Five young people sat-in at Citigroup on Bunker Hill in Los Angeles yesterday and demanded full disclosure of the financial giant’s anonymous political expenditures.

When the five activists — Dylan Bruce, Ryan Flannagan, Devon Whitham, Jordan Greenslade, and Kai Newkirk — and a group of about thirty supporters delivered the petition articulating their demand, the bank locked down the building’s main entrance.

 

 

The activists peacefully sat down in front of the doors and refused to leave until the requested information was disclosed.

The bank instead chose to have them arrested.

The five were charged with “failure to disperse from an unlawful assembly.” Bail was set at $5,000.

“This is the first election in which I get to cast my ballot, and I’m excited to fulfill that sacred duty as an American citizen,” said Jordan Greenslade, a 19-year-old sophomore at Occidental College. “But I can’t make an informed decision about who to vote for without knowing what interests are backing each of the candidates. Today I’m standing up for democratic transparency and will risk arrest if necessary to show America just how far Wall Street will go to continue buying our elected officials in secret.”

Greenslade and the other protesters are members of 99Rise, a new anti-corruption movement to get big money out of politics.

The Los Angeles arrests came on the heels of a similar action at JP Morgan Chase in New York City earlier this week that resulted in the arrest of three high school students.

Eight protesters were arrested on September 28th at Bank of America in Los Angeles in 99Rise’s first petition delivery and sit-in.

The movement’s ultimate objective is to win a constitutional amendment banning private money from American politics and landmark federal legislation reforming the nation’s campaign finance and lobbying laws.