CCF needs to stop ideating and start mobilizing. We can turn to the De-ICE Citizens Bank Movement to learn how.

By Jenny Brandt, Virgo with rising Virgo, so I’m gonna say the thing

At CCF, we’ve got a big mailing list, we have the infrastructure of Mighty Networks, we are already organized in hyperlocal and state chapters. Let’s mobilize that power to collectively demand that our funders, organizations, and the institutions we are connected to are not participating in old economies that are built upon human suffering and exploitation but rather on investments in thriving people and a thriving planet!

The Community-Centric Fundraising (CCF) founders decided not to create a 501(c)3 organization in favor of creating a CCF movement. (Check out “Building Movements, Not Organizations” by Hildy Gottlieb to learn more about this distinction.) 

While CCFers are making mostly incremental changes at their organizations, I want to push us to be thinking beyond one mission and one organization. We should be looking towards building a movement to counter the conservative movement that is forwarding attacks on reproductive rights, trans people, immigrants, humanitarian aid, DEI projects, and climate change, and the list goes on.  

I think that in the years that I have been involved with CCF—first as a Global Council member and now as the Operations Lead—we have been leading with a governance-first approach: trying to define job positions, programmatic areas, and committees. We haven’t defined the goal that the movement is trying to achieve.

From my interpretation of the principles, I think the place we should be leading is in economic and racial justice reform. I would like us to look at movements that are actively moving the arc towards justice. 

The De-ICE Bank Movement as a practical example

I first want to elevate the De-ICE Citizens Bank Movement, and their recent big win. 

The De-ICE Citizens Bank Movement has managed to, in a mere eight months, get the only major bank still bankrolling the ICE prison operators GEO Group and CoreCivic to exit credit facilities with these institutions. A real change from the $2.3 Billion they had previously financed.

This caught my attention for two reasons: 1. Possibility Labs (PL), our fiscal sponsor—a nonprofit that envisions a just world where Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and systemically oppressed communities have the power of self-determination—shared it with me; and 2. their bank accounts (and therefore our bank account) is housed at Citizens Bank!

The immigration prison-industrial complex is antithetical to PL and CCF’s work. The Supreme Court has ruled that it is legal to allow ICE officers to racially profile and detain people based on the color of their skin. And we were unknowingly complacent in the detainment and mistreatment of immigrants because of who we banked with.

I met with one of the De-ICE Citizens Bank movement leaders to talk about what made their movement successful. Julie Craven, a retired public school principal from Cambridge, MA, member of Cambridge Indivisible Resistance, and volunteer for the Boston Immigrant Justice Accompaniment Network spoke with me.

Julie shared with me how just a few dozen volunteers came together mobilized by the Citizens Bank: Stop financing CoreCivic and The GEO Group MoveOn petition. They began doing stand-outs outside of Citizens Banks in the Northeast. And when others wanted to join, they made it easy for people who had signed the petition to stay engaged, receive regular updates, and learn about additional discrete actions via map listings, emails to corporate leaders, and digital resources. 

The movement grew to include more than 175 groups in 17 states doing coordinated activities to raise awareness. and lead cities like Jersey City and Montclair, NJ, and groups like the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (a coalition of 53 churches, synagogues, and mosques) to pull more than $380 million out of their accounts at Citizens Bank! This coordinated action forced the bank to capitulate, (though the bank chose to frame the divestment in another way in their announcement). 

At CCF, we’ve got a big mailing list, we have the infrastructure of Mighty Networks, we are already organized in hyperlocal and state chapters. Let’s mobilize that power to collectively demand that our funders, organizations, and the institutions we are connected to are not participating in old economies that are built upon human suffering and exploitation but rather on investments in thriving people and a thriving planet!

What you can do for the De-ICE Citizens Bank movement today

I asked Julie what we could do as account holders at Citizens Bank. As account holders, she told me we can ask Citizens Bank to follow through on their commitment and share with us when this financial relationship will be fully wound down, and for assurances that they will not continue to fund this industry in the future, nor via other financing channels. 

We will continue to follow the movement started by De-ICE Citizens Bank to see what is next for them as they are a movement that recognizes that healing and liberation require a commitment to economic justice.

Read more about how they did it in their own words here and join in: Activists Pressure Citizens Bank and Win the Day. 

Check out their website to learn more or to sign up to be in their action network or get updates. Your can also follow their work on Instagram and Facebook.

What other movements are you part of? Do you have similar stories you can share with our 10,000 Content Hub readers? Consider contributing to The CCF Content Hub with other examples we should be learning from.