SAN DIEGO A Bank Transfer Day booster is scheduled to go on trial in state court today on criminal vandalism charges connected to chalk messages he wrote on the sidewalks in front of Bank of America branches in 2011 and 2012 urging customers to put their money in credit unions.
Jeff Olsen faces up to 13 years in prison on the charges, which are being prosecuted by the San Diego City Attorney’s office.
Olson, 40, says he was protesting big banks and their ties to the financial collapse. He says he was encouraging customers to put their money in credit unions, a movement that eventually spread from its origins in southern California across the country. “My chalk drawings are clearly free speech and protected by the first amendment,” he told reporters outside the downtown court yesterday.
During pre-trial motions prosecutors introduced a motion to prohibit Olson’s defense attorney from using the words First Amendment, free speech, free expression and other similar terms during the trial. The judge agreed saying jurors should focus on whether Olson committed vandalism and not why he did it.
Olson and a partner had been active in the campaign to encourage people to move transfer their money from big banks as early as 2011 and began showing his opposition with chalk drawings outside various Bank of America branches. Security camera footage from the banks apparently recorded his actions, and he eventually got a call from San Diego's Gang Unit in August 2012, when he gave up the artistic protests.
Olson joined the Occupy Wall Street movement in October 2011. That same year he appeared outside of a Bank of America branch in San Diego carrying a homemade sign promoting "National Bank Transfer Day," in which bank customers were encouraged to lawfully move their accounts out of large banks and into credit unions and smaller banks.
From February to August 2012, Olson visited the same Bank of America branch a few days per week and wrote anti-bank slogans on the sidewalk such as "Stop big banks" and "Stop BankBlight.com."
