[cross-posted at
IIRON]
by Will Tanzman, co-director of SOUL.
Yesterday, in St. Louis, Peabody Energy became the latest target in
this spring’s national Confront Corporate Power campaign. Peabody is
notorious for violating workers’ rights, destroying the environment, and
demanding tax breaks that hurt the struggling St. Louis public school
system. Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE),
Occupy St. Louis, and other groups got people into Peabody’s
shareholders meeting and disrupted the meeting, while a crowd supported
them outside.
Across the country, people are coming together in similar actions to
hold large corporations accountable at their annual shareholders
meetings. Last week, thousands of people (including a delegation from
SOUL) disrupted General Electric’s shareholders meeting in Detroit. In
2010, GE paid just 11% of its income in taxes, far below the national
corporate tax rate of 35%. Meanwhile, people in our communities are
facing cuts to jobs programs, health care, and energy efficiency.
Thousands more people targeted Wells Fargo’s shareholders meeting in San
Francisco to push the company to stop funding private prisons and to
reduce homeowners’ mortgage debt to the actual value of their homes.
These large corporations are at the root of many of the problems
affecting our communities, so we need to hold them accountable in order
to win on our issues. They are moving jobs to wherever they can pay
workers the least, refusing to reduce home mortgage debt and stop
foreclosures, lobbying for tax breaks while our communities suffer from
budget cuts, and pushing for right-wing legislation like the “stand your
ground” law that led to Trayvon Martin’s killing. If we do not fight
the increasing concentration of money and power in fewer and fewer
hands, things are going to continue to get worse.
On May 23, Confront Corporate Power comes to Chicago with the
shareholders meeting of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The CME is one
of the most profitable corporations in Illinois but successfully
lobbied for $100 million in tax breaks at a time when the state is
making cuts to health care and other vital services. We will be meeting
at 4:30 p.m. at Daley Plaza. Join us on May 23 to confront corporate
power and make Wall Street pay for the crisis they created in our
communities!