Move Your Money Campaign

[Shirley Jacobson]

I am copying Katie's comment here first so that all comments related to this discussion will be together.

[Katie]

I attended the Business Bank meeting last evening in their office at 2417 Meridian (next to Cascadia pizza). In discussion after the presentation by Michael Cann, the CFO Rob Woods told me that Cann would be willing to come and talk with our TW finance group and to speak at a public panel on local banking, should we put one on.

[Katie]

Follow up email from CFO Rob Woods. He confirms that Mike Cann will be glad to speak to us at one of our meetings, and/or at a panel presentation we put on:

Subject: Business Bank
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2010 10:31:07 -0700
From: "Rob Woods"
To:

Katie, it was a pleasure to meet you last night. Just wanted to follow up with when we are having other meeting in case you know anyone else that might be interested.

We don't have one scheduled up in Bellingham right now, but will let you know when we do. Our next meeting is this Thursday at 5:00pm at our Burlington branch. Then on next Tuesday at noon and Thursday at 5:00 again.

Mike said that he would love to come speak at any meeting that your group is having, so just let me know when you think would work.

Thank you again for your support.

Sincerely,

Rob Woods, EVP
Chief Financial Officer
Business Bank
1854 S. Burlington Blvd.
Burlington, WA 98233
[phone]

[Shirley Jacobson]

I would be in favor of his coming to our meeting on Nov 7th. We would need to decide how we want to direct the discussion.

[Caitlin Quigley]

I've been looking into authors/speakers who might be a centerpiece to launching our Move Your Money campaign. Has anyone seen David Korten speak? He seems like a really obvious choice. He just came out with a second edition of his book Agenda for a New Economy. He's a frequent contributor/kinda founder of Yes! magazine. I think he lives on Bainbridge Island, where the magazine is also based. Does anyone know more about him?

[Shirley Jacobson]

I like the idea of someone, somewhat local. David comes quite often to Bellingham. His writing is right on target with our goals too.

[Shirley Jacobson]

This is the reply I received from Nan Macy at Village Books re potential David Korten visit. ------

Hi Shirley,
Thanks for your message. I received a query re: the TW personal finance group and campaign from David Marshak (copied here) as well. At this time, David Korten is not on our schedule, but if this changes we'd welcome TW's involvement. Thanks for the suggestion. We'll see what we can do.

Best,
Nan

[David MacLeod]

I was part of the Sustainable Bellingham Vision Team that brought David Korten to Bellingham in 2006. We had an evening presentation, followed the next day with a planning session with Korten and a variety of change agents. One of the last things I remembered him saying was "I am absolutely interested in following what happens in Bellingham."

So I think its doable to bring him back to Bellingham, but it would require some people willing to plan a big event, and do some fundraising and ticket sales to make it happen. Last time we did the planning and arrangements, and then invited Village Books to come on board as co-sponsor.

In the meantime, check out his recent interview on Peak Moment TV, "Taking Back Our Lives from the Wall St. Mafia."
“Get rid of Wall Street!” says David C. Korten, author of Agenda for a New Economy and The Great Turning. Wall Street is about phantom wealth — real wealth is about happy, healthy families, local living economies in balance with Earth’s resources, and caring, resilient communities that provide life’s basics, like food, shelter, and education. To do that, we must change the rules to reduce the power of corporations, the politicians in their pocket, and a destructive money system. (www.davidkorten.org).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BQeIDOX1lY

[Shirley Jacobson]

LOCAL BANKING NEWS

This article ran in the Herald Oct 15th and 17th
Good news is that Peoples Bank rates #1 in deposits but otherwise Wall Street Banks outrank most local community banks. Read the whole report at this link.
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2010/10/17/1671068/bank-failures-sh...

Bank failures shift 2010 Whatcom County bank market share leaders

MOVE YOUR MONEY CAMPAIGN SUGGESTED SPEAKERS

RESPONSE FROM JARED GARDNER WHO HELPED US WITH OUR FLYER. HE IS WITH REAL WEALTH PORTLAND AND ACTIVELY INVOLVED WITH PLANNING A SIMILAR CAMPAIGN THERE. HE OFFERS SOME ADDITIONAL POTENTIAL SPEAKERS
I cant attend the Portland lecture this thursday, but David and I will be connecting this weekend on Whidbey island for the beaming bioneers conference as we both have workshops Saturday (he is also the keynote Friday night). David has been a big supporter of our bank work, he’d probably love to be a speaker at such an event. It’s up his ally with his recent focus on the financial system (ie “Agenda for a New Economy”) and the fact that he has been promoting new metrics for a long long time now. In fact, we brought him down for an event 18 months ago when we launched our move your money campaign. We did a public lecture and a small business workshop with business leaders. It was a valuable time. If you don’t have a direct connection with him I can put you in touch.
 
In terms of other speakers related to a media splash event…David is a decently well known person so he can draw new people to your campaign and likely could attract some media attention. There are likely other speakers that could generate more of an audience but they might tend to have less contribution to the issue, and of course there are a number of people who would be excellent speakers/educators, but who would not draw a crowd or media so you’d have to do all the heavy lifting for generating momentum. How much money do you have?? If I were to imagine an event that would be fun and likely generate energy, albeit edgy, I would love to bring someone like Naomi Klein, or Arianna Huffington. Noami Klien is one of my heroes and with a little bit of framing could connect the dots to your work. We brought her to Portland a few years ago and it was an amazing event. Arianna obviously caught the move your money bug and dedicated serious resources to the movement. She has a new book out and is doing book tours, though I don’t know if that will still be true in the spring. Its always win-win if you can get someone to include you on a tour as it keeps the cost down for you and has multiple media angles to pursue. Even though I’m on their radar as the local MYM contact I was unable to get to a real live decision maker to try and get her to town for a book event so we gave up, maybe you’d have more luck?
 
I think it would be fabulous if you all did something early spring that connected the MYM campaign to the state bank campaign, generated momentum for localizing your economy by bringing community banks and credit unions together with small business advocates, and brought lawmakers (if possible while they are in session), and had a celebrity of sorts to speak. The state bank campaign is the next logical step for the MYM energy, and while you may not be ready to dive into a state bank campaign, you could generate media attention for the MYM message by highlighting this topic in the overall message. I can put you in touch with WA groups and national groups supporting the WA proposal for a state bank. We can also discuss strategies for connecting with the small business advocates covering your area, and get them to bring various voices to the table to help with getting attention.

[Laura J Sellens]

What would the goal be of bringing Mr. Cann from Business Bank to our meeting? If he had a short presentation (20 minutes or less) I'd say we could probably make time, but if it's a longer discussion, we'd probably want to set up something outside our normal meeting, so we can continue working on our projects.

for the MYM speaker, I'd prefer someone who is specifically into local banking--like this "David" fellow or Arianna Huffington mentioned in the Real Wealth Portland email post below (but I haven't looked into them, they just sound like they're more on target). I wouldn't oppose David Korten though.

[Shirley Jacobson]

I have added the Move Your Money flyer file here so that you can print copies as needed.

[Shirley Jacobson]

I want to propose at our planning meeting Sunday introducing our campaign on the Joe Show (AM930 from noon to 1 pm weekdays) with a speaker from our campaign, and invite Jared Gardner who has been active with the Portland MYM campaign to share the mic. He is the one who originally designed the flyer that we modified and adopted. And he has been a public spokesman for their campaign. I've told him about this proposal (to find out if he would be agreeble if asked) and he responded enthusiastically. They have combined their MYM and Oregonians for a State Bank campaigns. My thought is that his input on the Portland experience would help the public understand  the goals of our campaign better. More info on Portland available from these links.

http://.www.OregoniansForaStateBank.org

http://www.realwealthpdx.org/local_banking/index.html

http://www.sbnportland.org/resources

http://www.newrules.org/banking/news/resources-starting-local-banki...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc-CMQiQmL8

 

 

[Laura J Sellens]

I have 2 ideas that may be good campaign activities:

 

1)  Chris Wolf has offered to give a presentation on her experience/adventure in frugal living and voluntary simplicity.

 

2)  This new Transition related film is out, "the Economics of Happiness" and from the trailer it looks like a full-length film about localization and how that can improve one's standard of living.  There is a premier of the movie in Seattle this Tuesday the 11th, would anyone want to go?  But the idea is that we could incorporate it into our shindig.  Here's a link  http://www.youtube.com/user/ISECeconofhappiness