Tag: Wells Fargo Bank

The fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline takes many forms. Any blow that can be struck must be struck. Not everyone can make it out to the frontline here in Oceti Oyate. But everyone can divest. Divestment is the withdrawal of funds from organizations that finance the pipeline so that they feel financial pressure to withdraw their support. Individual divestment has already drained over $67 million from pro-DAPL banks alone. The work at Standing Rock also needs many hands. Are you ready to get on the bus to Standing Rock?

Afrikan Black Coalition Political Director Yoel Haile states: “This victory is historic and momentous. Divesting $25 million is a good step towards shutting down private prisons by starving them of capital. This is a clear example of Black Power and what we can achieve when we work in unity. This victory belongs to the masses of our people languishing behind America’s mass incarceration regime.”

In the city of my birth, where people from all over the world come and make millions from the people of San Francisco, where there is the weak talk of helping artists, Blacks and families stay in this City that is becoming only habitable for “the haves,” I reach out to you for your assistance. Pack the courtroom Thursday, March 13, 1:15 p.m., Federal Building, Seventh & Mission, 17th Floor, Department 3.

The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) is at the forefront of the resistance to the foreclosures and illegal taking of homes by the banks. ACCE, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Home Defenders League released a report March 12 entitled “California in Crisis: How Wells Fargo’s Foreclosure Pipeline is Damaging Local Communities.”

Did a company called DMG Asset Management buy your foreclosed home? It bought Larry Faulks’ Diamond Heights home from Wells Fargo Bank after the bank put it up for foreclosure auction via a practice called dual tracking, whereby a bank forecloses and auctions off a home whose loan it is supposedly in the process of modifying.

The Bayview, which was once 70 percent Black, has been increasingly fighting a high rate of foreclosures that is resulting in yet another form of gentrification. Wells Fargo Bank has been responsible for many of the foreclosures in the community. Help your neighbors by joining the Stop the Wells Fargo 27 Holiday Foreclosure and Evictions campaign.

Harrison Chastang is news director at Black-owned KPOO Radio in San Francisco, and he's also an expert photojournalist. Here are a few of his photos from the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

On June 12, family members held a memorial for Derrick Gaines, a 15-year-old who was shot and killed by an officer with the South San Francisco Police Department on the evening of June 5. Police claim that Gaines, who was walking with a friend near an Arco gas station, was engaging in “suspicious behavior.”

San Francisco Bayview’s own, the undefeated Welterweight Champion of the World, Karim “Hard Hitta” Mayfield (16-0-1), brings his knockout power to the San Francisco Black Film Festival. “In the Hive” director Robert Townsend is coming a day early, on Thursday, to promote his film, which opens the festival. It stars Michael Clarke Duncan, Loretta Devine, Vivica A. Fox and newcomer Jonathan McDaniel.

Says Archbishop King: “I’m more concerned about my neighbor or his grandmother who labored in the shipyard to get these houses – living clean, doing right and being honest, hardworking people on the principles they brought from the South. ... Thousands of people were illegally foreclosed and evicted from their homes by a bank that had no authority or right to do that." Sign the Change.org petition to save Archbishop King's home.

Supervisor John Avalos is calling for suspension of foreclosure activities in San Francisco. Rally to support Avalos’ resolution Tuesday, March 20, 12 noon, on the City Hall steps, Van Ness side, where foreclosure sales are held. “We have to do everything in our power to stop any more foreclosure fast-tracking,” he said.

On Friday, March 16, a rally will be held at 10 a.m. at 1335 Quesada Ave. in Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco. Please come out and support as Dexter Cato and his family, longtime community members, reoccupy their home that was criminally foreclosed on. We want to send a message to bloodsucking predatory banks and their cohorts, STOP PREYING ON OUR COMMUNITY!

When Tanya Dennis, an Oakland public school teacher and reporter for the Post newspaper, reclaimed her home last year, she eventually received a fair modification from Wells Fargo Bank. However, at that time, Tanya acknowledged that her fight with Wells Fargo was only half over as she turned her attention to saving her 91-year-old mother’s home also.

At his ground-breaking Feb. 15, 2012, press conference, San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting announced “the first audit of foreclosure records in the state of California.” This nationally publicized report revealed that laws were not followed and that the neighborhood hit the hardest was “the Southeast part of town, which is very diverse, probably the lowest income area of San Francisco.”

On Friday, a coalition of immigrant rights and Occupy activists temporarily shut down two branches of Wells Fargo Bank in Santa Rosa and distributed a flyer charging that Wells Fargo profits from the private prison business now booming on increased immigrant detention.

On Dia de Reyes, the Day the Three Kings, a false king was exposed. Wells Fargo is the king of private prison finance, heavily invested in two private prison corporations, Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, which own a majority of the detention centers that house undocumented immigrants across the U.S.

It’s time that we stand as an “Army of One” and demand that the banks stop abusing our citizens, veterans and service members. We need to let the banks know that the buck stops here. I am asking that you stand with me as we fight to get a modification so we can keep our home. We have designated Wednesday, Jan. 4, as our “Day of Action” against Wells Fargo Bank. We will be meeting at Lake Merritt’s Snow Park, at 19th and Harrison, on Jan. 4 at 3 p.m. and walk as a group to Wells Fargo Bank headquarters to speak with Jim Foley, regional president for Northern California.

A municipal bank is finally on the table, and Supervisor and mayoral candidate John Avalos has scheduled a public hearing at San Francisco City Hall for Oct. 24, 10 a.m., in Room 250. There will be time for public comment. At least four mayoral candidates are outspoken advocates for a municipal bank: Supervisor Avalos, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, Terry Baum of the Green Party and state Sen. Leland Yee.

Led by students and teachers noisily chanting, “Tax, tax, tax the rich!" a crowd took over the state Capitol rotunda on May 9 to kick off a week of protest against looming draconian cuts to the California education budget.

Labeled a crime fighting tool, gang injunctions are ineffective, counter-productive and further strain the relationship between residents and police. Pack the courtroom Friday, May 6, 2 p.m., 1225 Fallon, Dept. 20, Oakland, for a hearing on the Fruitvale gang injunction.