Putting our communities before corporations
By
MORE THAN 225 farmers, immigrants, laborers, nurses, students, teachers, union members and everyday folks from all walks of life held a "People's Shareholder Meeting" outside the Urbandale, Iowa, home of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage President Mike Heid. The April 14 demonstration--in advance of the big bank's annual shareholders meeting in San Francisco on April 24--demanded that Wells Fargo put communities before corporations and people before profits.
The demonstrators were bused to Urbandale from the Des Moines Central Library and passed resolutions at the edge of Heid's driveway calling on Wells Fargo to stop home foreclosures, predatory lending and tax dodging. Protesters then marched on his front door with a letter demanding an hour of floor time at the shareholders meeting.
"If you vote to pass these 'put people first' resolutions, say 'Aye!'" Larry Ginter, an independent family farmer from Rhodes, Iowa, told the enthusiastic crowd. After they were forced off the property by Urbandale police, protesters leafleted the neighborhood, chanting "Heid can't hide" and "Make Wall Street pay" as they walked from house to house.
The confrontational direct action street protest was the culmination of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement's (Iowa CCI) "Statewide Summit to Confront Corporate Power"--a daylong educational and training event that was part of the national 99% Spring campaign organized by a coalition of national labor unions, community organizations and faith-based institutions. The Iowa Federation of Labor also heavily promoted the event.
Although some commentators on the left have expressed skepticism about the 99% Spring campaign, particularly MoveOn.org's participation in it, organizers in Iowa said that the national coalition was aimed at broadening the Occupy Wall Street movement, not co-opting it.
"We are not here today to help elect politicians from either political party--Democrats or Republicans," Iowa CCI executive director Hugh Espey said from the front of the room during an opening speech. "The only way we're going to make real change in this country is to build our power outside the electoral system, in the streets and on the job. We have to rebuild a fighting movement independent of the political system and powerful enough to take Wall Street on and win."
More than 100,000 people in all 50 states attended nearly 1,000 direct action trainings April 9-15 as part of the 99% Spring. The campaign's next step, say organizers, is to mobilize people to protest the shareholder meetings of 40 of the country's most abusive corporations.
"The spring trainings are based on the freedom schools of the civil rights movement and are geared towards dramatically escalating movement capacity," Espey said. "This is about fearless truth-telling and going toe-to-toe with corporate power until we win a more just and democratic society and a fair economy that works for everyone."
