A Powerful Spring for the 99% - What do you think?
Share your thoughts on 99% Power, the unprecedented wave of protests targeting corporate abusers.
Post a comment below and let us know what you think!
This Spring has been unprecedented.
In April, we launched the 99% Spring, a nationwide effort to train 100,000 people in organizing and direct action. Hundreds of people were trained, and within weeks they were hosting their own trainings for thousands of others.
99% Power turned that training into action. In a wave of protests confronting the worst corporate abusers, we’ve faced off with Wellpoint, Walmart, Sallie Mae, Verizon, Bank of America, and more.
And we weren’t alone. This shareholder season saw a record number of resolutions introduced by the shareholders themselves to cut CEO pay and to disclose lobbying expenditures. Shareholders of Citigroup, one of the largest banks in the U.S., successfully voted to reject a fat CEO compensation package. Meanwhile, dozens of companies have dropped ALEC, the shady organization responsible for creating model legislation such as the Stand Your Ground law that has received national attention in the Trayvon Martin shooting.
More importantly, we’ve begun to name names. We have begun to name the individuals responsible for destroying our economy and widening the gap between the 1% and the rest of us. Many executives were shocked to find their names and faces on signs lining the streets outside of their shareholder meetings.
Now, we’re continuing the fight from every angle.
This week, guest workers at CJ’s Seafood, a supplier to Walmart, went on strike. The workers, who were hired under the federal H-2B temporary worker program, even went to the police to complain of forced labor and being physically threatened for not working fast enough. When manager Michael Leblanc found out, he threatened violence against the workers and their families in Mexico. Terrified, the workers courageously went on strike and filed a U.S. Department of Labor complaint against the company. You can learn more about the CJ’s Seafood guest workers on our blog.
Yesterday, Walmart opened an investigation--acknowledging that something has gone very wrong in their supply chain. While the nature and timeline of the investigation are still unclear, their acknowledgement of potential wrongdoing is a significant step forward in our campaign to change Walmart.
Our online petition, shareholder actions, and direct worker organizing have forced Walmart to acknowledge abuses in their business practices. Now, we must take the struggle forward. It will take a massive movement along every point of the Walmart supply chain to change the largest retailer in the world, but winning will change more than just Walmart, it will transform our economy.
Share your thoughts and reflections! Write a comment and let us know what you thought of 99% Power and our unprecedented shareholder season.
We look forward to reading your comments and strategizing for the future together.
Comments
First comment! Woo hoo!
I think it's great that we're finally "naming names." Corporations might be "people" under the law, but they don't respond to us like people. It's time we talk directly to the 1% getting in the way of the nation we want.
Also this video was AWESOME:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESgMiAeAw4
While I was excited to hear of the initiative, labor and leadership in social movement organizations across the spectrum - peace, women's, environmental, legal, civil rights, you name it - need to be thinking and acting with a long-term perspective and on the basis of a deeper strategic vision. This primarily means thinking about ecological implications. People on the established and diminishing Left are not paying attention to ecological indicators and research: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/06/07-3. Simply put, the Left in this country needs to politically adapt to new ecological conditions. There will be little use for labor unions if the agricultural and thus economic system as a whole collapses. Civil society in the U.S. must quickly form some kind of grand and tremendously aggressive and well-organized coalition committee to propose and fight for those policies that might give humanity a fighting chance of preventing its own extinction. There are numerous policy plans, see Lester Brown's World on the Edge, Gilding and Randers "One-Degree War Plan," etc. People of conscience need to start thinking, acting, and organizing in a far more urgent and aggressive way.
Joshua, I agree with the need for the Left to take up these issues. Up until recently, there has been a divide on the Left over environmental issues and other social/political issues, taking the loose form of red vs. green. However, this is being addressed on a site that I follow, kasamaproject.org. you may find this helpful and encouraging. Ralph.
Fight the good fight! To hell with the naysayers!
We not only need to spotlight those committing injustice we need to focus on solutions. One solution would be to limit campaign financing. This appears to be a complaint from the left and the right. Perhaps this is something that could united both sides? On more public financing. All candidates receive monies from the government to run a campaign. The biggest losers would be the media that makes windfall profits from the spending and those seeking political favors. Do we have the courage to lead?
I think, generally, the work of JwJ is necessary and good. The issues covered in this email are excellent. But, I have some problems with the idea of JwJ organizing a 99% coalition that seems to have developed out of the Occupy Movement, but has somewhat of a different purpose. I fear that there is the possibility of efforts to coopt the movement by some members of the coalition. I hope I'm wrong.
"This spring has been unprecedented" your tagline states, yet we just saw the Walker Recall effort defeated and contracted pensions for public workers in San Diego taken away at the ballot box. Millions of people are engaged in various levels of economic and social justice activity yet there is not a unified and coherent movement that can consistently challenge corporate power. Occupy!, building on the massive Wisconsin civil disobedience effort, which in turn was inspired by the Arab Spring, was able to change -- for a time anyway -- the national narrative that blamed our economic malaise on government deficits and public sector unions. The 99%-1% frame, the focus on Wall Street, and the occupation of public (and sometimes private) space went mainstream. But we still lack a strategy or set of strategies for building a movement. Our default strategy is to elect politicians who are not quite as bad as the bad guys. That only works when there are organized forces that can wield enough power to force the slightly better pols to enact reforms.
We need short term and long term strategies. We need inside and outside strategies. We need organizing and mobilizing. We need messaging and education that goes deeper than handing constituents our analysis and expecting them to march to our commands. We need to make the road as we walk, constructing social and economic enterprises that reflect human rather than corporate values. We need to practice democracy, check our privilege, and be open to creativity and difference. Another world is possible; we need to spend time to figure out how to get there.
We need to start putting the heat (newspapers, radio, internet, blogs, etc) on politicians, especially progressive democratic senators and congress people, and let them know that if they don't work with Occupy, and the 99%, that we will do our best to get someone in their office who will work with us. We have got to make the political support of the Occupy, and 99% Movements as important to their political well being and futures as do the lobbyists from the Wall Street corporations that have them cornered right now. We have to create the opportunity for our elected leaders to jump ship on the 1%, and that opportunity better be good!. We can point out all of the issues we want to our elected officials, but if they have no reason to listen to anyone but Wall Street, that is all they will hear. We also need to infiltrate Washington with folks who understand what we are trying to accomplish and who are sympathetic to our cause.
I think we're another step closer. Here's what we need: Many people oppose the idea of govt spending on job creation. Reframe the discussion. Since Reagan, we've redistributed several trillion dollars directly to corporations to "spur job creation." It didn't work. So, invest those same dollars -- the ones slated for ongoing corp tax cuts, etc. -- directly into job creation and training.
Yo tengo orgullo ser uno de los 99%
It takes courage and determination to do whatever workers had accomplished in their fight for fairness.
I see nothing but successful ending to their strugle.
I live in Richardson, Texas. Our Target management has all the workers there unhappy and nervous about their jobs. They play mind games with the workers and no matter what I say to corporation Target--they won't answer and don't care.
What company do you feel the screw from?
Corporations do not like unions yet have one of their own, ALEC. Whats good for the goose is good for the gander yet their buying elections at a rapid pace making elections no less than a bribed effort. Representatives are there to represent the people, the citizen, not the corporation. Corporations are a GROUP of people and do not not represent citizens rights. Not to mention their very traitorous act of outsourcing. Talk about abandonment of America. I would say thats quite UN-patriotic.
OWSt. DEM beginning With BARACK.
Corporate Extorsion Operators are paying themselves at record setting rates. Company shareholder rights have been quashed . The Robber Barons are back we need a new age Teddy Roosevelt to break up concentrated corporate power.
You need to give more thought and energy to solving the problem--i.e., to creating full employment and boosting the minimum wage to a living wage.
It's okay to fight the corporations but what we NEED is to create 15 million jobs and raise the minimum wage to $12 per hour.
No amount of punishing WalMart and so forth will move us a single inch towards this goal.
If you only have limited resources and time, you need to devote them towards fighting for the changes that will improve the world, not just punish the guilty.
The broad outline of what we need is to tax the rich to create jobs. The taxes needed will be massive, because we need to BOTH vastly increase government spending AND balance the budget unless you want to go the way of Greece. Namely, we need to impose a $2 trillion a year tax on the rich and corporations--which they can easily afford to pay. Of this, $300 billion a year will be needed to create full employment.
We will need to get millions of people in the streets demonstrating for jobs in order to achieve this, obviously this will take a year or two or three but we do need to get started working towards it.
This is what I am trying to do, but I am only one person. I hope you--JWJ or many of you individually--will join me because this is the only hope for America, the world, and the future.
Roger Skutt---Coalition For Progress
The old saying: "The squeaky wheel gets the greese" is so true. The more of us who write, protest, occupy and share, the more we will be heard. In the long run this will result in the betterment for workers and their families.