Women’s March 2018 Proposal: #BreaktheBanks Rolling Bank Strike3 min read

by | Dec 11, 2017 | Blog

The United States is in a radically terrible place right now. Avowed white supremacists and rapists are openly working in government. The free press, the independence of the judiciary, and the rights of religious and ethnic minorities are all under open attack by the White House and Congress. All people outside of the 1% are suffering attacks on our economic livelihoods.

A radically terrible government calls for a radical response. That’s why I’m proposing a coordinated, rolling bank strike to coincide with the 2018 Women’s March. Women (and our male supporters, and non-binary folks) control the majority of the purchasing power in this country and we are sick of the pussy grabbing and rampant white supremacy. It’s time to act boldly.

The big idea

Every 21st day of the month, members of the resistance will pull their money out of corporate banks and put it into credit unions, then publicly challenge three friends to do the same. This would mean that every month, the corporate financial system experiences a predictable (and hopefully escalating) shock as funds are withdrawn. This gets the attention of wealthy power brokers and changes their calculus about where their best interests lie. We would launch the effort on January 21, 2018 to co-incide with the one year anniversary of the Women’s March.

The goal

The strike continues to escalate until all of the demands are met. The demands fall into three categories. Here are some ideas to get us started.
  1.  Protect human rights:
    • Congress opens a sex crimes investigation of Trump and any other lawmakers accused of harassment or assault.
    • A Clean DREAM Act is passed and signed into law.
    • The ICE deportation force stands down.
    • The Muslim ban is rescinded.
    • White extremist groups go back on the terror monitoring list.
    • DOJ reverses course on its support of police militarization and continues Obama-era work to curtail unnecessary use of force.
    • The tax scam is killed.
    • An emergency fund for opioid abuse treatment is made available to the states with the highest rates of opioid addiction.
  3. Protect global stability:
    • Congress revokes Presidential authority to order a nuclear first strike without Congressional approval.
    • The US State Department is staffed and made operational to Obama-era standards.
  5. Protect democracy:
    • No further judicial appointments are approved until Mueller’s Russia investigation concludes.
    • Congress passes a law that would automatically re-instate Mueller in the event that Trump fires him.
    • Each member of Congress publicly commits to call for the impeachment and removal of anyone in the Presidential line of succession indicted for criminal conspiracy with Russia, up to and including Trump himself.
    • Reinstate the Voting Rights Act in its entirety.
    • All states go to voter-verified paper ballots.

Potential obstacles:

  • Switching banks is a pain. We’d need to provide a portal that would make it easy for participants to scan their bank statements for recurring payments and auto-deposits that need to be switched over. That technology exists in the form of Mint.com already and could probably be licensed from Intuit. If they won’t license it to us, we’d need to reinvent the wheel somewhat, but I know some of the people who built the initial code and they could probably do it again.
  •  We’d also need to help people find the right community bank or credit union. There are public databases that we could work with on that front.
  • Obviously, the powers that be aren’t going to like this very much. Too bad for them.

So, what do you think?

Please let me know if you’re into it and consider tweeting and sharing this under the hashtag #BreakTheBanks.

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