It seems we keep referencing Bill Daley’s recent post Has The Budget Crisis Du Jour Got You Down?. Maybe that’s because it gives you have a pretty good sense of the impending debt lid crisis that
is due to hit in July, and that we need to be ready to push back against efforts to cut Medicare and Medicaid as the debate over the budget deficit heats back up.
Frankly, we need to move austerity off the table.
Continue reading
The debate about the national economy seems to have slipped into the shadows. You may be breathing a sigh of relief. Shadows on the budget are inevitable with the Congress focusing on immigration and the press focusing on the attack in Boston.
Many years ago I heard with bemusement that Mafia like organizations were springing up in Russia following the collapse of Communism. The reports suggested that these associations were emerging because their organizers thought that Capitalism actually sanctioned criminal behavior and they were only following the new rules. Continue reading
Over the last year and a half, the Alliance for a Just Society and Main Street Alliance have participated in efforts to mitigate the corrosive effect that secret corporate political donations have on the political process. Continue reading
Melanie Collins, a small business owner and leader with the Maine Small Business Coalition, traveled to Washington, DC on October 19 to speak at a press conference outside the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Her message was simple: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t speak for small business, and it doesn’t speak for me.” Continue reading
Cross-posted from Public Campaign website.
Analysis by Public Campaign and Alliance for a Just Society
The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), heralded as the “voice” of America’s small businesses, has received renewed scrutiny due to its role as the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit to throw out the Affordable Care Act, which awaits a decision from the Supreme Court on Thursday. Continue reading
From the Main Street Alliance Website:
Main Street Alliance of Oregon has been surveying business owners throughout Oregon and is finding strong interest in electoral reform. Currently around eight in ten business owners feel the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, freeing corporations to spend unlimited sums of money in elections, is bad for small business. And seven in ten would support a constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people and money is not speech. Continue reading
The next step in our campaign to take on the big banks pay and win relief for homeowners is to disrupt business as usual at shareholder meetings across the country. The goal of these actions is to build off the fall mobilizations and the Occupations to keep up the street heat holding the 1% and bank executives accountable – in this case, accountable for the continued foreclosure on families across the country.
The Alliance played a leadership role in this action to shut down business as usual at Wells Fargo’s annual shareholder meeting on April 24.
The setup started in the weeks leading up to the meeting, when groups created a drumbeat with local actions. For example, Washington CAN and Colorado Progressive Coalition mobilized freshly trained activists out of the 99% spring trainings to confront Wells for paying zero federal taxes despite making record profits. Washington CAN foreclosed on the downtown Seattle headquarters, auctioning off all of Wells’ prized possessions, including their lobbyist, while singing a new version of this Land is Your Land. Meanwhile, Colorado Progressive Coalition joined with partners to deliver an overdue tax bill to their local Denver branch.
In preparation for the trip from New York to San Francisco Leni Juca, a small business leader from Make the Road NY, authored an op-ed published in the Nation demanding that Wells Fargo dump its stock in the private prison industry that is destroying immigrant communities.
Washington CAN, Idaho Community Action Network, and Make the Road NY sent leaders to San Francisco holding proxies to disrupt the circus. Each year, Wells Fargo executives take an annual ceremonious walk from their world headquarters across the street to the Mercantile Exchange, to the shareholders meeting. This year, the presence of 1,500 protesters stopped this self-congratulatory dog and pony show, which typically exhibits fancy suited businessmen patting each other on the back for another year of record profits.
Leni Juca (MRNY) & Diana Corcorran (ICAN) were selected to link arms with brothers and sisters from across the country to lead the crowd of 1,500 through the streets of San Francisco to the Mercantile Exchange Building.
AJS leaders stepped up to lead two affinity groups, one highlighting Wells’ investment in the payday lending industry and the other focused on Wells investment in the private prison industry. These groups of proxy holders were poised to raise issues inside the shareholders meeting.
All of AJS staff and leaders and another 200 protesters held proxy shares and were ready to attend the shareholder meeting and raise our demands from the inside. Not surprisingly, Wells CEO John Stumpf and his board of directors hid behind the SF police, who barricaded every entrance to the building. Wells played a cat-and-mouse game, shuffling shareholders from entrance to entrance – in the end, denying them their legal right to participate. Despite these tactic, 25 of our allies managed to make it upstairs and shut down the meeting.
AJS staff and leaders ended the day excited to kick off the season of shareholder meetings confronting corporate power raising issues including: CEO compensation, corporate money in the coming elections, investments in the prison industrial complex, fair mortgages and principal write-down. This action set a high standard for a season of our communities confronting corporate power.
Press coverage was strong across the country. AJS leaders convened after the activities and penned letters to the editor.
Press clips:
KTAR: http://ktar.com/509/1522967/SF-police-monitor-Wells-Fargo-shareholder-meeting
Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/24/us-wellsfargo-protests-idUSBRE83N10K20120424
Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/occupy-the-shareholder-meetings/2012/04/24/gIQA8e8reT_blog.html
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/24/470342/general-electric-tax-protest/
Mother Jones: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/04/wells-fargo-turns-away-its-own-shareholders-annual-meeting
A couple of days ago, the New York Times reported that the super PACs backing President Obama had fallen far behind on fundraising, and it’s not clear they’re going to catch up with their Republican counterparts.
According to the Times, “Mr. Obama’s backers on Wall Street are leery of their money being used for attacks on Mr. Romney’s background in private equity, already the topic of millions of dollars’ worth of slash-and-burn advertising this year from a super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich.” Continue reading
In the foreclosure saga that continues to rip communities apart, there are two obvious players: banks and homeowners. But the situation is a little more complicated than just banks versus families trying to hang onto their homes. Continue reading
