Wells Fargo employees are having meetings about us. Yes, we are starting to get under their skin.

A member from Marshalltown, Maria Alvarez, called and reported on her interaction with the branch manager when she closed her Wells Fargo account because of their investments in private prisons, predatory lending, and giant executive bonuses.

On April 23, I was one of 10 members of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement who were arrested outside of Wells Fargo’s downtown Des Moines headquarters.

A family farmer, a Methodist minister, a Vietnam veteran and seven others were arrested today at the national headquarters of Wells Fargo’s Home Mortgage division in Des Moines, Iowa. Among those arrested was George Goehl, the executive director of National People’s Action (NPA).

Wow. What a week!

The 99% Spring was a huge success and we couldn’t be more inspired by the spirit and courage of this movement.

Tens of thousands of us came together in homes, places of worship, campuses and the streets to train in non-violent direct action and then hit the streets to go toe-to-toe with executives of some of the biggest and baddest corporations in America.

About 30 members of community action groups met an executive from Wells Fargo, demanded several things, were not satisfied by the executive’s answers, and then marched on some downtown Wells offices to demand that the bank “put people first” and pay its “fair share.”

The executive was Jon Campbell, vice president for social responsibility for Wells Fargo, but his meeting at the offices of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement was not open to reporters.

CCI demands that Wells Fargo do five things:

The advocacy group Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement has a new report out this morning calling on Iowa policymakers to boost tax revenues and resist reducing state government spending.

The report, titled “The Cost of Cuts in Iowa,” finds that a 1 percent cut in state spending in Iowa leads to the loss of 580 jobs, and argues that increasing spending would help spur economic growth.

During Tuesday’s work session, the Iowa City Council will discuss what one local chapter of a statewide group calls “predatory lenders.”

Iowa City’s chapter of the Citizens for Community Improvement organization have asked the Iowa City Council to restrict the use of payday lenders, pawn shops and check-cashing businesses in and around the city’s residential areas.

"We don't want just a seat at the table. We want to run the table," Hugh Espey, the executive director of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, said to me. "We want to run the table in order to win policies that put people before profits, people before polluters and communities before corporations."

The attorney general leading the investigation into "robo-signing" mortgage companies may be backtracking on promises to help Americans wrongly foreclosed on stay in their homes.

Iowa Attorney General Tim Miller is no longer promising to press criminal charges against bank officials who fraudulently foreclosed on homes, according to Iowa community groups.