From Ron Williams, Executive Director, Oregon Action
Alliance for a Just Society affiliate Oregon Action testified in front of the Portland City Council on May 9th in support of a local ordinance that would divest money out of Wells Fargo and into local community banks and credit unions. Continue reading “City of Portland Moves Closer to Divestment”
The interest rate on subsidized Stafford Loans is set to double. If Congress doesn’t sort out its differences, seven million Americans will see their student loan rates double, creating further drag on the economy.Continue reading “Student Loan Sideshow”
Bill Daley is the Federal Issues Policy Director at The Alliance for a Just Society.
May was Minority Health Month and a couple of things happened that deserve a bit of attention. And it’s also important to note that not enough happened and more attention is needed.Continue reading “Daley’s View from Washington: Minority Health Month Cheers and Jeers”
In a recent report on immigration released by the Department of Homeland Security, statistics overwhelmingly show that immigration officials are not evenly applying new enforcement guidelines in deportation cases. Continue reading “Families Still Being Devastated by Parent Deportations”
Student loan interest rates have taken center stage in the latest partisan political debate. In response to the economic crisis, the federal government reduced the interest rate for Stafford Loans from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. But that was only temporary. Continue reading “Student Loan Interest Rate is a Political Distraction”
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
It’s tax season. And that means tax policy is at the center of the public debate. So are claims about how changes to the tax code will affect small businesses.
To separate fact from fiction, the Main Street Alliance released a pair of new “straight talk” fact sheets addressing topics relating to small business and taxes.Continue reading “Straight Talk on Taxes with Small Business Owners”
In the United States, the secret ballot is a long-standing tradition. But that refers to our choices as voters remaining secret – not to the idea that we don’t know who we’re voting for.
But now we’re living in the world of Citizens United, in which outside groups can pool rich people’s millions with corporations’ millions to influence elections, all without disclosing whose interests they’re promoting.Continue reading “Is this what “secret ballot” means?”
Throughout most of our history the Supreme Court has been accorded a special place as a fair and impartial arbiter of legal issues. Sometimes the Court has failed in this role, but, for the most part it has been an important force in the unity of the nation because seemed to deserved respect.
The current Supreme Court majority has become so partisan that it is systematically undermining the principle of law and injecting in its place a radical corporate elitism that threatens our political stability by undergirding extreme economic inequality.
Continue reading “When the Supremes Hit the Extremes What Happens?”
Latinos are growing fast in both numbers and voting strength in Idaho. With over 11 % of the state’s population concentrated in specific counties, Latinos are the swing voters for some state races and the 1st congressional district.
This power will only grow with time as age eligibility and naturalization rates increase for Latinos in Idaho. Continue reading “The Immigrant & Latino Vote Matters in Idaho”