As the sun began its daily drop behind Manhattan’s skyline, a red double-decker bus rolled Thursday into the heart of Times Square, parking between two of the biggest and brightest billboards.
On those billboards, gold coins appeared to fall from the sky before landing in a shiny, larger-than-life piggy bank representing Social Security contributions. Meanwhile, from the upper deck of the bus, roughly 50 Social Security recipients wearing bright red shirts and waving sparkly red pom-poms chanted, “We earned it! We earned it!” as a crowd of onlookers stopped, smiled and waved.
“If you want to get your message across, this is how you do it,” said Beth Finkel, AARP New York’s state director. She was behind the celebration unfolding at “the crossroads of the world.”
AARP’s takeover of Times Square was the showstopper of a summer of more than 600 AARP events nationwide honoring Social Security’s 90th anniversary. The program has never missed issuing a check and is considered one of the most successful anti-poverty initiatives in American history…