People Are Awesome: This Church Is Divesting Millions from Bank of America

[kpete]

People Are Awesome: This Church Is Divesting Millions from Bank of America

We told you last week about the Bank Transfer Day movement, the grassroots effort to get Americans to leave their major banks for smaller institutions—regional banks, credit unions, etc.—by November 5. The goal is to punish the big banks for predatory lending—a hallmark complaint at the beginning of the financial crisis—and their recent adoption of loads of absurd fees—a hallmark complaint of people on Occupy Wall Street.

So far, there's no real way to measure if Bank Transfer Day is having a pronounced impact on companies like Bank of America, which infuriated customers this month by instituting a $60 annual fee for using debit cards. But if the above video is any indication, the divestment movement isn't a flop just yet, and it might turn out to be a rousing success.

The video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RnLnRo_TQds#! shows Eduardo Samaniego, pastor of Most Holy Trinity Church in San Jose, California, announcing that his parish and the parish school will be leaving Bank of America and putting their $3 million into a local credit union. The decision, Samaniego tells the small crowd assembled, was made "in order to say, 'No more,' to Bank of America to use our money in investing in bad loans and not negotiating fairly."

Regardless of your religious beliefs, if you're standing in opposition to the financial industry, this looks like your kind of church.

http://www.good.is/post/people-are-awesome-this-church-is-divesting-millions-from-bank-of-america-to-say-no-more/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+good%2Flbvp+%28GOOD+Main+RSS+Feed%29

[roguevalley]

1. they are. :-D I remember nuns buying stocks in companies so

they could go to stockholder meetings and raise hell