This month, a protest against one of the wealthiest companies in the world took place in one of America’s affluent suburbs. Approximately 150 people gathered in front of the San Marino home of Tim Sloan, the CEO of Wells Fargo, to perform a “citizens’ arrest”. The protesters spoke against the company’s support for the Dakota Access Pipeline and its discriminatory actions towards its consumers and employees.

Activists held signs and carried a 50 foot black, plastic balloon that was meant to resemble the Dakota Access Pipeline. Chants such as “Pipelines leak” and “Water is life” could be heard from the protesters. The pipeline, if built, would threaten the water supply and sacred sites of Native Americans and would contribute to global warming. Wells Fargo is one of the largest funders of the controversial pipeline. Hector Peres-Pacheco, an environmentalist and Native American with Harmony Keepers spoke about his stance on it. “As indigenous people, we feel and obligation to protect the sacred land. But as a human being, we feel an obligation to make sure the land is . . . there for the next generation,” he said.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe attracted public attention when it protested against the pipeline that would be built less than a mile from its reservation. The tribe and its supporters were able to enjoy a victory when the Army Corps of Engineers stated that it would find an alternative route for the pipeline. This progress was undone when President Donald Trump signed executive orders in January to revive the Dakota Access Pipeline as well as the Keystone XL oil pipelines, things former President Barack Obama rejected, as his first acts as president.

This protest that took place just miles away from Arcadia was a part of the growing movement against President Trump’s right-wing policy agenda. The scope of the movement could be seen in the recent Women’s March in L.A. in which more than 40 million people participated. According to the Washington Post, President Trump owned up to $1 million worth of shares in the Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the company behind the controversial Dakota Access project in 2015. ETP CEO Kelcy Warren gave $100,000 to a committee that supported President Trump during the election. Last year, President Trump had about $100,000 invested in another company that owned part of the line. Concerns over his business conflicts-of-interests have risen.

Peter Kuhns, an organizer with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, stated that the protest was meant to push Wells Fargo to lose its “lingering sales goal culture and improve protections for consumers and working conditions . . . for workers.” Wells Fargo is known for its discrimination against low-income communities and people of color. Mona Bly, a former employee of Wells Fargo, stated that she “witnessed the targeting of the most vulnerable in our community by bank managers as a strategy to sell more products.” The bank also has a history of unjust foreclosures and high-risk predatory loans. Ruby Smith is one of the victims of the company’s foreclosures. Smith claimed that the signatures of her and her husband were forged on documents that would take her home away from her. She stated that “for the past ten years, [she has] been fighting . . . to keep [her] home.” Furthermore, Wells Fargo’s flaws caught the public’s attention in a recent scandal when it was revealed that low-level employees were made to create over 2 million unauthorized checking and credit-card accounts to increase the company’s stock price. When this was revealed, the company fired thousands of low-level employees rather than the top managers.

This is not the first instance where protesters took to voicing their concerns in front of the Wells Fargo CEO’s suburban home. Similar protests were seen each year from 2011 to 2013. The past protests were done by people who wished to prevent the unfair foreclosure of their homes and demanded that Wells Fargo no longer discriminated against people from vulnerable communities.

During a protest in San Marino in 2013, Peter Dreier, a political science professor at Occidental College and an author, spoke of the necessity of voicing concerns. He explained that it “is how you get government to respond and bankers to do the right thing: by holding them up to public scrutiny and embarrassment.” Protests continue across the nation over injustice. As students of AHS, we may feel that we do not need to be concerned about this, but this issue is in fact closer than we think.