OccupySF does not support this kind of destruction of the 99%’s property.
OccupySF does not know the individuals involved in this damage.
More information to follow.
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- Occupy and Community Groups from throughout the region, including labor and religious leaders marched on the Wells Fargo shareholders meeting to demand changes to their unfair business practices.
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- The protest kicked off the night before with speakers and movies.
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- “LET US IN! LET US IN!” More than a dozen Occupy shareholders eventually made their way into the meeting where they loudly critiqued the company’s behavior.
Wells Fargo April 23 and 24th Takeover!
Action Council, Communications, Direct Action, Media, News Ticker
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Apr 102012
Monday, April 23: 4pm to Midnight – in 1 DAY!
Occupy Wells Fargo!!
California at Montgomery St (Montgomery BART), SF
Teach-Ins, Music, Film Screenings, Food and more.
Please come join the Occupation the day before the 99% Take-Over of the Wells Fargo Shareholders’ Meeting. Put a spotlight on issues that affect us all: Foreclosure Fighters, Students, the LGBT Community, Feminists, Anti-War activists, Immigrants, Prison Abolitionists, Environmental/Sustainability Folks, and Workers. Come and share stories of how Wells Fargo/Banks/Wall St has affected you, your organization, or your community.
SCHEDULE:
4-5 pm: Outreach to Financial District workers and other 99%ers
5-8 pm: 99% SPEAK OUT:
Come hear the stories and struggles of people on the front lines of the communities and movements of the 99% — impacted by and fighting Wells Fargo, big banks and Wall St.:
5-5:30: Foreclosure Fighters
5:30-6: Labor
6-6:30: Immigrant rights/Prisons/Detention Centers
6:30-7: Feminists
7-7:30: Students
7:30-8: Environmental Sustainability
6-9 pm: Nonviolent Direct Action Training:
Prepare for the take over of the Shareholder Meeting the next day. Hands-on skills and info about how to engage in effective direct action and occupation, tools for de-escalation (and escalation) and dealing with arrest and legal consequences.
8-9 pm.: Outdoor Film Screenings by Occupy SF Media:
A series of short documentaries on Foreclosure Fighter Victories, Bank Occupations, and Subervtisements.
9pm -Midnight: Silent Movies & Music and Wells Fargo Teach-In hosted by the Occupy SF Ideological Liberation Work Group
This Occupy SF-organized occupation will not risk arrest or stay overnight; we aim to spread the word about why thousands of us will be taking nonviolent direct action and protesting at Wells Fargo Shareholders’ Meeting the next day. Bring banners, food and your friends.
facebook.com/events/372774052767348/
Flyers Downloads: please print and distribute! We always need help with outreach:
Occupy_WellsFargo_8.5x11_Half Sheet Flyers
Occupy_WellsFargo_8.5x11_Full Sheet Flyers
Occupy_WellsFargo_11x17_Vertical Poster
Check the website for more flyer downloads, nonviolent direct action trainings and action information. Join us!
facebook.com/events/203308649774621/
Twitter: #WF24 #WFShareholders
Tuesday, April 24th: 10 am
99% Take-Over of the Wells Fargo Shareholders’ Meeting
Mass Nonviolent Protest and Direct Action
10am: Meet at Justin Herman/Bradley Manning Plaza and march to Shareholders’ Meeting at Merchants Exchange Building, 465 California St @ Montgomery St., SF
Wells Fargo profits at the expense of our communities. America’s biggest tax dodger has its tentacles in many different areas of our lives: Wells Fargo leads the country in foreclosures and evictions for profit. Wells Fargo is a predatory mortgage lender and student loan shark. Wells Fargo is a prison & immigrant detention center profiteer. Wells Fargo is corrupting our democracy.
The goals of our action are to:
1) Stop the Shareholder Meeting from occurring and convene a People’s Stakeholder Meeting.
2) Amplify the stories of all of us directly impacted by Wells Fargo’s predatory practices.
The April 24th mobilization is organized by a coalition of homeowners, clergy, immigrant rights advocates, unions, occupy groups, tenant rights groups and residents from some of the hardest hit communities in the Bay Area and across the country. Get your friends, co-workers, occupiers, classmates, neighbors or folks from your group, take the day off and let’s make history together!
NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION INFO
We are a coalition of homeowners, clergy, immigrant rights advocates, unions, occupy groups, tenant rights groups and residents from some of the hardest hit communities in the Bay Area and across the country. This action is part of a national series of mobilizations at big bank shareholder meetings. We intend to make history, win positive change for the 99%, and push to end the rule of the 1%.
We hope you will join us.
ACTION GOALS:
1) Stop the Wells Fargo Bank Shareholders’ Meeting from occurring and convene a People’s Stakeholder Meeting.
2) Amplify the stories of all of us directly impacted by Wells Fargo’s predatory practices.
ACTION DEMANDS:
We will demand the redress of the following grievances with Wells Fargo, which is profiting at the cost of our communities:
* America’s Biggest Tax Dodger – Hoarding billions of tax dollars that should be paying for public and community services and putting America back to work
* Foreclosure Leader – Continuing to foreclose on families in an economy it helped to collapse
* Predatory Lender – Targeting those who can least afford it with exploitative mortgages and payday lending, especially the low-income communities of color
* Corruptor of our Democracy – Protecting their own profits by quadrupling spending on self-serving lobbying since the financial crisis began
* Prison Profiteer – Profiting from increased incarceration by investing heavily in for-profit prison corporations and anti-immigrant legislation
WELLS FARGO SHAREHOLDERS’ MEETING
Wells Fargo Annual General Shareholders’ Meeting is planned to take place on Tuesday April 24 at 1pm on the 15th Floor of the Merchants Exchange Building, 465 California (at Montgomery) across the street from Wells Fargo Headquarters at 420 Montgomery in San Francisco’s Financial District. If the shareholder meeting does take place, we will have people inside with proxies who are connected to our coalition to attend on our behalf.
ACTION AGREEMENT
We are asking all participants in the April 24 mass mobilization to agree to remain nonviolent and to refrain from damaging property.
NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION TRAININGS
We encourage people planning to engage in nonviolent direct action to attend nonviolent direct action training. The trainings will cover: risking arrest, role-playing actions, legal consequences and details of the April 24th action.
Please let us know if you can attend the training (but it is ok to just show up.)
Saturday April 21, 10am to 1pm:
UNITE-HERE Local 2, Golden Gate Ave (between Hyde and Leavenworth, near Civic Center BART/MUNI)
Monday April 23, 6pm to 9pm:
California @ Montgomery, near Montgomery BART (NOTE: this is an outdoor training in conjunction with the Occupy Wells Fargo/Teach-In and there may not be chair seating. Please dress warmly.)
Tuesday April 24, 8am to 10am:
Justin Herman Plaza, North side, near the amphitheater/fountain. This training will take place just before the 10am March.
NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION COORDINATION MEETING
Everyone who would like to participate in the nonviolent direct action at Wells Fargo on April 24th is asked to attend this Action Coordination Meeting to receive key updates and legal info and to coordinate with others.
WHEN: Saturday April 21, 2:30-4:30pm
WHERE: Contact <apanarese@calorganize.org> for San Francisco location.
LEVELS OF PARTICIPATION
There are multiple ways to participate;
MARCH, RALLY, PROTEST: you can join the march and rally if you do not intend to risk arrest, and can support folks engaging in nonviolent direct action.
PICKETS: there will be some pickets near entrances to the shareholders’ meeting, which will involve minor risk of arrest, but the intention here is to disperse.
NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION: this will involve sitting-in and blockading to shut down the Wells Fargo shareholder meeting and involves risking arrest.
NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION SUPPORT: Groups that are risking arrest are also asked to have one or more of their own support people to: have names, birth dates and contacts for everyone in their group risking arrest, keep track of their folks before, during and after the arrest and to be in touch with the Legal Support. A good checklist and related information can be found at OccupyLegal.org
ACTION/AFFINITY GROUPS
We encourage everyone to form or join a group. Your organization, friends, co-workers, occupiers, classmates, congregation, neighbors or folks from your nonviolent direct action training can be an affinity group. Being part of a group allows us to be well organized, effective and take care of each other. Ideally, each group includes one or more folks who will not risk arrest and who can provide support at the action.
We will have a final Nonviolent Direct Action Coordinating Spokes Council meeting for all those participating in nonviolent direct action the weekend before the action (day, time, location tba). Every group participating in nonviolent direct action is asked to send one or more spokespeople.
LEGAL SUPPORT
The National Layers Guild and Occupy Legal will be providing legal support for this action. This includes the presence of legal observers (wearing bright green caps) to: document any problems with the police; provide legal briefings; staff a legal hotline number; and have attorneys on-call for those arrested. More info at OccupyLegal.org
LEGAL HOTLINE 415 285 1011
MORE INFO:
facebook.com/events/203308649774621/
Twitter: #WF24 #WFShareholders
“…We collectively confront a monolithic government, a parasitic financial system, and a military industrial juggernaut…”
It has been well-established in declaration and law that all people are endowed with inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly. We, and our descendants, share common human needs — a sustainable global ecology, adequate food, shelter, health, education, and equal opportunity to fulfill our potential.
Through a deliberate series of attacks, these rights and basic necessities are being stolen from us by the economic elite in Washington, London, Wall Street and other centers where money and power consolidate.
We have no redress from our government, as it is busy ensuring the health, prosperity, and security of corporations and financial institutions while ignoring and actively working against the basic needs of the People. In light of this, a call was made to occupy Wall Street on the 17th of September, 2011. From Liberty Square in New York City to the Financial District in San Francisco, we answered that call, occupying with determination and solidarity.
To reclaim our rights, we collectively confront a monolithic government, a parasitic financial system, and a military industrial juggernaut, all of which command overwhelming economic power and seemingly insurmountable physical and legal force. We confront these entities with courageous nonviolent civil disobedience. By occupying public space, mobilizing people, and transforming public discourse, we shine the light of truth on the situation at hand.
Financial institutions have become parasites of the economic system. Instead of functioning as a buttress for the economy, they have constructed mechanisms that allow them to plunder the world’s wealth and divert it directly into their pockets. By abusing the money creation powers of the Federal Reserve, manipulating domestic and international financial markets, and creating risky, deceptive, and dangerous investment products, they accumulate staggering wealth and power, leaving in their wake global economic devastation.
Multi-national corporations are equally guilty. Under the guise of fair competition, they take an unfair proportion of produced wealth. When true competition threatens their power, they crush it. They achieve global hegemony by using our armed forces as personal enforcers and looting the public treasury to fund their empires. They befoul and contaminate the air we breathe, the waters we drink, and the soil that gives us life. The Earth’s resources are destroyed and depleted for their insatiable avarice.
To continue accumulating obscene wealth, these culprits commit horrendous economic, political, and environmental crimes. To perpetuate these crimes and escape accountability, they deploy their vast ill-gotten wealth to buy control of our society and government at all levels, undermining the tools and abilities we have available to us to resist effectively.
- They buy the loyalty and votes of politicians through lobbying and corruption to create laws and regulations favoring the financial and corporate interests at the People’s expense.
- They influence the judicial system to interpret and enforce those laws and regulations primarily to their benefit, even going so far as to grant corporations the rights of people.
- They buy or neutralize government regulatory bodies tasked with protecting the People’s and economy’s health.
- They buy university curricula and research, particularly in science and economics, to advance their agenda.
- They influence the creation of, and even draft, anti-Constitutional legislation that punishes or inhibits those who publicly protest their misdeeds.
- They buy and consolidate the print and broadcast media to inhibit diversity of ideas and opinions and ensure mass media conformity to their agenda.
- They manipulate the political process and the media, demonizing our differences in ethnicity, skin color, gender, age, sexual orientation, nationality, political affiliation, and religion to separate us from our natural allies.
- They seek Internet censorship laws to eliminate the last bastion of free media and organizational tools for the People.
- They fabricate pretexts to divert excessive public resources into wars of choice, and the weapons and personnel to wage them.
- And they inflict debt slavery on the people of other nations by using the IMF and World Bank as their foreign arms of operation.
Because these financial institutions and multinational corporations have committed these crimes, the government, the corporate media, and the prevailing ideology no longer represent the People.
We, the People, are left to suffer the staggering costs that these financial institutions and multinational corporations inflict — on the economy, political process, and the environment.
- We suffer from a shrinking middle class, rising unemployment, insecure jobs, diminishing wages, retirement plans looted by Wall Street, a decline of living conditions, and a slide toward poverty.
- We suffer from millions of fraudulent home foreclosures and evictions that have devastated our communities and families.
- We suffer the costs of fighting and financing unnecessary wars, and the inadequate support our government provides for veterans.
- We suffer from an exorbitantly expensive and inefficient health care system, leaving us at the mercy of employers and insurance companies who can arbitrarily deny, or prohibitively price, the coverage our very lives depend on.
- We suffer from decimated lands and imperiled wildlife caused by the unsustainable rape of the environment.
- We suffer from food and water supplies laced with poisonous runoff and unhealthy additives, due to woefully inadequate government regulation.
- We suffer from an increasingly inaccessible college education system that results in decades of crushing student debt and extremely limited job prospects after graduation.
- We suffer from a brutal austerity regimen resulting in ever-worsening K-12 education, imploding social services, and crumbling infrastructure.
- We suffer incalculable personal and community devastation due to the reckless privatization of public necessities, including education, healthcare, and even prisons.
- And we suffer from a broken political system where moneyed interests are represented, but the People and communities are not.
We, the People, are fed up with this unwarranted suffering. We can no longer idly stand by, with indifference and apathy, watching our rights, our economic security and our shared environmental heritage being torn from us. We answered the call to Occupy because all of us can agree that these profound wrongs must be righted.
Occupy is both the conversation and the space to make meaningful change happen. Occupy is a big tent and all are welcome to help us create the solutions for a better world. Whether it’s removing money from politics, transforming the economic system, or advocating for a more just and equitable society, we have the energy and we have the ideas, but the most important thing we need is your passion! You have more power than you’ve been led to believe, and your voice is more needed than you think. These are the days when we must speak out, no matter how our voices shake.
As we grow, the criminal financial institutions, multinational corporations, and their government lackeys will continue to attempt to silence us. But our resolve and purpose will only grow stronger. They can tear down a tent, they can eject a body, but they cannot evict an idea once it is rooted in the hearts and minds of a People. We are an expression of hope and solidarity for a better tomorrow. We are the cry that has found a voice, and that is the voice of the People. We invite you to join your voice with ours. Let us stand together and let it be known that we we will not go quietly into the night. We are Occupy!
The police have taken over the Turk St. Commune space with dozens of arrests.
The 5pm march will leave from Civic Center Plaza as planned. March is leaving from Polk St by City Hall.
