While Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and his fellow banksters met in Salt Lake City, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) members mourned the damage they bank has caused the Bay Area with a protest at their Headquarters.

On Tuesday, April 23rd homeowners, tenants, faith leaders, and students from around the Bay Area demonstrated at Wells Fargo headquarters in solidarity with those at annual shareholder meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. The memorial service in San Francisco focused on three themes: mourning lost homes, dreams, and lives as a result Well Fargo's predatory lending practices; standing in fellowship with protestors at the shareholder's meeting; calling for action and justice for homeowners, students, and all currently in the struggle against crushing debt.

While protesters gathered outside the San Francisco headquarters of Wells Fargo, other Californians went to Salt Lake City to protest at the company’s annual shareholders meeting.

Via:

“We recognize that there are a lot of predatory loan practices and racial loan practices,” said ACCE spokesman Melvin Willis. “They are making record profits while people are just struggling to have the 'American dream' — to live in a house and raise a family.”

He said foreclosures are still harming families, particularly in minority communities nationwide.

“That is unacceptable and that is why we are here today,” Willis said.

Thursday's event was part of a broader campaign of ACCE and the Home Defenders League to push Wells Fargo to change their practices in order to reduce foreclosures. The groups are calling on Wells Fargo to:

• Make principal reduction a core front-end strategy when considering loan modifications;
• Release data on race & income of the homeowners they foreclose on, evict or assist.
• Stop all foreclosures and evictions stop until these steps are put into place.

Protesters also called on Wells Fargo to end practices that profit from community losses, including foreclosure, payday-type lending and investment in private prisons.

Protesters gathered at an vacant and neglected bank-owned home in southeast San Diego on Tuesday to collect debris and transport it to a local bank, where they had hoped to make a "deposit."

They hoped that their efforts would send a message to Bank of America, the reported owner of the property: "Clean up your mess."

The protesters, members of Alliance Of Californians For Community Empowerment, a homeowner advocate group, organized the protest to underscore the filth and possible unwanted behavior that could infiltrate communities as a result from a bank's failure to maintain a vacant foreclosed property.

Members of the group also used the event to push for a city ordinance that would require banks to enter every home in the foreclosure process into a registry. The proposed measure would also fine lenders if they do not properly maintain those homes.

More on this here.