We’re asking some incredible organizations across the corporate accountability movement to tell you about their campaigns targeting corporations on this year’s Corporate Hall of Shame ballot. The message below is from Maurice BP-Weeks, the Co-Executive Director at The Action Center for Race and the Economy (ACRE).
One of the worst corporate actors of the year is JPMorgan Chase. While 2020 was undoubtedly a difficult year for everyone, especially communities of color and the poor who were disproportionately affected by COVID-19, Chase CEO Jamie Dimon profited enormously. Through predatory lending, wealth extraction, and financing fossil fuel companies, Dimon has ruthlessly continued to line his pockets at the expense of working-class families and the environment.
That’s why I’m asking you to vote for JPMorgan Chase in this year’s Corporate Hall of Shame.
In Chicago this year, Mayor Lori Lightfoot plans to use $1 billion of the city’s federal stimulus to pay off loans — including $465 million to Wall Street giant JPMorgan Chase. That’s more than half of Chicago’s relief money! Congress passed the federal relief funding and it should go to communities, not to America’s largest bank, with $3.3 trillion in assets.
Chase could waive the interest on this loan that would free up $465 million of relief funding to go towards recovery for residents. The interest on the loan is $9 million a year. Our communities should not have to miss out on $465 million in relief money so that America’s largest bank can make more profits.
In addition to Chase’s failure to commit to waiving interest on municipal debt deals and the stifling of shareholder attempts to conduct a racial equity audit of the bank’s business practices, Dimon has no issue with squeezing profits out of the dire climate crisis. JPMorgan Chase has been the top financier of fossil fuel companies since the Paris Climate Agreement.
Chase has continued to finance fossil fuel corporations that harm Black, Indigenous, and communities of color such as Marathon and Enbridge, the corporations behind the Line 3 pipeline. They’ve perpetuated Big Oil’s greenwashed climate goals to reduce “carbon intensity” of their portfolios and are backing deforestation and other land-use changes that further contribute to emissions and the violation of Indigenous rights.
