Move Your Money Campaign

Too often I feel personally helpless in that I am unable to make a direct and significant contribution to our nation’s future.  As an organization YWC!LI discusses, informs, rallies, demonstrates, GOTVs, . . . We hope our messages get their due attention, but there is no immediate measurable way to understand our impact on any of the issues.
But now there exists a concrete opportunity for many of us to take direct action against the corporate interests—specifically the big banks. Such action does not rely upon our elected officials listening to our voices and serve as go-betweens for voters and corporate interests.  Here’s the plan:
I rarely discuss personal finances. However, I share with you that I have moved my family’s accounts from Citibank (one of the ‘big six’ that have received taxpayer money to save them from their own greed and ineptitude) to a local bank. Responding to the call of the Move Your Money project, I feel today that I have taken real action that will make my voice heard. A local bank is a bank or credit union that operates within your local area and is primarily owned or controlled by people who live within or near your local area.
Should you elect to transfer your accounts to the Madison Bank, for example, (local offices in Merrick and Melville; next month in Massapequa) or any other local bank/credit union, please inform them that you are a member of Yes We Can! Long Island.
I emphasize that I have no personal investment in this bank other than my message to the big banks that their customers are very upset with that industry and are demonstrating our discontent in a manner that impacts them meaningfully. Perhaps there will be an incentive to YWC!LI based upon the number of accounts opened at any particular bank. –Marvin

Move Your Money: Project Urges People to Transfer Money Out of Nation’s Largest Banks Into Local Community Banks

www.democracynow.org, Jan 4

Economist Robert Johnson, columnist Arianna Huffington and filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, among others, have come up with a new proposal that would allow ordinary people in this country to channel their anger over the Wall Street bailout while also helping invigorate community banking. We speak with Rob Johnson about Move Your Money.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/4/move_your_money_project_urges_people

Following is Solari’s list of the 20 Best Banks to flush from our lives in the US. In 2004 alone these 20 banks reaped $89 billion in net income, while in the same year US households ran a deficit of $342 billion. Think what could happen if we turned the tables? The total net income of these twenty banks in 2004 was (drum roll please) . . . $89 billion.

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