate institutions in this city and this nation. The bank's appeal for help wielding off a "well organized, politicized and well financed" opposition is ironic coming from a conglomerate of the most powerful electrical, medical, media and financial companies in the region: United Illuminated, the New Haven Register and Yale-New Haven Hospital, whose leaders sit on the bank's board. Each of these companies has a stated policy of social responsibility and a record towards working people that has been the subject of sustained community criticism. These are interconnected problems that demand interconnected solutions... The New Haven Advocate has been all over this issue - read more here, here, here, and here. You can also check out CCNE's report on the Bank's lending policies here. The hearing is tonight in Hamden at 5 PM at the Miller Library. Don't miss it.