ACORN Hamilton, ACORN Toronto, and ACORN London members held an action in front of 140 Tycos Drive in North York, Ontario on June 22 to deliver a demand letter from tenants who are fed up with the tenant displacement tactics employed by Family Properties. Finding an address with an active office to drop a demand letter was challenging, and illustrates the need for one of ACORN Canada’s national Stop Corporate Landlords campaign demands: the right to know your landlord.

OnEstEnsemble organized a protest with the eco-union of residents near the SOSUCAM sugar cane plantations. These residents’ crops of cassava, peanuts and yams were destroyed by SOSUCAM’s planes spraying pesticides. The residents gathered the destroyed crops and displayed signs in protest, demanding compensation.

The residents living near the sugarcane plantations of the Somdiaa group, a subsidiary of the French giant Castel, have been forced to uproot their cassava, peanut, and yam crops destroyed by the aerial spraying of pesticides by the company’s planes. In response to this devastation, several individuals gathered to protest and plan to dump their destroyed produce in front of the Sosucam headquarters. The victims are demanding significant compensation from the company for their immense losses.

Our Liberia affiliate, Justicitiz, forced multinational corporation Socfin Group to repair drainage they had destroyed months ago in Massaquoi town. How did they do it? Using the ACORN model! They held a “Fix our Drainage System and Anti Green-washing” protest. During the protest, armed police dispersed and chased after Justicitizs’ members. A few days later, Socfin workers repaired the drainage system, making the village safe from flooding again. Direct action gets the goods!

Scotiabank, one of the institutions targeted by Community Organizations International (COI) in our recent Day of Action of remittance rates has announced they will voluntarily reduce their remittance charges.

While we applaud any reduction in costs, the pricing structure of Scotiabank remittance products remains out of line with the costs of providing the service.  Further the deepening relationship between Scotiabank and Western Union remains at the heart of this issue. 

If working families are to see the reduction in costs that would transform remittances from a predatory financial product to one that reduces poverty in the both the north and south, then banks like Scotiabank and alternative financial services providers like Western Union will need to go a lot further than these recent announcements.

For more, check COI Chief Organizer Wade Rathke’s blog post on the topic.

http://chieforganizer.org/2010/02/02/small-scotia-steps-on-remittances/