The New Bottom Line, one of the organizations leading the “move your money” movement and the national “Bank Transfer Day” on Saturday, announced today that nearly $50 million had been removed from Bank of America and other Wall Street banks.
With that as a start, the movement has set a new goal: $1 billion withdrawn from Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and other big banks.
The movement to shift banking dollars out of the Wall Street institutions that have played leading roles in the financial crisis and have obstructed Wall Street reform efforts has gotten an assist from some big names, according to Tracy Van Slyke, New Bottom Line executive director. They include Silicon Valley businessman and philanthropist Mike Fox Sr., who divested more than $8 million from Bank of America, including both his personal and family-owned company bank accounts. Also joining the effort were such organizations as Virginia Organizing, San Jose PACT, Washington CAN, SEIU local 775, Oregon Action, Montana Organizing Project and clergy associated with LA Voice.
To get to $1 billion in withdrawals, New Bottom Line is enlisting churches, local governments and other organizations to get involved in the effort, and is offering a tool kit individuals can use to move their dollars.
A parallel effort, meanwhile, has been organized to turn the single Bank Transfer Day into “Move Your Money Mondays.”
“The idea is to make Monday the day of the week — every week from now on — for anyone who wants to close their bank account as a matter of principle,” writes Eric Stetson at DailyKos. “Just like the Occupy Wall Street movement is based on the idea of continuous, unending action until our nation’s socioeconomic system is radically changed, the Move Your Money movement needs to adopt a similar strategy of remaining visible and relentless until the “big four” banks — Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo — are shrunken down to a size that will no longer be an oligarchic threat to the economy and our democracy.”
The Credit Union National Association is offering anecdotal reports of some credit unions seeing as much as 10 times their normal new account openings on Bank Transfer Day and through the month of October.
