The Food Chain Workers Alliance has joined the 99% Power coalition. Starting this spring with corporate shareholder season, the 99% Power coalition—workers and retirees, families fighting foreclosure and the unemployed, students, immigrants and environmentalists—have united together to build an economy and a democracy that works for all us, not just for the 1%. Thousands of people will be inside and outside more than three-dozen corporate shareholder meetings across the country, including Wells Fargo, GE, Verizon, Sallie Mae, Wal-Mart, Bank of America, and more.
Additionally, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an Alliance member, is organizing a Northeast action tour April 12 through April 17, the date of Ahold’s shareholder meeting in Amsterdam. Ahold owns Stop & Shop and Giant supermarkets, and so far has refused to sign a Fair Food Agreement with the CIW. Actions will also focus on Chipotle to demand that they company also sign the agreement. CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food focuses on major corporate buyers — companies such as Publix, Ahold, Kroger, and Wal-Mart — that purchase a tremendous volume of fruits and vegetables, leveraging their buying power to demand the lowest possible prices from their suppliers. This, in turn, exerts a powerful downward pressure on wages and working conditions in these suppliers’ operations.
The demands of 99% Power are precise and simple: corporations must pay their fair share of taxes, create jobs and treat workers fairly, protect homeowners, pledge to keep money out of the election and shift all investment away from fossil fuels and into renewable energy.
To challenge the grip of institutions the size of Bank of America, Wal-Mart, Verizon, Wells Fargo, and more on our economy and our political system, we know no single organization can do it alone. Joined by tens of thousands of newly trained individuals coming out of 99%Spring trainings, 99% Power has created an alignment of groups, representing communication, service, hospitality, food, commercial, steel and domestic workers, the unemployed and families fighting foreclosure, environmental activists, immigrants, and family farmers around a shared vision of forcing corporations to serve a bottom line that includes workers, communities, and the environment.
99% Power will mobilize well over 10,000 people, from all walks of life and representing the diversity of the 99%, to engage in nonviolent direct action. All told, there will be more demonstrations connected to corporate shareholder meetings than at any point in American history. Together, we fight to build a political and economic system that offers equal opportunity for all.
Other members of the 99% Power coalition include: The New Bottom Line, Jobs with Justice, Rainforest Action Network, 350.org, Alliance for a Just Society, National People’s Action, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Pushback Network, Right to the City, Public Campaign Action Fund, MoveOn.org, Service Employees International Union, Public Citizen, Enlace, UNITE HERE, Common Cause, Rebuild the Dream, Restaurant Opportunities Centers, Health Global Access Project, United Steelworkers, International Labor Rights Forum, and The Other 98%.
You can sign up to take action this spring and to learn more about 99% Power online at https://www.the99power.org/. When you pledge to Confront Corporate Power, you’ll receive information about how to support and participate in a variety of different tactics to confront corporate power head on. We believe that there will be no economy or democracy that fully embodies the values of community, cooperation, and equality without confronting—and reclaiming—corporate power.
There’s still time to join a 99% Spring Action Training! In the span of just one week, from April 9-15, 100,000 people will be trained to tell the story of what happened to our economy, learn the history of non-violent direct action, and use that knowledge to take action on our own campaigns to win change. Trainings are happening in homes, community centers, places of worship, campuses, and public spaces nationwide — together, the 99% are learning how to join together in the work of reclaiming our country through sustained non-violent action. Go to this MoveOn site to sign up for a training!