Smash the WTO

Join the Campaign Against the world's Most Destructive
Financial Institution: CitiGroup

From South Africa to the South Bronx, from Brazil to San Francisco, Communities are rising up and telling Citigroup - WE WANT OUR PLANET BACK!

Unite to demand accountability from one of the biggest and most harmful corporations in the world.

“The financial realm constitutes the commanding citadel of the global system - the benefactor that provides essential capital, the enforcer that disciplines multinational corporations as well as nations. Its imperious attitudes and amoral operating assumptions are embedded in every aspect of globalization and implicated in every complaint, from inhumane working conditions to environmental wreckage, from the erosion of national sovereignty to the gross and growing inequalities. “ --William Greider THE NATION, April 24, 2000

The destruction of fragile ecosystems, sweatshops, oil spills, the genocide of indigenous peoples, the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, genetic engineering, the exclusion and then exploitation of low income communities and communities of color, climate change, corporate prisons…these are some of the many faces of the corporate global economy. Who makes it all possible? The private finance industry - the small group of mega-banks and investment houses that dominate the global financial system. First and foremost among them: CITIGROUP.

Comprised of Citibank, investment house Salomon Smith Barney and Traveler’s Insurance, Citigroup is the big boy of Wall Street. With operations and customers in 134 countries around the world, Citi is one of the key powerbrokers and central planners of the corporate global economy. Because of this, more and more organizations and individuals are joining up to confront Citigroup and the private finance industry. These are exciting times. Over the past year we’ve seen an unprecedented coalition of groups and movements unite to confront corporate power. Students, human rights advocates, environmentalists, trade unionists, anarchists, farmers, people of faith and many more took to the streets to confront the World Trade Organization, the World Bank/IMF and the corporate-controlled political party conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

We’ve all seen the power of the cross-movement alliances built in teargas-filled streets over the last year. If we are interested in continuing this momentum, we must ask ourselves an important question. How do we create common sustained campaigns to fight corporate globalization that meet the needs of all of our different communities and movements while strengthening the coalitions that made Seattle to Prague possible?

Unfortunately for Citigroup, they answer this question for us. The private financial system has a destructive impact on every community and ecosystem on the planet, and the perfect example of private finance’s destructive power is Citigroup. A company born itself out of an illegal merger that required $18 million in political pay-off to get the law changed, Citigroup is a true cornerstone of the corporate global economy.

Citi’s global reach is more specifically a global attack on communities and vulnerable ecosystems everywhere. Citigroup is at the heart of the system of global destruction that put the interests of a small group of corporate elites ahead of the well-being of local communities, workers, farmers, the environment and democratic decision-making.

From a partnership with Maxxam Corporation to destroy the California Redwoods, to helping the World Bank and Exxon-Mobil build an oil pipeline through the rainforests of Africa, Citigroup profits from environmental devastation.

From genetically engineering trees for Chilean pulp mills to funding global warming with its ongoing investment in fossil fuels, Citigroup benefits.

From mining the Amazon rainforest to the displacement of millions for China’s massive Three Gorges Dam, Citigroup is underwriting the deal.

From bank branch closings, followed by predatory lending in US inner cities to strangling the global South with crippling debt payments, Citigroup thrives off economic injustice.

From laying off 10,000 workers to bankrolling strikebreaking to creating the investment climate that fosters sweatshop exploitation, Citigroup attacks working people everywhere.

In fact, Citigroup is everywhere we don’t want them to be, including college campuses and communities around the world. Therefore we have a unique opportunity to confront them with powerful and creative action! Of the small cartel of mega-banks and investment houses who run the global economy, none rely as heavily on their consumer presence and brand name as much as Citigroup. This makes them uniquely vulnerable to grassroots pressure, and offers activists around the world an incredible opportunity to focus our collective energies on a single corporate target while campaigning on a variety of issues and mobilizing the diversity and energy needed for truly systemic change.

The time has come to go beyond “think globally- act locally” to “think structurally - act specifically” Because Citi is a global player, involved in every aspect of global finance, this campaign is an opportunity to tangibly confront the system in a way that makes actual gains and educates ourselves and the public about how the global financial system creates and maintains social, economic and environmental injustice. To this end a growing number of organizations and individuals are turning our attention to CITIGROUP.

We need to raise our collective voices and demand that Citigroup stop funding the destruction of communities and the environment around the planet. We have the power to reassert citizen control over Citigroup and set the standards by which the global economy will operate. Dare to imagine a global economy based on social equality and ecological sanity!

This campaign has already attracted attention from students, farmers, environmentalists, organized labor and human rights activists, debt relief organizations, fair trade activists, groups from the global South, community activists, and others. But in order to tackle a Goliath like Citi, we need more committed activists, more visions of a better world, more diverse communities, and stronger coalitions. We must work together to draw the links between one another’s work and Citigroup’s impact on all of our issues and communities.

Let’s start talking to other activists and the public about what Citigroup is doing to our communities.

Find your local Citi subsidiary at:

Websites for Citibank

Salomon Smith Barney

Rainforest Action Network and Citiaction are willing to serve as information clearinghouses and help coordinate a decentralized campaign. We can provide organizing packets with adaptable materials as well as help connect you with other activists in your area.

Check out Rainforest Action Network
Inner City Press - CitiGroup Watch and
CitiAction - People's Campaign Against CitiGroup

We’d like to hear from you with your questions, ideas, strategies, tactics or local research. To learn more, get involved, or endorse this campaign, contact us:

Rainforest Action Network
1-800-989-RAIN/415-398-4404 or
email Patrick: organize@ran.org
Beka: organize@ran.org

Citiaction
(206) 312-8975 or
info@citiaction.org
Vanessa Lee: v_mijo@yahoo.com
Steph Sherer: assherer@cs.com

DON’T BE AFRAID TO THINK BIG OUR TIMES DEMAND IT

Legal Resources

Justice Online
Seattle WTO Report by National Lawyer's Guild
PoliceWatch -- Ella Baker Human Rights Center
FREE Online Legal Resources for Street Protesters
Seattle NLG - WTO Report
We Interrupt This Message
Lesislative Action Center@WorldNetDaily.Com

Media Resources

National Radio Project
Free Radio Santa Cruz
Free Radio Berkeley
San Francisco Liberation Radio
Media Alliance - San Francisco

Committee on Democratic Communications
of the National Lawyers Guild - San Francisco

Civil Rights Forum on communications policy
Media Democracy Now!
NAB Schedule of San Francisco Events
Independent Media
Independent Press
InfoShop News Kiosk

Globalization of the Anarchist Resistance
Prague S26 and the Anti-Capitalist Movement

Philadelphia Independent Media

Support Resources

Food not Bombs
Alternative Tentacles
Coalition on Homelessness - San Francisco
POOR Magazine Online
Kensington Welfare Rights Union (Philadelphia)

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