Monthly Archives: April 2012

99% Spring Has Sprung: Shareholder Actions Underway Across the County

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99% Spring Has Sprung: Shareholder Actions Underway Across the County

Center for Media and Democracy PR Watch

by Mary Bottari — April 29, 2012 – 7:27am

Read the full article here

The people’s shareholders 

This spring, in coordinated actions across the country, retirees who lost their pensions, families whose homes are underwater, students with impossible debt, the unemployed and underemployed, family farmers, immigrants, vets and more will be knocking on the doors of corporate boardrooms, holding CEOs of major American firms responsible for crashing the economy then turning their backs on their fellow Americans. With hundreds of shareholders on the inside and thousands of folks on the outside, the largest shareholder demonstrations in U.S. history are underway and spreading across the land.

Their goal is nothing short of transformational: to wrest control of our democracy back from the robber barons and CEOs that systematically block any effort to create an economy and a body politic that serves the needs of the vast majority of Americans and not the elite few.

Thousands Surround Wells Fargo and GE

To get things moving, National People’s Action (NPA) director George Goehl and nine other members of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa CCI) went to a Wells Fargo office in downtown Des Moines with a simple, civilized request. They wanted to ask CEO John Stumpf to give a group of concerned shareholders a single hour of time at the annual shareholders meeting in San Francisco the next day.

Stumpf had no reply. Goehl and nine other peaceful protestors — retirees, vets, and farmers — refused to leave until they got one. All were arrested.

The next day, thousands of humans and one giant inflatable rat surrounded the Wells shareholder meeting in San Francisco. Shareholders had to be escorted in by police, hundreds of shareholders (including 100 clergy from across America) were barred from entry, but a few dozen representatives of the 99% got in. Occupy San Francisco played a major role in the effort and live-streamed the events all day long.

According to Maurice Weeks of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, the protesters were asking Wells to increase principal forgiveness to aid families underwater or facing foreclosure; pay their fair share of taxes; stop financing payday lenders; stop all political lobbying; and divest stock in GEO Group Inc., a publicly-traded private-prison operation.

Ross Rhodes, 53, of San Francisco clutched his proxy shareholder letter with the hopes he could talk with Stumpf about his struggle to save his family’s home of nearly 50 years from foreclosure, but hundreds were blocked from entering. Larry Ginter, who traveled all the way from Rhodes, Iowa, managed to get inside, but Stumpf would not yield.

Stumpf had the protesters arrested and carted away. Not a single remaining shareholder even squeaked as his $20 million dollar bonus package was approved. An estimated 24 people were arrested inside and outside the building.

The giant rat escaped the cuffs. 

The next day, thousands arrived on the doorstep of General Electric to shine a light on the role GE has played in deepening the economic crisis for many by dodging its tax obligations. Shanie Smith from Chicago’s south side said she was headed to Detroit because “GE is the biggest tax dodger in the United States,” a claim supported by Citizens for Tax Justice data that pegs GE with an effective negative tax rate from 2008 through 2010. Because GE wasn’t paying its taxes, the state of Illinois was short some $200 million in revenue, says Smith, funds that could be used to put people to work or preserve critical public services in tough times.

Hundreds of shareholders on the inside had their say before they were escorted out by police.

Pulling Back the Curtain on Who Controls the Economy

According to Goehl, whose organization has been pounding the Obama administration for meaningful help for families in foreclosure, it’s time to “scale up” to make the fight for a fair economy the mass movement it needs to be to get things done. “Government isn’t the problem — it’s the prize. But right now it rests in the hands of corporations and it sits a trophy case down on Wall Street. We can go to the government and ask elected officials to address these issues or we can ask who is really in charge here? We think the corporations are in charge, so we need to go to the people behind the curtain, the people pulling the strings and tell them ‘if you want to run our economy, if you want to run our democracy, you will need to deal with us directly.’”

Some 32 shareholder actions are planned. Next up: a diverse list of energy firms, banks and baddies like Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Sallie Mae (think student loans), Verizon, Wal-Mart, WellPoint, Occidental, Peabody Coal, and more. These and hundreds of smaller events scheduled for the coming weeks have been in planning for a year. Inspired by the Wisconsin Uprising and Occupy Wall Street actions, organizers have worked hard in an effort dubbed the “99% Spring” to train more than 45,000 people in America’s long tradition of nonviolent direct action.

Trainings took place in church basements, community centers, big cities and small towns across America, and the focus was on direct action role-playing for the many who had never considered walking in Rosa Park’s shoes. “There is no road to a fair economy and true democracy that does not include going toe to toe with abusive corporations,” says Goehl.

Dupes for the Democrats?

But the effort has generated a bit of controversy. While confronting corporate CEOs directly in boardrooms can be empowering for some, for others, a conspiracy lurks.

Anonymous bloggers and others have spent a lot of time detailing the “smoking gun” that the liberal online advocacy organization Move On provided internet support for the recent 99% Spring trainings, and tarred the entire 80 group coalition — which includes small, feisty NGOs as well as major unions and more mainstream groups — as a front group for MoveOn.org and the Democratic Party. The raison d’etre of the spring actions, we are warned, is to “co-opt the Occupy movement and steal it as its own.” The Nation magazine, Bill Moyers, Chris Hayes, and a raft of others are “in on the take.”

The more likely — and less interesting — story is that these journalists had heard a lot about the planning for the shareholder actions over the course of the year and have long admired the work of the groups involved.

Co-optation or Cross-Pollination?

For key groups like NPA and Iowa CCI, the “co-optation” critique is more than a bit ironic. The allied groups are made up of people on the front lines of the financial crisis, people facing foreclosure, immigrants fighting wage theft, and seniors fighting cuts in critical government services. In the early days of the financial crisis, they surrounded Ben Bernanke’s house with hundreds of people, took over an American Bankers Association conference, organized a mass march on Wall Street, shut down K Street, crossed the moat at the JP Morgan Chase shareholder meeting, infiltrated the Mortgage Bankers Convention, and stood shoulder to shoulder with allies in the Occupy movement.

These groups don’t have time for co-optation, but they are definitely interested in cross-pollination.

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has been a leader in the 99% Spring actions, along with other groups specializing in direct action. RAN has worked well with Occupy forces in many cities on joint projects like “Occupy our Food Supply.” What does RAN have to say about the critique that they are dupes for the Democrats?

RAN spokesperson Nell Greenberg just laughs, “People haven’t done their homework. Our message is about how our democracy has been bought and sold, so I don’t think the Democratic Party is going to pay for that one. In 26 years, RAN has never had any relationship with the Democratic Party. We are all about corporate campaigning.”

The 99% Spring has many defenders in the Occupy movement. “These organizations are encouraging thousands of people to undergo direct action training, without any electioneering diluting that goal, despite the fact that we are six months out from a presidential election,” Occupy the SEC’s Alexis Goldstein told The Nation. “This is unprecedented, amazing, and shows that there is an important focus on trainings and education among groups that may have different strategies.”

Sam Corbin has worked with Occupy since before it took Zucotti Park. She has also worked hard to make 99% Spring a success. As a trainer for the legendary Ruckus Society, her objective was to help people who were pissed off and fired up “access their own power and get involved in direct action.” According to Sam, “a lot of Occupy folks facilitated spring trainings or were trained themselves.” She found the trainings exciting because “people living in the same community got out of their silos and met each other for the first time.” Because invitations went out from a broad array of groups, the result was “incredibly diverse groups of people eager to be trained” — diverse racially, economically and age-wise. She thinks all the kibitzing “is irrelevant compared to thousands of people taking action.”

In the trainings this reporter participated in, not a word was said about Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi, but a lot was said about the corporate capture of our democracy. An incredibly diverse crowd was inspired by a film showing many direct action triumphs through U.S. history, including the grape boycotts and farm worker marches of the 80′s, the anti-globalization protests of the 90′s, and the recent actions stopping the Keystone XL pipeline.

Long-time corporate campaigner John Sellers of “The Other 98%,” who famously was held for $1 million in bail at the 2000 Republican National Convention, participated in many of the actions featured in the movie. He says the criticism of main stream groups like Move On is misplaced: “If we really want to be the 99%, we are going to need soccer moms out on the street taking action.” From his perspective, “the fact that all these giant mainstream groups are now talking about how our democracy has been stolen from us is an incredible opportunity, not a problem.” One wonders if there would be any controversy if it had been called the 98% Spring.

“Another World is Possible”

There are literally hundreds of grassroots anti-corporate actions planned for the spring, including General Strikes and May Day actions being planned by Occupy groups across the nation.

For those of us involved in the protests that brought the WTO to its knees in 1999 and stymied its expansion since, we are seeing something familiar and hopeful — a remarkable convergence of diverse groups, who are borrowing language, tactics, strategies, targets, and inspiration from each other. The fact that labor and more main-stream groups are willing to learn something from today’s young activists, shows that we have come a long way since Seattle.

Echoing through the urban canyons in San Francisco is a hopeful chant building on the “Another World is Possible” theme of the WTO protesters: “We are unstoppable, another world is possible.”

Dear Bank of America: allow all shareholders in May 9 meeting!

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On April 24, 2012 Wells Fargo held its annual shareholder meeting. At this meeting, key stakeholders are supposed to be able to engage with top executives and board members. But instead, Wells Fargo blocked dozens and dozens of legitimate shareholders from entering the meeting. 99%Power is working to ensure the same does not happen at Bank of America’s shareholder meeting next week.

We are sending a letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan — read the letter below.

Bank of America must:

  • Keep People in their Homes: Impose an immediate moratorium on foreclosures and reduce principal for all underwater mortgages
  • Pay its Fair Share: Stop depriving our government of revenue and start paying its fair share of taxes
  • Fund the Future – Not Coal: Cease its role as the largest funder of dirty coal energy projects in the United States and prioritize funding of renewable energy projects
  • Keep Your Money Out of Our Democracy: Disclose corporate money in elections to date and pledge to keep all corporate money out of the 2012 and future elections.

Brian Moynihan
Chief Executive Officer
Bank of America
100 North Tryon Street
Charlotte, NC 28255

April 30, 2012

Dear Mr. Moynihan,

On April 24, 2012 Wells Fargo held its annual shareholder meeting. At this meeting, key stakeholders are supposed to be able to engage with top executives and board members. But instead, Wells Fargo blocked dozens and dozens of legitimate shareholders from entering the meeting.

It was clear that Wells Fargo specifically excluded people they thought might disagree with Wells Fargo’s business practices. They gave preferential admission to certain people, while excluding others who had been waiting for hours to enter. They limited the size of the room and claimed it was too full. But the dozens of shareholders supposed to fill those seats were left out on the streets.

Bank of America’s annual shareholder meeting is just days away. Bank of America must not engage in the same bad faith practices with its shareholders. You must ensure that the meeting room is big enough to accommodate all shareholders that have a legitimate right to be present and that all shareholders are in the same room with board members and top executives. In addition, you must honor legitimate shareholders’ rights, including the right to designate a proxy to attend the meeting in their stead. We will have legal and citizen voting rights observers on hand to observe and publicly report if legitimate shareholders are deliberately excluded from the meeting.

It is incumbent on you to ensure that legitimate stakeholders in your company have a seat and that your company does not engage in the same exclusionary practices as Wells Fargo. We want to meet with you by May 4 to confirm that all proxies and shareholders will be seated and present in your annual shareholder meeting.

Please contact at Brigid Flaherty at brigid@pushbacknetwork.org or 917-678-8944 to set up this meeting ASAP.

It is vital that legitimate shareholder rights be respected.

Regards,

Brigid Flaherty, Pushback Network
Roxana Bendezu, North Carolina Coalition Against Corporate Power
George Goehl, National People’s Action
Rebecca Tarbotten, Rainforest Action Network
Rachel Laforest, Right to the City Alliance
Randy Jackson, UNITY
David Arkush, Public Citizen
Sandra Cook, Virginia Organizing
Tracy Van Slyke, The New Bottom Line
Susannah Goodman, Common Cause

Powerful Week of Action for 99% Power!

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It’s been an incredible week for the 99%!

From the fields of Iowa to the neighborhoods of San Francisco and Detroit, the 99% Power took to the streets and the corporate board rooms to demand justice. Thousands of voices came together in one demand — end corporate thievery now! In cities across the country, we demanded that the corporations responsible for ruining our economy, stealing our homes, and retirement savings answer for their crimes.

On Monday April 23, 2012 dozens of protesters descended on Wells Fargo in Iowa. Several brave leaders from ICCI were arrested for standing up for the 99%. Those who were arrested included a Vietnam Vet, a grandmother, and National People’s Action Director George Goehl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Tuesday April 24, 2012, thousands of us stormed the streets of San Francisco to demand that Wells Fargo stop profiting from investments in private prisons and to demand that the company halt foreclosures so that no more families would be kicked out of their homes while the company reaped $69 billion in profits. Wells Fargo responded by preventing it shareholders from entering the meeting.

But several shareholders did get inside and challenged Wells Fargo CEO John Stompf, demanding answers about the company’s profits from private prisons and foreclosures on hundreds of thousands of homes.

By Heather Wilson

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday April 25, 2012 thousands of us streamed into the streets of Detroit for GE’s shareholder meeting to demand that the corporation pay its fair share in taxes. GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt was forced to shut the meeting down after only one hour because of tough questions about tax dodging from shareholders representing the 99%.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Thursday, the 99% told CIGNA that their tax dodging and profiteering makes us sick! Several hundred representatives of the 99% gathered outside of the shareholders meeting in Hartford Connecticut and 12 were arrested. Shareholders and people outside of the meeting wanted a meeting with CIGNA CEO to discuss why he was collecting a salary of $9.77 million in 2010 while his company was collecting more than $50 million in tax incentives and laying of thousands of workers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The shareholder spring has just begun, but already our actions are having an impact on corporate power as we shut down shareholder meetings and hold the corporations accountable for bankrupting our communities.  

More Press Coverage: the 99% takes on CIGNA

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Advocates Take On Cigna

Connecticut News Junkie Read the full article 

by Michael Lee-Murphy | Apr 25, 2012 11:00pm

(Updated 9:40 a.m. Thursday) As Cigna shareholders held their annual meeting inside Hartford’s Bushnell theater Wednesday afternoon, a coalition of unions and healthcare advocates asked to speak to Cigna CEO David Cordani.

Cops said no.

So a dozen activists decided they would sit down in front of the theater until Cordani came out and spoke to them or they got arrested.

Cordani didn’t come out, nor did anyone from the company, so the 12 were charged with criminal trespassing in the first degree after receiving an ultimatum from Hartford Police.

According to Steve Thornton, an organizer with SEIU Local 1199, healthcare advocates sent a letter to Cordani and didn’t receive a response. Activists tried to paint the health insurance company as a greedy corporate entity that handsomely pays its executives while overcharging consumers.

“Now he knows we’re going to follow up that letter with this kind of action. I think that’s an effective day’s work,” Thornton said.

A Cigna spokesman said the company respects the rights of people to express their opinions.

“Our primary goal for the annual meeting is to give our shareholders the opportunity to talk about their company in a safe and secure environment. The voting on important items underscores the strong support we enjoy from the owners of our company,” Joseph Mondy a Cigna spokesman said in an emailed statement. “Cigna supports improving the health care system and we are hard at work developing products and services that will provide more citizens with access to quality and affordable care. We welcome the open and peaceful exchange of ideas to help realize the very best service for our more than 70 millions customer relationships across the globe.”

Last summer, Cigna was the first company to qualify for tax benefits under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s “First Five” program. The tax incentive program made the company eligible for between $50 million and $71 million for creating between 200 and 800 new jobs.

In December, the Bloomfield-headquartered company announced it would move a number of accounting jobs to India, but that the layoffs would be offset by the new Connecticut job openings.

Protesters were particularly upset about Cordani’s salary — $9.77 million in 2010 — calling the tax incentives “corporate welfare.”

“Arrest Cordani” the crowd chanted as police led protesters away to be booked.

Police estimated the size of the crowd at between 150 and 200 people.

Three healthcare advocates were able to attend the shareholders meeting after previously receiving proxy status as representatives of organizations who hold shares in Cigna.

John Murphy, who represented AFSCME shareholders in the meeting, said afterwards that he and two proxies representing SEIU, were each given a chance to pose two questions to Cordani taking no more than five minutes.

Murphy said he asked Cordani if it was company policy to minimize utilization of medical resources in order to maximize shareholder profit. According to Murphy, Cordani replied that while low utilization of medical resources was a cause of large profits this year, it was not company policy.

Murphy said that he and the other two proxies, Julie Kushner of the United Auto Workers and Rev. Demaris Whittaker of the Interfaith Fellowship for Universal Healthcare, were the only shareholders to ask questions during the hour-long meeting.

Cordani acknowledged that Cigna receives subsidies from other jurisdictions, like Pittsburgh and Delaware, and that Cigna was trying to get more, Murphy said.

“I said ‘thank you, that’s great.’ And I gave him the thumbs up and stepped down,” Murphy said.

The sound of drums and chanting were clearly audible inside the meeting, though they were never acknowledged by company executives, according to Murphy.

“It wasn’t drowning anything out, but it was the soundtrack. It was the background noise,” Murphy said.

Back outside the meeting, David Roche, President of the Connecticut’s unionized building trades, said that he joined the picket line outside the shareholders meeting to protest Cigna’s decision to lobby against healthcare reform.

“I think its all an attack on the middle class. I really do. Whether its jobs on the busway or giving people healthcare,” Roche said, referring to recent efforts to stop the Hartford-to-New Britain busway.

Roche said he was trying to figure out how the company gets tax breaks and tax incentives from the state and then turns around to fund efforts to lobby against healthcare reform.

Karen Schuessler, director of Citizens For Economic Opportunity, said that the state “giving money to [Cigna] is just giving candy away. It’s nothing. It does nothing for our state,” she said.

“There needs to be a larger quid pro quo,” added protester Win Heimer.

The 12 who were arrested have a court date set for May 1. “International workers day,” noted Thornton.

General Electric: Bringing Inequality to Life Through Tax Dodging

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General Electric: Bringing Inequality to Life Through Tax Dodging

Perhaps more than any other company, General Electric has turned tax avoidance into an art form. The company’s 975 person tax department annually produces a tax return of more than 50,000 pages. It takes that many pages to fill out the forms for all the special tax breaks GE’s lobbyists have won.

Over the last ten years, General Electric reported $81 billion in U.S. profits and yet paid just $1.8 billion in federal corporate income taxes, an effective tax rate of just 2.3%, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.

General Electric has used its political clout to place its CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, as Chair of the President’s Jobs and Competitiveness Council, where he has direct access to President Obama. It is an odd job for a man who presides over one of the country’s biggest job destroyers. In 2004, the company got a tax holiday on $1.2 billion of foreign income, thanks to a law that promised tax breaks for companies that brought money home and created jobs. Instead, between 2004 and 2010, General Electric slashed 32,000 jobs.

That came on top of GE’s massive offshoring drive in the 1980s and 1990s, when it cut its U.S. workforce nearly in half. Former CEO Jack Welch was so committed to seeking the lowest cost workers that he once famously said “ideally, you’d have every plant you own on a barge.” In 2011, General Electric added back about 10,000 U.S. workers, but not nearly enough to make up for their decades of job-slashing.

General Electric was one of 30 companies highlighted for paying more to lobby Congress than they paid in federal taxes between 2008-10. GE topped the list of 30 in two categories: money spent on lobbying ($84 million) and size of their IRS refund (GE got back $4.7 billion even though they reported more than $10 billion in U.S. profits).  General Electric has fought long and hard for one of its most lucrative tax breaks, the active financing exception, which saves the company up to $100 million on taxes each year. The “exception,” first passed in 1997, has been renewed by Congress multiple times.

If tax dodging and job cutting were Olympic sports, GE would be a champion.

Scott Klinger is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

 

 

Bank CEOs gain as millions lose dreams, retirement to foreclosure

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Bank CEOs gain as millions lose dreams, retirement to foreclosure

In the Star Ledger April 25, 2012

By Scott Klinger and John Cavanagh

Inside and outside of Wells Fargo’s annual meeting in San Francisco yesterday, thousands of angry protesters decried the bank’s leading role in the loss of millions of American homes to foreclosure.

If you want to know why the protesters are so angry, consider this double standard. For most Americans, retirement security lies in the value of their homes. Millions of these people have been losing that security as the nation’s largest banks have foreclosed on them. Yet the CEOs of these banks are reaping giant pay packages and padding their own retirement security with profits squeezed from ordinary people.

For many American families, a paid-off home is part of the dream of a secure retirement. The roof over their heads has long comprised the largest element of most families’ net worth. The housing crisis brought to us by the country’s biggest bankers has stolen the dreams of the nearly 4 million families who have lost their homes to foreclosure since the housing crisis began in 2007.

Of those who continue to live in their homes, more than a quarter have lost so much equity that they now owe more on their mortgage than their residence is worth. Even those who have never missed a payment on these underwater mortgages have found it all but impossible to refinance their loans to take advantage of record low rates that would cut hundreds of dollars from their monthly payments.

As American families struggle with their shrinking equity, Wells Fargo is enjoying record profits. Its earnings clocked in at more than $4 billion during the first quarter of 2012.

Wells Fargo and Bank of America are the country’s two largest mortgage servicers. Over the past three years, the number of homes foreclosed upon by the two giant banks has steadily grown. At the end of 2011, they reported to federal banking regulators that they held $22.5 billion and $19 billion worth of foreclosed houses, respectively.

While foreclosures have devastated the financial security of millions of American families, the CEOs of Wells Fargo and Bank of America have seen their retirement packages balloon.

The pension assets of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf stand at $16 million, according to the company’s proxy statement. The vast majority of these assets came from a special plan available only to the company’s top executives. As high as Stumpf’s retirement assets have soared, they’re exceeded by those of another Wells Fargo executive. Mark Oman oversees the company’s consumer lending division, where most of its ill-fated subprime loans were made and where many customers have lost their homes to foreclosure. His retirement assets top $17 million.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan’s pension assets now total $6.8 million. His nest egg came mainly from a special “supplemental” pension plan.

It’s long past time that banking regulators stopped these dream-stealers from laughing their way to their gold-plated retirements. Protesters are insisting that the corporate funds diverted to prop up the lavish lifestyles of those responsible for upending the lives of the millions of American families who have lost their homes be redirected toward principal relief for homeowners devastated by these banks’ actions.

The Wells Fargo action was just the start. Don’t be surprised when thousands more protesters show up when Bank of America shareholders gather on May 9 in Charlotte, N.C.

Scott Klinger is an associate fellow and John Cavanagh is the director of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies (ips-dc.org). This article was distributed by OtherWords. For more like this one, visit OtherWords.org.

Read the article on NJ.Com

The 99% Power takes the media by storm — round up of media coverage from Wells Fargo & GE Actions

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In news outlets all over the country, the voices of the 99% are finally being heard!

Our actions in San Francisco, Detroit, Minnesota, Iowa, and online drew the attention of local and national press.  Click on the links below to read full articles of the press coverage of the actions at Wells Fargo & GE.

News Stories 

Coverage of the Wells Fargo Action on NPR’s Morning Edition, April 25, 2012

The 99% Power, Occupy Wall Street & Wells Fargo Action get coverage in Bloomberg April 25, 2012

MSNC Coverage of the Wells Fargo Action and The 99% Power Movement April 24, 2012

Dylan Ratigan Show MSNBC Coverage of Wells Fargo and 99% Power April 24, 2012

Coverage of the Wells Fargo Action & The 99% Power in Mother Jones April 24, 2012

The Associated Press Covers the 99% Power & Wells Fargo Action  and in KTAR.com April 24, 2012

The 99% Power Wells Fargo Action gets covered in Reuters April 24, 2012 

The Wells Fargo Action in Think Progress April 24, 2012

Coverage of the GE Action in Detroit in the Detroit News April 24, 2012

Reuters’ coverage of the GE Action in Detroit April 24, 2012

The 99% Power & 99% Spring in the Wall Street Journal April 24, 2012

The Washington Post WonkBlog covers the 99% Power’s Shareholder Spring and the Wells Fargo Action April 24, 2012

Coverage of the Wells Fargo Action in the Berkeley Daily Planet April 24, 2012

GE & The 99% Power on Aaron Krager April 24, 2012

The 99% Power & Wells Action in The Huffington Post April 23, 2012

 The 99% Power in the Nation April 23, 2012

Coverage of the Wells Fargo Action in the San Francisco Times April 23, 2012

Op-Eds

The 99% Power & Wells Action in the New Jersey Star Ledger April 25, 2012

The 99% Power & Wells Fargo on My Firedog Lake April 24, 2012

The 99% Power in AlterNet April 23, 2012

 

The 99% on MSNBC: Occupy movement targets Wells Fargo meeting in San Francisco

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Occupy movement targets Wells Fargo meeting in San Francisco

By Kari Huus, msnbc.com

Click here for video

Several hundred protesters marched to Wells Fargo Bank headquarters in San Francisco Tuesday and a few managed to gain access to the company’s annual shareholder meeting and disrupt proceedings before being escorted out by police, San Francisco Gate reported.

Police in riot gear arrested six people involved in the protest, which focused anger on foreclosures, high executive compensation and low corporate taxes, Reuters reported.

Demonstrators carried a huge inflated rat with dollar bills coming from side pockets, and held signs that read: “99 percent take over, topple the 1 percent” — referring to the majority of the U.S. population and the 1 percent who make up the wealthiest Americans.

The demonstration is part of an attempt to revive the Occupy movement — though most protesters are no longer focused on occupation of public sites after being evicted from many encampments in the fall and winter.

The movement has been broadly focused on economic inequity, corporate greed and money-driven politics, and it plans more protests in the coming weeks, including against other large companies and the nation’s massive student debt.

 

“A tax dodger and predatory lender, Wells Fargo Bank has corrupted democracy by quadrupling spending on lobbying since they helped cause the financial crisis,” according to the web site for Occupy Wall Street, which advertised the event.

Police were stationed around the Merchant’s Exchange Building in the financial district in advance of the 1 p.m. meeting. Bank stockholders were asked to show certificates or other proof of ownership before being shepherded through the gates, The Associated Press reported.

Activists said that 30 shareholders who are protesters had entered the session, and intended to ask bank leaders for policy changes, including halting foreclosure proceedings against homeowners, San Francisco Gate reported.

The Occupy Wall Street web site lays out complaints against Wells Fargo, calling it “America’s biggest tax dodger” and blasting its continued foreclosures “on families in an economy it helped to ruin.”

The Occupy movement has staged numerous past protests against Wells Fargo. In February protesters delivered a mock foreclosure notice to the Russian Hill home of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf. In Minneapolis in November, they turned up to protest Stumpf when he was scheduled for a speaking event.

Stumpf told the crowd in the Minnesota city that he ”gets” the frustration of the anti-Wall Street movement, according to a report in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and called for unity of the nation’s political parties, as well as “the 1 percent and the 99 percent,” to get through economic hard times.

Wells Fargo did not immediately return calls from msnbc.com seeking comment.

However, the company issued a statement in reaction to the protest, NBC Bay Area reported:

“Wells Fargo has helped more than 740,000 customers with loan modifications, and has forgiven $4.1 billion in principal since 2009,” it said. “The unfortunate reality is that some customers are in homes they cannot afford, even with substantially reduced payments. … When people are 60 days or longer past due, and they decide to work with us, we are able to provide an option that prevents foreclosure for 7 out of 10. Over the past year, less than 2 percent of owner-occupied loans in our servicing portfolio have resulted in foreclosures.”

According to the bank’s web site, Wells Fargo ranked fourth-largest among U.S. banks in terms of assets — $1.3 trillion — and first in market value of its stock as of Dec. 31.

Around the country, similar protests are planned to target major banks and other companies.

A group called 99% Power, an offshoot of the Occupy movement, said it plans actions at dozens of shareholder meetings, starting with Wells Fargo, and then on Wednesday at General Electric Co.s shareholder meeting in Detroit.

On campuses, activists are launching an “Occupy Student Debt” campaign, described as “a collective strategy of non-violent direct action to take back higher education and end our complicity with a predatory and unjust system.”

Occupy groups across the country also plan events for what they call an Occupy General Strike Day on May 1 to demand economic justice, during which they advocate “no work, no school, no housework, don’t bank, don’t buy.”

The 99% in Mother Jones: Wells Fargo Turns Away Its Own Shareholders From Its Shareholder Meeting

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Wells Fargo Turns Away Its Own Shareholders From Its Shareholder Meeting

Mother Jones April 24, 2012

—By Josh Harkinson

“I would not want to work for Wells Fargo,” one woman on lunch break in downtown San Francisco loudly told her friend.

No kidding. At around noon today, some 2,000 activists launched a blitzkrieg against the bank’s annual shareholder meeting at the Merchants Exchange Building, where they blocked entrances, inflated a two-story cigar-smoking rat in the street, and deployed hundreds of shareholder activists to pack the joint.

Citing space constraints, the bank turned away many of the shareholders, a move protesters quickly decried as an illegal attempt to dodge tough questions. A press release from the activist group Cal Organize claimed Wells Fargo packed the meeting with its own employees, and continued to let shareholders who were not part of the protest in through a side door.

A Wells Fargo spokesman did not immediately return my call.

In the building lobby, I ran into Wells Fargo shareholder Andrew Constans, who was wearing a suit and tie and holding a paper copy of his single share of stock. The 19-year-old University of Minnesota student flew halfway across the country to tell Wells Fargo that it should pay more taxes. (Between 2008 and 2010, Wells Fargo paid none, but got $681 million in tax credits.) “I pay taxes, so why can’t they?” Constans asked. “I’m not a multinational corporation; I don’t have 60 tax shelters.”

The Wells Fargo protest is part of an effort on the part of 99% Power, a coalition of dozens of labor and community groups that plans to target some 40 corporate shareholder meetings over the next six weeks. “It’s a broader group than normally does shareholders meetings,” says Stephen Lerner, an executive board member with the Service Employees International Union. “It’s a campaign that’s saying, let’s gather all the folks who are impacted negatively by these giant corporations and lets figure out ways to illustrate that and challenge them directly at the meetings.”

That strategy was on full display today in downtown San Francisco, where demonstrators hit Wells Fargo from every possible angle. A speaker with the immigrants rights group Causa Justa pointed out that Wells Fargo is a shareholder in Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison firm that profits from detaining illegal immigrants. Bob Donjacour, a freelance computer programmer and member of Occupy San Francisco, held a sign that said, “Stop Funding Dirty Power,” highlighting the bank’s investments in oil and gas. Other protesters criticized Wells Fargo’s involvement in the American Legislative Exchange Council, the excessive salary of CEO John Stumpf ($19 million in 2010), and, of course, its foreclosure practices.

On the corner of Pine and Sansome Streets, I ran into artist Cheryl Meeker, a member of an Occupy-related protest group known as Don’t Just Click There. “It’s about doing things in real life, like, physically,” she explained. She was blocking the intersection with a long cloth banner with flames on it as others held up signs reading, “Hells Fargo.”

“Do you think we can get through?” asked two guys in nice suits.

Meeker declined, but did give each of them a dollar bill. It sported an image of humans pulling a stagecoach with the caption: “Debt slavery.”

The 99% Power in the Huffington Post: Ninety-Nine Percent Power: Activists Ready To Crash Wells Fargo, General Electric Shareholder Meetings

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Ninety-Nine Percent Power: Activists Ready To Crash Wells Fargo, General Electric Shareholder Meetings

Jason Cherkis April 23, 2012

WASHINGTON — Last fall, the Occupy Wall Street movement ignited a national conversation on income inequality, corporate ties to conservative legislation and the culpability of banks in the foreclosure crisis. Now, a broad coalition of unions and progressive organizations is launching a massive, coordinated wave of protests aimed at the country’s biggest brand names and Fortune 500 companies.

Calling this new phase 99 Percent Power, organizers tell The Huffington Post that they have planned more than 200 actions over the next few months in cities nationwide. Tuesday, supporters are gathering in San Francisco to protest Wells Fargo’s shareholder meeting. On Wednesday, they are targeting General Electric’s shareholder meeting in Detroit.

Melissa A. Engels-Lewis, 36, is going to the Detroit protest with Wisconsin Jobs Now. “I’m very angry,” she said.

She watched her hometown of Wausau, Wis., collapse economically over the past several years. Her uncle lost a factory job two years ago and hasn’t found steady work since. Her brother lost his factory job, too. He now drives a cab. Her mother-in-law recently was laid off from the paper mill where she had worked for more than two decades.

Engels-Lewis and her husband, Joel, work as landscapers and attend college. She said they live paycheck to paycheck and have subsidized health care to take care of their three daughters — 14-year-old Shawna, 12-year-old Haley, and 2-year-old Carra. “It’s a constant worry,” she said. “We’re always afraid that we could get our hours cut at work.”

She and her husband demonstrated alongside Occupy D.C. in December.

As Wisconsin slashed its state budget for education and other necessities, Engels-Lewis said, she discovered that General Electric paid no taxes. “I don’t understand how a corporation that makes so much money can not pay taxes,” Engels-Lewis said. “I don’t understand for the life of me why these people who not only don’t pay taxes but get so much in kickbacks. I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s unfair.”

The New York Times reported the company claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion in 2010.

“We understand the amount of economic pain and anxiety people continue to feel in today’s climate,” General Electric director of media relations Andrew Williams wrote in a statement to HuffPost concerning the upcoming demonstration. “We agree that there needs to be more fairness in our economy, and we’re focused on doing our part by investing in putting people back to work around the country, while laying the foundation for a more innovative, healthy future for our company.”

Williams insisted that GE has paid its share of taxes:

“GE paid $1 billion in federal, state and local taxes in the U.S. for 2010. GE’s tax rate for 2010 was low because we lost $32 billion in our financial business during the global financial crisis. That tax rate increased to 29% in 2011 as our financial business has recovered.

The U.S. tax system is complex, out-of-date and uncompetitive. GE supports comprehensive tax reform to create a simpler, more efficient tax system that ensures everyone pays their fair share, including GE. To that end, we favor closing loopholes and making the tax system more efficient.

Those loopholes were part of the direct-action trainings organized earlier this month by a coalition of unions and progressives like MoveOn and Rebuild the Dream. Many of the same groups are participating in the shareholder protests. The trainings melded modern economic analysis, personal storytelling, and protest role-playing along with strategizing.

“People got a lot out of the trainings,” said Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice, to HuffPost. “We found huge, huge interest in the shareholder meetings — understanding this is the moment that we have to really bring our demands forward directly to corporate power.”

According to a schedule provided to Huffington Post, demonstrations are planned for shareholder meetings with Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, 3M, Verizon, Pepco, Amazon, Sallie Mae, Exxon Mobile, Chevron, Comcast, Target and Walmart, among others.

Tomorrow, organizers are hitting Wells Fargo’s shareholder meeting. Rebecca Tarbotton, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, said they expect 2,000 demonstrators including 100 clergy. They plan on circling the building where the meeting is set to take place, “non-violent blockades,” sit-ins inside the building, as well as placing activists inside the shareholder meeting.

The National People’s Action and other groups already met with Wells Fargo in Iowa to air grievances over the bank’s investment in private prisons, its role in the foreclosure crisis and paying its fair share of taxes. Unhappy with the bank’s response, the activists wrote a letter in mid-April telling the executive that they planned on attending the shareholder’s meeting.

Ancel Martinez, a Wells Fargo spokesman, told HuffPost that the bank has “conducted more than 716,000 mortgage modifications” and that the Wells Fargo Advantage Fund includes only a small holding in GEO Group, a private-prison company. Martinez added that the bank pays its share of taxes and is a “responsible corporate citizen.”

In the April 18 letter to Wells Fargo, the activists wrote, “Your current path is unsustainable, and is leading America deeper into debt, job and housing loss, economic inequality, and racial injustice.” The activists also urged the bank to reduce principal for underwater homeowners.

Ten activists were arrested Monday afternoon during direct-action street protest at a Wells Fargo office in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.

The message has gotten to new activists.

Veronica Miranda, 32, who has worked in insurance sales, attended one of the 99 Percent Spring trainings in Wichita, Kan. She is planning on flying to San Francisco to attend the Wells Fargo protest. “I wanted to do more than sit back and let stuff happen,” she tells HuffPost.

In Culver City, Calif., Marco Galindo, 65, attended a direct-action training session. He, too, plans on joining the Wells Fargo demonstration. Like Engels-Lewis, he is mystified by corporate behavior in the midst of the recession. “It’s important … to learn more about what exactly a big corporation — how do they function? How can they get away?”

It’s not just demonstrators who are feeling the moment. It’s actual shareholders, too. Last week Citigroup shareholders overwhelmingly rejected the compensation package for its CEO during a meeting in Dallas.

Groups that may have done separate actions are now coordinating with other groups — adopting the big-tent Occupy approach. The successes of joining forces is not lost on 99 Percent Power’s organizers.

“I think part of this opportunity is connecting the issues together,” Tarbotton said.

Gupta agreed. “We know we can do more if we’re doing this together,” she said. “It can step up the game significantly.”