Across the country late last week, hundreds of union members, religious leaders, community activists, farm workers and victims of bank home foreclosures protested at 200 JPMorgan Chase branches to demand the bank respect the basic human rights of people to have decent places to live and work.

Large banks such as Chase are flush with cash and protestors demanded the bank declare a one-year moratorium on home foreclosures. The Wall Street Journal reports that Chase has $19.5 billion worth of home loans in foreclosure—nearly 7.5 percent of its mortgage portfolio and more than any other big bank.

“Foreclosures are a plague on families and communities,” said the Rev. Charles Williams, a leader in Detroit’s anti-foreclosure coalition, People Before Banks.

 It cannot be in any bank’s best interest to pursue a policy that leaves so many people and communities in ruins—and for a bank like Chase that professes to be a good citizen, tearing families and communities apart is morally indefensible.

The protestors also called on Chase to use its influence as the lead banker for Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) to promote talks that could lead to improved conditions in America’s tobacco fields and farm labor camps. 

Even though neither Chase nor RAI directly employs tobacco field workers, both corporations are in a position to make changes in the industry that could abate the abusive conditions under which these workers work and live. The protesters are asking Chase to use its influence help convince RAI to meet with worker advocates and to work together to correct the abuses in the tobacco field and camps.

Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts said:

I’ve seen with my own eyes the dangerous and inhumane conditions imposed on the workers who tend and harvest the tobacco crop. Both these giant corporations profit from the labor of these exploited workers and have it in their power to play a decisive role in ending the abuses.

“Chase is not the good corporate citizen it claims to be, and we’re asking the public to join us in urging the bank to commit to ending human rights abuses in America’s tobacco fields,” said Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), one of the organizations spearheading the nationwide actions.

Click here for more information on the  Chase campaign.