From Berlin to Fremont: Victories Against Deutsche Wohnen & Tesla 10/13/2021

 

October 13, 2021 From Berlin to Fremont: Victories against Deutsche Wohnen and Tesla Welcome to our first newsletter celebrating victories from corporate campaigns around the world! Berliners sent a powerful message to corporate landlords like Adler, Deutsche Wohnen, Heimstaden, the Pears Group and Vonovia in late September when over one million city residents voted to seize some 240,000 housing units from mega landlords and turn them into city-owned affordable housing. "The whole city said: 'We don’t want speculators to have a say in our housing.' And that’s a decision that political leaders simply can’t ignore," Kalle Kunkel, an activist with the Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen campaign, told Euronews. Although the vote was not legally binding, the opinion of 56.4% of those who went to the polls, sends a powerful message to the new city government — which has already (unfortunately) indicated that it will not implement the measure. "While some may bristle at the nature (and perhaps radicalism) of the socialisation campaign in Berlin, it has also shown us the power of tenant activism and community organising," Alexander Vasudevan, an associate professor in human geography at the University of Oxford, wrote in the Guardian newspaper. "What is needed are creative, large-scale solutions that tackle housing insecurity and empower residents to challenge their increasing marginalisation and vulnerability." CorpWatch salutes the vote as one small step towards tackling one of the most pressing issues of our time. The city of Berlin already owns and manages 325,000 apartments and it could do more. Many cities in the United States are doing the same from Dallas, Texas, and Missoula, Montana, to Gary, Indiana, where hundreds of apartments have been bought in recent months by municipal authorities to keep them affordable. Such steps are a welcome change to the days of Margaret Thatcher who pioneered a devastating privatization of 1.8 million council-built homes in the UK, that paved the way for London's housing crisis today. In other good news, auto-maker Tesla has been ordered to pay $137 million in damages to Owen Diaz, a Black elevator operator at the company plant in Fremont, California, who accused the company of ignoring his charges of discrimination and racial abuse. The decision has given ammunition to activist shareholders. "After this week’s headlines and many other employee allegations of racial discrimination, we, as investors, need a look under the hood," Kristin Hull, CEO of Nia Impact Capital told the company annual meeting. "Bias, discrimination and harassment in the workplace create unknown and uncompensated risks for investors, inviting unnecessary legal, brand, financial and human capital issues to a company." Thanks for helping hold corporations accountable!   The CorpWatch Team Pratap in Tokyo, Tyler in Santa Barbara, Victoria in London, Elena in Calgary, and Elisa in Andalusia New Stories From the CorpWatch newsdesk, here are our two latest stories: Indigenous South Africans Protest Planned Amazon Headquarters in Cape Town, Pandora Papers Leak Reveals 14 Major Offshore Advisors to the Rich & Powerful. Browse all articles Gulliver This week on Gulliver - our brand new database of global corporate wrongdoing - we'd like to feature two of our latest profiles: Facebook and Amazon, two companies that are always in the news. Social media company Facebook is in the dock after yet another brave insider and whistleblower — Frances Haugen — spoke out against how the company harms children and destabilizes democracies.  And Amazon, a retail behemoth whose real business is data — Big Data. It is infamous for its use of low paid warehouse workers and delivery drivers who are tasked with delivering a wide variety of products to online shoppers. Go to Gulliver Video chats with activists Next up in our regular series of video interviews with activists and organizations: Mid October 2021 Anne Schröeter of the European Center for Constitutional Rights (ECCHR) will be talking to us about a new project mapping the European arms companies that are exporting weapons used in the bombing of Yemen, creating the world's worst man-made humanitarian crisis.   Late October 2021 We've been invited to speak with Steven Donzinger, a New York lawyer who successfully took on Chevron's deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of cancer-causing waste into the Ecuadorean Amazon. He was recently sentenced to 6 months in jail by a U.S. judge in a decision condemned by UN. The interviews will be live-streamed on our Facebook, YouTube and Instagram channels so please keep an eye on those sites for broadcast times! We will also archive them on our website, in case you can't join us in person.   Keep your eyes peeled for the date announcements! Spotlight Our most recent video interview was with Stanka Becheva of Friends of the Earth Europe who talked about the Meat Atlas 2021, a new report on the methods and impacts of Big Meat. Read more on our website and watch the full interview on YouTube.   Watch the full interview here. Last, but not least, here is our latest infographic  - based on our article on Amazon's plans for a new headquarters in South Africa. Design by Elisa Emch. More infographics on Instagram

[CorpWatch] CorpWatch is migrating to a new list-serv.

 From Sept 27, 2021 

CorpWatch will migrate to a new list-serv in the next few days.

Meanwhile here are some recent stories on our website that you might want to check out:

Denka Challenged Over Louisiana Factory Associated with Highest Rate of Cancer in the U.S.

By Pratap Chatterjee, June 16, 2021

Denka, the owners of the factory believed to be the major cause of cancer in a Louisiana neighborhood with the highest cancer rates in the United States, has been challenged over its failed efforts to weaken environmental standards and its claim that the factory has reduced toxic airborne emissions.

See http://www.corpwatch.org/article/denka-challenged-over-louisiana-factory-associated-highest-rate-cancer-us

BAT Knowingly Oversupplying Mali with Cigarettes, Fueling Bloody Conflict

By Paula Reisdorf, May 13, 2021

A cigarette factory with the capacity to produce three billion Dunhill cigarettes per year is expected to open up in Mali this year, the product of a partnership between British American Tobacco (BAT) and the Malian government, that the company claims will create as many as 200 permanent jobs.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article/bat-knowingly-oversupplying-mali-cigarettes-fueling-bloody-conflict

Investors Shun Deliveroo in Wake of Mounting Protests and Lawsuits Over Working Conditions

By Victoria Westphalen, April 29, 2021

http://www.corpwatch.org/article/investors-shun-deliveroo-wake-mounting-protests-and-lawsuits-over-working-conditions

Best wishes

From Silicon Valley to Sámi lands in Norway, victories against Facebook and for reindeer herders!

November 17, 2021 From Silicon Valley to Sámi lands in Norway, victories against Facebook and for reindeer herders! Welcome to the latest CorpWatch bulletin! We start with the good news - Facebook has agreed to shut down its decade-old facial recognition system following years of complaints because of how the data can be misused by private corporations, governments, and law enforcement. The company says it will delete face scan data of over 1 billion users. Back in April 2015, Carlo Licata sued Facebook for misusing his data under Illinois state privacy laws. The case was eventually awarded class action status in California - and 1.6 million people signed a claim against the company, almost a quarter of the eligible users in Illinois. Faced with these overwhelming numbers, Facebook agreed to pay $650 million to those affected. “Corporate use of face surveillance is very dangerous to people’s privacy,” Adam Schwartz, a senior lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization, told the New York Times. But perhaps more importantly - for Facebook - was the real possibility that it could be sued in other states for more money. On November 2nd, Facebook announced it was shutting down the system for good. In other positive news, the Norwegian supreme court has stripped Storheia and Roan windfarms of their operating licenses over harm to Sámi reindeer herders. The two farms are owned by BKW, Energy Infrastructure Partners, Stadtwerke Muenchen, Statkraft and TroenderEnergi. The 288 megawatt Storheia wind farm and the 255 megawatt Roan wind farm on the Fosen peninsula of western Norway began operations in 2010. Today the two farms operate 151 wind turbines which have impacted the reindeer herds that the indigenous Sami people graze on Fosen's pastures. “Reindeer are very shy, and a bit wild, too,” Leif Arne Jåma, a Sámi herder, told Earth Island Journal. “The animals steer clear of the turbines because they are disturbed by their view and noise. On top of that, in the coldest months large chunks of icy snow can be thrown into the distance as the blades turn. It is dangerous for humans and animals alike.” The case went before local courts and even the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, before landing at the Norwegian supreme court. "In this case, there was no question of a collision between environmental considerations and the reindeer owners' right to cultural practice," the judges ruled. These two inspiring victories, years in the making, were the result of determined challenges by impacted communities who refused to accept the status quo. Stay tuned for more stories of people helping hold corporations accountable!  The CorpWatch Team Pratap in Tokyo, Tyler in Santa Barbara, Elena in Calgary, and Elisa in Andalusia