Occupy assails Wells Fargo

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:59:00 +0000

Intervening in and disrupting business-as-usual has characterized Occupy tactics since the movement's earliest days. From encampments in prominent plazas to mass marches to impede the flows of traffic and capital in major cities, the aim has been to visibly and physically unsettle a system symbolized by glistening financial districts and their suited denizens. As such, the new plan to disrupt shareholder meetings of major corporations seems an obvious one for Occupy and its allies -- both as a means to garner attention and take the action directly to the corporate leviathans so central to Occupy grievances.

On Tuesday, in one of what organizers across the country hope to be a string of shareholder meeting disruptions, Occupy participants, union members, housing justice advocates and individuals hurt by foreclosures descended on the Wells Fargo annual summit in San Francisco. According to reports, 15 people were arrested inside the meeting of 300 shareholders (where standing room only meant that many individuals with a stake in the banking giant or their proxies could not enter the venue). The disrupters had bought stock in Wells Fargo in order to gain access; they shouted out that the bank should pay its fair share of corporate taxes and vociferously decried investments in private prisons, according to reports. Over the course of the day there were 24 arrests, as police in riot gear flanked the Merchants Exchange Building, which was surrounded by nearly 2,000 demonstrators and one giant inflatable rat.

The students are coming!

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 02:00:00 +0000

From the Free Speech Movement to SDS and the anti-Vietnam War protests, many of the most important American protest movements have historically been spearheaded by students. In recent years, students, buffeted by hard times and growing up in an apathetic, me-first civic culture, have been as passive as the rest of the population. But in the last two years soaring tuition costs, draconian cuts in faculty and classes, and the prospect of a jobless, student-loan-burdened future, have begun galvanizing some collegians into action. And the Occupy Wall Street movement has lit a fire under more of them, and broadened their movement into a structural demand for social justice and equity.

On Wednesday, 500 to a thousand college students from all over California converged at Justin Herman Plaza, the center of the Occupy SF movement, and marched through the financial district along with their non-student brethren. For a weary movement, it felt a little like a very young, very smart cavalry had come riding to the rescue.

Salon.com > Occupy SF

Occupy assails Wells Fargo

The students are coming!