Seven folks have been arrested as a whole lot of local weather and Indigenous rights activists participated in non-violent demonstrations at Wells Fargo’s company workplaces in New York Metropolis and San Francisco on Wednesday, in what marks the launch of a summer season of civil disobedience towards billionaires and companies accused of cowering to Donald Trump.
In New York Metropolis, dozens of protesters stormed the foyer of the financial institution’s company workplaces, disrupting staff by blocking the doorway and calling out what they describe as Wells Fargo’s complicity within the local weather disaster.
Wells Fargo, presently ranked thirty third within the Fortune 500 listing, grew to become the primary main financial institution to desert its local weather commitments – simply weeks after the president signed a slew of government orders to spice up fossil fuels and derail local weather motion. The US financial institution is among the many greatest financiers of planet-warming oil and fuel firms, with $39bn in fossil gas investments in 2024 – a 30% rise on the earlier 12 months, in line with the newest annual Banking on Local weather Chaos report.
“As dozens of youngsters die in climate-driven floods in Texas and 1000’s die in heatwaves all over the world, it’s unconscionable {that a} financial institution like Wells Fargo would simply fully stroll away from its local weather objectives,” mentioned Liv Senghor with Planet Over Revenue, the non-profit group that led the New York protests.
In San Francisco, seven folks have been arrested as activists blocked each entrance of the financial institution’s world headquarters for a number of hours, with members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribal nation locked themselves to a sleeping dragon tripod.
The Standing Rock and Cheyenne River tribes spearheaded the 2016 and 2017 struggle towards the development of the Dakota Entry pipeline (DAPL) – the opposed fossil gas pipeline constructed via Lakota lands that Wells Fargo helped finance.
“DAPL was constructed via the Lakota Unceded Treaty Territory, with out correct consent. That land holds our historical past, our spirit, and our ancestors. We’re in a time the place we needs to be defending the Earth, not pushing extra oil via it. We owe that to our folks and the long run generations,” mentioned Trent Ouellettefrom Waste Wakpa Grassroots.
Wednesday’s protests have been a part of the Cease Billionaires Summer time marketing campaign – a sequence of deliberate civil disobedience to disrupt the tech billionaires and companies backing the Trump administration’s dismantling of democratic rights and local weather motion. It follows final 12 months’s summer season of warmth marketing campaign focusing on Citibank, one other main fossil gas funder.
This 12 months Wells Fargo is being particularly focused by a coalition of non-profit organizations, who accuse the financial institution of capitulating to Trump and supporting the rise of planetary destruction, autocracy and land occupation – within the US and Palestinian territories.
In San Francisco, about 150 activists additionally painted a large group mural exterior the financial institution’s headquarters with the phrases “Wells Fargo Funds Genocide”, pointing to the financial institution’s funding in firms that present tech and/or AI to the state of Israel together with Palantir – which additionally has contracts with Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
“Right now’s actions are just the start of a response to Wells Fargo’s enabling of the rise of authoritarianism,” mentioned Leah Redwood with the Oil and Gasoline Motion Community, who helped set up the San Francisco protest. “Wells Fargo is complicit in so many injustices … the local weather disaster or union busting or Trump’s mass deportations or the atrocities in Gaza.”
Final week, protesters throughout the US focused Palantir, accusing the tech firm of facilitating Trump’s increasing surveillance, immigration crackdown and Israel’s human rights violations throughout the occupied Palestinian territories.
Wells Fargo is among the many US’s largest banks, value virtually $270bn, and with greater than 4,000 branches throughout 39 US states and territories.
Additionally it is among the many greatest financiers of fossil fuels since 2021 – the 12 months that the Worldwide Power Company warned the world that there may very well be no extra fossil gas enlargement – if there was any hope of avoiding whole local weather disaster. Since then, the financial institution’s investments in fossil fuels have topped $143bn, in line with Banking on Local weather Chaos.
In 2021, Wells Fargo’s chief government, Charles Scharf, described the local weather disaster as “one of the pressing environmental and social problems with our time”.
In February, Wells Fargo dropped two key commitments – the sector-specific 2030 financed and facilitated emissions reductions targets and its objective to realize web zero emissions in its lending and underwriting by 2050.
On the time, the financial institution mentioned: “After we set our financed emissions objective and targets, we mentioned that attaining them was depending on many components exterior our management,” including that “most of the situations essential to facilitate our shoppers’ transitions haven’t occurred.”
The announcement comes simply months after Wells Fargo give up the world’s greatest local weather coalition for banks – the Web-Zero Banking Alliance – adopted by the remainder of its US banking friends. That exodus began one month after final 12 months’s election victory for Trump.
In response to a current investigation by Rolling Stone, the Texas lawyer basic boasted about how his workplace “bullied” Wells Fargo into abandoning the alliance and different local weather pledges.
Along with dropping its local weather pledges, the financial institution has additionally deserted its range, fairness and inclusion (DEI) objectives – ending insurance policies requiring various candidates for senior-level roles.
A summer season of non-violent disruption is deliberate for Wells Fargo together with a nationwide day of coordinated motion on 15 August, in an effort, activists say, to strain the financial institution to reinstate its local weather targets, cease union busting, and finish its monetary ties with firms accused of destroying each folks and the planet.
Local weather activists are additionally getting ready to help unionization efforts on the financial institution, the place staff have already voted to unionize at 28 branches. Wells Fargo presently faces greater than 30 allegations of union-busting.
Wells Fargo declined to touch upon the protests or any of the allegations about its investments and insurance policies.
