Before a crowd of thousands in Chicago, national labor and religious leaders attacked the nation's bankers for opposing financial reform and misusing taxpayer money. The rally was held in front of the Sheraton Chicago Hotels and Tower, where members of the American Bankers Association had gathered for their annual conference.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Anna Burger, the chair of Change to Win, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson all criticized “too-big-too-fail” banks and their efforts to defeat the Obama administration’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, as well as recent CEO bonus payments.

“You treated the money we worked so hard to earn like Monopoly,” proclaimed Trumka. “This is not a game.”

“Taking on the banks is not a spectator sport,” declared Burger. “We need to break the power of the big banks and Wall Street over our country.”

Trumka laid out four concrete goals: establishment of a CFPA; reform of the Federal Reserve; regulation of “shadow markets”; and reform of corporate governance, in particular CEO compensation.

Addressing the bankers inside, Trumka declared, “We didn’t put you back in business so you could pay billions of dollars to the suits."

But in the convention hall, some bankers were distressed that they are being included in daily protests outside. On Monday several asked Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairwoman Sheila Bair and Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, who addressed the meeting, why regional and local bankers, who make up the majority of the ABA’s membership, are lumped in with large banks, investment banks and bank holding companies generally deemed major contributors to the current economic distress.

“It’s a public education issue,” said Bair. “Maybe there should be some legal constraints on who should call themselves banks.”

Stephen Lerner, an assistant to the president of the Service Employees International Union, which organized Tuesday's protest, said in an interview that labor leaders are making a distinction between banks that are “too big too fail,” and smaller banks. But, he said, because both big and small banks are part of a single organization, the ABA, they are inviting criticism.

“It’s disingenuous because the lobbying policy of the American Bankers Association is the same as JP Morgan and Bank of America, which is opposed to all financial reform,” said Lerner. “If they think the big banks are wrong, then they should come out and have a different policy than the big banks.”

During their remarks on Monday, both Bair and Dugan said the banks should support financial reform, in particular the CFPA.

“I think significant legislative and regulatory changes are likely and that you need to prepare for them,” said Dugan. “There are parts of the CFPA proposal that I think are very good ideas, especially the level playing field thought to have uniform consumer protection rules apply to anybody who is in the same financial activity and that means applying it for the first time to non-banks in the way it gets applied to banks.”

In Tuesday's demonstration, local religious leaders and community organizers led the crowd in chants of “enough is enough,” and held a mock firing of Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, JP Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO James Dimon, and Wells Fargo President and CEO John Stumpf.

After over an hour of chanting and cheering, the crowd grew quiet as Rev. Jesse Jackson approached the podium and gave the closing prayer. “Those who’ve lost jobs, bless them,” prayed Jackson. “Those who’ve lost their houses, bless them.”