Feature Archives

Hundreds of community members, workers, and even some shareholders disrupted the Annual Shareholders Meeting of Wells Fargo held in San Francisco on May 3rd, 2011. The protesters demanded "an immediate foreclosure moratorium." They marched from the Embarcadero to the Merchants Exchange Building where Wells Fargo was holding it's meeting. The proceedings of the meeting were delayed and disrupted for about an hour by protesting shareholders while others rallied outside.

Activists in the Bay Area are shining a light on the connection between recently announced budget cuts and a corporate culture of tax evasion. Late last month, members of San Francisco's US Uncut movement held a sit-in at a Bank of America branch in the Mission District to call attention to the fact that the mega bank paid no federal taxes for years 2009 or 2010. As the April 18th tax filing deadline approaches, banks in Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and Oakland are protest targets.

The Internationalist Platform for Resistance and Self-Initiative Weaving Autonomies (PIRATA) organized a brigade for the observation and documentation of the violation of the rights of native peoples in the municipality of Santiago Xanica, Oaxaca, México. The brigade traveled through the municipality from March 14 to March 21, 2011. The task that the International Brigade set for itself has been to listen, understand, relate, and make public what is happening in the community of Santiago Xanica.

London, UK: Following months of demonstrations, occupations of town halls and other buildings, road blockades and widespread campaigning, a national protest against the cuts to social spending and for the alternatives is taking place on Saturday, March 26th. Hundreds of thousands are expected to march in London's biggest street mobilization since the anti-war march of 2003. Locally, the US Uncut San Francisco team has called for a demonstration on the same day starting at 10:30am at an unnamed bank near the 24th St. BART station.

Last week Rainforest Action Network's Change Chevron team asked people to call Chevron CEO John Watson and congratulate him for being inducted into Corporate Accountability International's Corporate Hall of Shame. The same day, Rainforest Action Network activists teamed up with the Raging Grannies, boarding a biodiesel bus to deliver an enlarged Corporate Hall of Shame certificate to Watson at his home in Lafayette, California.

As the Obama administration moves closer to introducing the NAFTA-style Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) to Congress, on January 14th, 2011, citizens and activists joined Kim Kyung-Ran, Director of External Relations for the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, in a rally at San Francisco's new Federal Building to oppose the deal. Labor, faith, environmental, fair trade, and family farm organizations called on Minority Leader Pelosi, Congress and President Obama to stop pursuing the KORUS FTA, an agreement expected to cost American jobs and grant corporations in each country rights to subvert public interest laws.

The 34th America's Cup will be held in San Francisco in 2013 and hundreds of thousands of tourists are expected to come to see the sailing races. Critics fear that the No Sit-Lie Law recently created by the passage of Proposition L will be especially enforced during the event and tenants will be required to move away from new construction areas. Still others are concerned about expenditures including an estimated $4 million for a beefed up police presence.