November 5th is upon us — the day we are urged to move our money from corporate banks like Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citibank into small community banks and credit unions. There are some great articles out there explaining the hows and whys of moving your money. This one by AlterNet's Lynn Parramore is great, as is this piece by Mother Jones' Josh Harkinson. Read those in their entirety if you can.
Really, you only need a few basic resources to move your money. Here they are, via the Move Your Money Project website:
—A short primer on why you should take your money out of corporate banks.
—A tool to find community banks and credit unions near you and to check your local banks' IRA rating, which tells you how sound an institution is.
—An easy seven-step guide to switching banks.
That's it! That's everything you need to know about moving your money. And it seems that this message is already getting out. Last month, some 650,000 Americans joined a credit union — that's more than the number of people who joined a credit union in all of last year. Will you join their ranks?
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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