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Occupy Wall Street Lays 'Siege' to Wells Fargo Shareholder Meeting, Two Dozen Arrests Result

Occupy Wall Street Lays 'Siege' to Wells Fargo Shareholder Meeting, Two Dozen Arrests Result

SAN FRANCISCO (AP/The Blaze) — Occupy Wall Street is back. Authorities have arrested about two dozen people who demonstrated inside and outside Wells Fargo's annual shareholders meeting. Dan Gainor of CNS News Reports:

“Activists with The 99% Spring coalition already have disrupted shareholder meetings this year at EQT Corp. (EQT), Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL) and BNY Mellon (BK). Now they’ve announced a full schedule of ‘non-violent direct action’ at shareholder meetings,” according to Kent Hoover, the Washington Bureau Chief for the Phoenix Business Journal.[...]

The Occupiers have announced a partnership with hardcore radical AIDS activists ACT UP. According to the liberal Nation, “a quarter century afters [sic] its founding, one of the original direct action pioneers is joining forces with the new kid on the block: Occupy Wall Street.”

ACT UP is planning a “march on Wall Street this Wednesday, April 25, starting in the morning at City Hall and ending in the financial district. ACT UP is hoping the event will attract hundreds of protesters for what they describe as a ‘daylong siege in Lower Manhattan.’”

This "siege" approach has already born fruit. San Francisco police Sgt. Mike Andraychak says police arrested 20 protesters. At least 14 of them were inside the meeting in the city's financial district Tuesday afternoon. Six others were arrested for trespassing.

Watch video of the protest below:

Andraychak said the San Francisco Sheriff's Department arrested another four people.

The bank protest drew several hundred protesters, many associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The demonstrators criticized the San Francisco-based company for pursuing home foreclosures, predatory lending, not paying enough taxes, and investing in private prison companies.

Wells Fargo & Co. spokesman Ruben Pulido says the company respects the protesters' right to gather but would work to keep its customers, employees and shareholders safe.

And for those who are curious about Occupy Wall Street's new allies, ACT-UP, here is some relevant information from a source sympathetic to them:

One of ACT UP’s first targets was the Catholic Church, then as now quite comfortable placing its dogma -– contraception bad, homosexuality an affront to God, condoms out of the question -– over the needs of its own flock, let alone a public health crisis spiraling out of control. And while the church was perfectly willing to care for the sick, it was –- and is -– equally willing to lend its power and moral authority in support of the homophobia and misogyny that were enfeebling the public response to the epidemic in the first place. In short, as far as the AIDS epidemic was concerned, the church was very much a central part of the problem, and needed to be shaken out of its complacency.[...]

Four thousand angry queers were cordoned off on one side of Fifth Avenue, safely contained behind barricades, their chanting not quite loud enough to penetrate the heavy bronze doors and thick walls of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Over the next few minutes, those queers fought their way across Fifth Avenue and stormed the cathedral, disrupting the Mass and igniting a firestorm, both inside the building and on front pages and newscasts around the world. It was the largest demonstration against the church up to that date in recorded history, an epochal event in the truest sense of the word.

One wonders what Wells Fargo did to make "angry queers" see them as the enemy.

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