On Saturday November 5th, the Alliance and its affiliates joined hundreds of thousands of activists from across the country for “Bank Transfer Day, a “deadline” of sorts calling for people to shift their funds from for-profit banking institutions to not-for-profit credit unions.
Wells Fargo was put on notice last week as Colorado Progressive Coalition (CPC), the Alliance for a Just Society, and community members took their grievances with the Wall Street bank to the streets of Denver. The week started out with a delegation of homeowners, union members, immigrants, and students delivering their set of demands to Western Regional CEO Tom Honig, and vowing to not let up on Wells Fargo until their demands were met.
They made good on that promise when a group of “Robin Hoods” joined CPC on Tuesday to take their money back. The delegation turned in over 300 signatures of individuals, all pledging to take their money out of Wells Fargo. They also pledged to actively work with the City of Denver to ensure that tax dollars would stay out of the hands of Wall Street.
The next day, 99 letters from occupytheboardroom.com were delivered to both Tom Honig, Western Regional CEO, and Nathan Christian, Regional President, who coincidentally live across the street from one another in a gated community. But snow, gates, and security cameras did not deter Robin Hoods from delivering their message. Watch what happened here.
On Thursday, homeowners in jeopardy of losing their homes gathered outside the Wells Fargo Center to demand action. And Wells Fargo responded by locking their doors. CPC and the homeowners were not deterred and set up a makeshift “Fargoville” outside of the locked doors. Watching through the windows of the building, bankers looked out on more than 150 protesters. Angered at Wells Fargo’s use of high-interest subprime loans directed at communities of color and “robo-signing” tactics, the protestors demanded that Wells Fargo and other “big” banks put a moratorium on all foreclosures. In addition, they called on Wells Fargo to pay back home-owners who helped bail them out by resetting mortgages to their true market value.
Vicki Dillard, one of the protesters who is experiencing difficulties with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage after she was a victim of predatory lending, explained the group’s objective was to ensure that home owners are not the ones being blamed for the crisis.
“We are trying to name who the villain is, and that is truly Wells Fargo and the big banks. I believe that we are starting to refocus and get the target back on who the target really is.” Dillard said. “I hope that this motivates people to begin using their voice and to get our elected officials, the law, and hopefully the banks to do some things are on their own.”
Another group of protestors marched from the CPC offices on Santa Fe Drive to the Denver Performing Arts Center where they joined Occupy Denver in a protest at the Colorado Chamber of Commerce’s annual luncheon that featured Tom Donohue, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Both groups are vehemently opposed to the U.S. Chambers investment of $750 million over the last 15 years to heavily influence elections and gain corporate-friendly policies for the benefit of the 1 percent. With swelled numbers the group then marched to the Wells Fargo Center to join the homeowners in “Fargoville.”
The week capped off with an action to highlight Wells Fargo’s investments in the two largest private prison corporations – GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America. CPC, The Alliance for a Just Society, and hundreds of protestors met at the Auroria Campus. Students, dressed as the “Bulls of GEO and Wells Fargo”, were paraded down Main Street in a “prison stagecoach”, and the march continued on to Wells Fargo Center. The march ended with “Robin Hood” freeing the students and symbolically putting GEO and Wells Fargo in the prison instead.
The Mile High Showdown is just the beginning of Colorado Progressive Coalition and the Alliance’s campaign against big bank greed. To get involved, please go to www.progressivecoalition.org and sign up to become a member of CPC.
Kicking off a month of New Bottom Line actions sweeping across the country, yesterday Washington CAN and the Alliance for a Just Society helped spearhead statewide protests against Wall Street banks’ raiding of our economy and our political system.
The Association of Washington Business – the state’s corporate lobby – was holding a policy summit at Suncadia, a swank golf resort on the eastern slopes of the Cascades. JPMorgan Chase regional exec Phyllis Campbell was there to lead a seminar called, “Where Will the Money Come From?”
In the wee hours of the morning, Washington CAN gave “wake-up calls” to slumbering CEOs and flyered their rooms with “agendas” for the day’s activities. Later in the day, two hundred protesters descended onto Suncadia from all corners of the state. They staged a picket at the resort’s entrance, while a fifty-person team dodged security to deliver the “Save Our State” message outside the lodge where the corporate CEOs were hammering out the corporate agenda.
The protest put Chase exec Campbell on the defensive and forced her to speak publicly about the tax breaks her bank pulls in from the state.
While the Showdown at Suncadia was raging, more protests took place in Seattle, Spokane, Vancouver, and Olympia. In Seattle, community members declared Chase’s downtown headquarters a crime scene, took over the intersection of 3rd & University, and put the CEOs of Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America on trial for crimes against our community.
Some of these crimes include fraudulently foreclosing on people’s homes, hoarding money instead of paying their fair share of taxes, and taking from the poor by charging 85 cents per transaction for use of electronic benefit transfer cards.
Eleven people put their freedom on the line and were arrested while standing up against big bank greed. These were just the first of many that will be sweeping across the country in coming weeks. To get involved, click here.
Media Coverage:
Forty homeowners and clergy members traveled across the country on Tuesday to Chicago’s Drake Hotel to welcome and urge the nation’s states’ Attorneys General to stand firm for a strong settlement agreement with the big banks.
While the Attorneys General gathered for their NAAG summer meeting, members of the New Bottom Line brought along “welcome packets” that contained cookies with frosted handcuffs to symbolize that the big banks must be held accountable for their crimes, a tourist map of foreclosed homes in Chicago, and a flyer with homeowner’s demands. In addition, they held a press conference to release “No End in Sight” a new report by New Bottom Line organizational member, National People’s Action detailing foreclosures in Cook County, IL. Continue reading
On a beautiful sunny Seattle Saturday, 400 south Seattle residents took to the streets to demand that JPMorgan Chase Bank reinvest money in the communities they have destroyed. The community members — parents, students, workers, homeowners — demanded that Chase reinvest money in the form of principle write down for every Washington homeowner. They also called on Chase to invest in a community jobs fund that would create over 30,000 jobs for the neighborhoods hardest hit by the economic crises created by the reckless gambling of Chase and other big banks.
On Thursday, May 12, 20,000 community members from New York City and beyond descended on Wall Street. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had just released his budget which cuts 6,000 teaching jobs and slashes vital social services the city relies on while keeping in tact tax breaks for his billionaire friends and the corporations that house them. This scenario is becoming all too familiar on the local, state and national level—and working people have had enough. That day on Wall Street, an unprecedented number of organizations (including Alliance members who traveled from Washington and Idaho) came together in belly of the beast to send a message to corporate America.
The JP Morgan Chase office in Columbus, Ohio is surrounded by a moat—literally. But that didn’t stop five hundred Americans, organized by the New Bottom Line coalition, from finding a way across and storming the castle on May 17. Homeowners, community leaders, union members, clergy members and more converged on Tuesday’s shareholder’s meeting. Many dressed as Robin Hood to send a message: stop hoarding resources and pay your fair share! Continue reading
On a typically rainy Seattle morning, Tuesday, May 2, commuters stuck in rush hour traffic were treated to a perfect view of a banner declaring peoples’ demands to big banks – PAY YOUR TAXES! The banner, hoisted up by 8-foot weather balloons and anchored by local students’ sailboat, reading “Wells Fargo-Pay Your Taxes” flew above Portage Bay to send a message to local Wells Fargo board member Judith Runstad as she departs for the company’s annual shareholders meeting in San Francisco on May 3.
