Wells Fargo Protest: Bay Area Activists Demand More Progress, Less PR from Banking Giant

Wells Fargo Birthday BBQ Demonstration: Bay Area Activists Demand More Progress, Less PR On Environmental And Social Issues

-- Activist “chefs” serve up tofu dogs and tough questions at Wells Fargo headquarters today.

-- Customers call on Wells Fargo to “get on the wagon” and celebrate its anniversary by respecting communities and protecting the Earth.

San Francisco – Two days after Wells Fargo launched a new public relations push to improve its image, local environmental and social justice activists will today host a lunch-hour sidewalk “cook-in” at the bank’s headquarters in San Francisco’s busy financial district. Demanding more from their hometown bank, Bay Area activists are calling on Wells Fargo to do better than the new policies already in place at Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. The demonstration coincides with the bank’s 153rd anniversary.

San Francisco's hometown bank - Wells Fargo - is one of the largest US banks still operating without meaningful social or environmental safeguards to prevent destructive investments. Despite their surprise July 11 announcement of a so-called "10-point environmental commitment," Wells Fargo continues to be a top financier of environmentally and socially destructive corporations like Burlington Resources, a Houston-based company drilling for oil on indigenous homelands in Ecuador, and BlueLinx, a timber-importer linked to illegal logging and human rights abuses in Indonesia.

Unlike competitors such as Citigroup, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo refuses to take seriously its role as a bankroller of global warming, and consistently avoids making any specific commitments to curtail oil investments, safeguard endangered ecosystems, or to uphold human rights in areas where it invests money. Moreover, Wells Fargo profits from other types of social injustice such as predatory lending and charging exorbitant fees to low-income immigrants seeking to wire money home to their families overseas.