Reposted from The Nation

Last year, US Bank held its annual shareholders meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of its corporate headquarters. The event was dominated by shareholders and proxies who are members of Minnesotans for a Fair Economy, an alliance of community, faith and labor organizations working for a more equitable economy.

“Our members asked CEO Richard Davis direct questions about issues like principal reductions and foreclosures, and payday lending,” said Eric Fought, communications director of the organization. “We were really effective in holding them accountable, so this year they looked for another solution—to hide from us.”

On Tuesday, April 16, US Bank officers will jet from their hometown to hold this year’s meeting in Boise, Idaho. If the bankers are hoping for a better reception in this reddest of states, or that activists will take a pass on the long distance travel required to get there, then Martha and the Vandellas have a word of advice:Got nowhere to run to, baby. Nowhere to hide.

More than 100 members of the Idaho Community Action Network (ICAN)—who are mostly rural, working poor and seniors—will travel to take direct, non-violent action both inside and outside of the meeting. More than half of these individuals will be driving 3 to 7 hours to reach the venue. Their allies from Minnesotans for a Fair Economy will be there to greet them, along with workers from SEIU Local 503—the largest union in Oregon with 54,000 members.

“People are so excited that Minneapolis and Oregon are coming to support this effort,” said ICAN executive director Terri Sterling. “It helps our membership, it helps motivate them.”

Among the issues on the agenda: a call for US Bank to pay its fair share in taxes; write-down mortgages to help stem the foreclosure and underwater mortgage crisis; and end payday loans with exorbitant interest rates. These issues are of concern, of course, not only to the activists from these three states, but also to people across the country.

“Almost anywhere the banks go in the country—they will find out as they try to hide away at their meetings—there will be a set of groups agreeing that the role of banks in the economy and politics of the country is damaging,” said labor organizer Stephen Lerner, who created the Justice for Janitors campaign and is now working on Wall Street accountability campaigns.

Sterling says that even in a state like Idaho she hasn’t “found one person—red, blue, or tea party—that likes big banks.”

Idaho has the highest share of minimum wage workers in the country, and for every job opening that pays a living wage for a family of three, there are 32 job seekers. According to LeeAnn Hall, executive director of the Alliance for a Just Society, a national coalition of eight state-based community organizations (including ICAN), 4,400 families lost their homes to foreclosure in 2012. Today, 22 percent of all mortgage holders in the state are “underwater,” owning more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. In Canyon County, where approximately 12 percent of Idaho’s population resides, 66 percent of homeowners are underwater—one of the highest rates in the nation.

“Our members are doing multiple jobs to make ends meet, and often times not making ends meet,” said Hall. “As a result they are losing their homes, or using payday loans to stretch and meet their family obligations—to their detriment.”

US Bank calls its payday loan product a “checking account advance,” and it has an annual percentage rate (APR) of up to 365 percent. It also helps finance some of the largest payday loan companies in the country, including Advance America, Cash America and EZ Corp. These “easy money” businesses cluster around low-income communities and communities of color.

Sterling spoke about ICAN member Miranda Davis who was disabled at 19 but as a single mother of two kids still “works to make ends meet.” When her car broke down, she used her utility money to repair it so she could commute to work—and then she took out a $300 payday loan to cover her utility bill. She was only able to pay back the $75 per month interest, and eventually needed another $300 loan.

“She’s now paying nearly $200 per month in interest alone,” said Sterling. “She can work as hard as she can and she won’t ever make enough money to pay off those loans.”

ICAN and Minnesotans for a Fair Economy have been pushing for a 36 percent cap in their states—the same one mandated by the federal government for members of the military and their families. Arizona, Montana and Oregon have also adopted a 36 percent cap on all payday loans.

“If they’re gonna set up a bank in my community, then by golly they should provide me with a short-term, fair lending product that’s less than 36 percent,” said Sterling.

While payday loans and overdraft fees are trapping low-income people in cycles of debt, foreclosures are draining wealth from entire communities.

Activists will speak at the US Bank shareholders meeting about their own experiences with unnecessary, unfair and too often illegal foreclosures. Fought said that last year there was a “success” when homeowner Monique White approached CEO Davis after the shareholders meeting, told him her story, and was then able to get a modification to remain in her home.

But with more than 141,000 foreclosures in the state since 2008, 100,000 homeowners still underwater, lost home value of over $20 billion, and a cost to local governments of $1.5 billion to maintain vacant, bank-owned properties—Fought says these individual successes are hardly enough.

“We want broad solutions,” said Fought. “We know principal reductions to fair market value can solve this. We want to continue to dialogue with US Bank, but it’s been two years now—it’s time to make the solutions a reality.”

Hall said that reducing mortgages to fair market value would save Idaho families over $290 million annually in mortgage payments—money that would be spent in the community and create jobs.

“US Bank is draining resources out of families’ pockets and Idaho’s economy as a whole,” said Hall.

SEIU Local 503 is currently at the bargaining table trying to bring some of those lost resources back to Oregon. Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber is pressing for cuts in the pension fund to make up for resources that vanished in the economic meltdown. But the union estimates that Wall Street lost as much as $300 million through fraud and unethical behavior, and that they should be targeted for investigation and repayment, rather than retirees paying for Wall Street’s misdeeds. The state has $150 million to $180 million in pending lawsuits against some of these firms but the union says “that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Fought said that it is critical that US Bank paying its fair share of revenues in Minnesota as well—that a decade of “cuts only” budgets under former Governor Tim Pawlenty (current CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable) was “devastating for people.” He noted, for example, that the state has been forced to borrow money from school funding to pay for other bills. Meanwhile, US Bank actively lobbies for tax breaks and loopholes through the Minnesota Business Partnership.

“We need to ensure that we have adequate funding for education, health care and other human services, and because US Bank is based here, they have a unique responsibility,” said Fought. “The fact is if we want to be effective in our work for a better economy we have to look at the larger problem here—these banks are really destroying communities.”

The action in Boise is part of a broader and diverse movement that is renewing the focus on big banks and irresponsible corporate neighbors that prevent a more equitable economy. A week later, activists will be in Salt Lake City, where Wells Fargo will do its best to hide after holding its shareholder meeting last year in San Francisco. Bank of America and JPMorgan shareholder meetings are just around the corner, too. You can get involved here.

“There is a wonderful alignment developing between unions, community groups and groups focused on Wall Street accountability,” said Lerner. “Instead of having many separate fights on issues—on how to fund local government and public services, how to keep people in their homes, how to address money in politics—people are seeing that they are all connected because it’s the same giant banks at the center of so many crises.”

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.”

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.”