 Yeah, so I grew up with a real strong ethic of conformity Comfort me making sure for the comfort of all the people around you and people pleasing And I got really good at that and I I also grew up with one of my parents really singularly focused on on making money and being in business and There was no really literally no access to that person as a small child Except I began to notice at a young age if I was talking about like a little business ideas or money And so I gained access to that parent by getting masterful around ideas of money and Started starting small businesses at the age of seven and doing spreadsheet analysis is by the age of nine on the computer And I didn't understand that that's what was happening until about 20 years later after living the first half of my life as a business woman and That combines really well with people pleasing and making others comfortable and getting approval because a business owner is the thing everybody wants to be Oh, you're a business owner. I remember early on in my shop people came in and they'd say oh my gosh Your dream came true. Look you're a business owner. You have a chocolate factor You have a chocolate shop your dream came true and I would feel terrible inside. I Didn't really know why but it made me mad like you don't know my dreams That's what came up for me When people would say that but everybody thinks that it's your dream to be a business owner That has power you dominate others you are dominant and in the patriarchy. That's what's good So that was that's a really big aspect of my relationship to money I'm a creative person. I'm a writer writing is my gift and thinking critically about the edge the future edge of where humanity is going and Thinking through the words and surfacing through spirit what we have to say to each other about that. So I'm Moving into the second half of my life as a writer and healing and also at the same time really grateful For my relationship to money and business. However, it was formed and then the second half of my My My journey with money and the the pivotal story around that is In the last three years my family came into very sudden very tremendous wealth I Must feel compelled to give you a content warning because I don't like to avoid using numbers I think we don't use numbers when we talk about money and we should and so I will but when you say a number like this And then you'll look at me different. You think oh, she's impervious to pain and troubles Which isn't true, but my parents sold a business for a hundred million dollars right in the middle of the pandemic They had started three years before it was a it was a fluke It wasn't like this was something that we lived in a high net wealth business as a family all our life It was very sudden and as that was approaching for about about eight months before that happened I knew that I would be privy to some of that money And I got very Out ungrounded in my body and I sought guidance from elders or friends really There aren't many elders For me that model how to relate to the patriarch your move away from relating to it and So I got the advice to see a very powerful body worker an ancestral healer in Montpelier that I did and Recognized that like this lung analogy that money is like oxygen You need enough to come in you need it to go out and you need a healthy flow of it So if I was going to start to become privy to mass massively more amounts of money then I would Need to figure out where it was going to go What that energy flow was going to look like in my body because it's not like I can just have something come It's sit in it all this power all this energy. That's not healthy for me And I don't want to also be that stupid naive girl environmentalist hippie that is stigmatized for a Bleeding heart giving the money away or doing things with it that are nice And that end up harming me So There's there's just so little modeling and I and I went into a deep journey about what does this mean and how? How do I relate to the flow of money? I love Moving money. I love resources and the abundance of resources on the earth and which money is one of and that We can move these things. I don't really love money so I can accumulate it But I love that I can move it and with movement there's change and with change we can rearrange the status quo So how do we move resources is much more interesting to me than how do we accrue them? and so um By the time I that transaction happened the big Transaction when everything just moves and suddenly a bunch of people have a different amount of energy and power inside of them um, I Had come to a fair relationship with my understanding about wanting to make local investments and think about Ways that I can safely without putting myself at harm Support things that are growing in my immediate community that I can understand and as I was doing that I was really excited because my parents are very innovative and I assumed that they were doing the same thing and that they were thinking about How they were going to move their resources and what they were going to create and how they were going to address what wealth inequality with all of this power because they're incredibly creative and It came to just a few days before the transaction and I I said to my My mother or we were just having a conversation and she said oh, yeah We had our stockbroker over last night, and he's just such a nice guy He's such a nice guy. He and his colleague came and we had drinks and guys. It's just such a nice guy And I felt my whole body just just numb just like I didn't know I was overcome with a sense of terror And I didn't understand it that well in the moment But I said well, what are you telling him about your? What you're gonna willing to invest in and she said well He's just really great. He knows what we're supposed to invest in I Said well, he works for you. What do you what are you what are you gonna tell him about well, you know What are your limits? You know and I didn't have the words because I didn't I didn't even know what was coming up for me But I was I had made a bunch of assumptions about How they would be going into this and I was so wrong and it was came down in this one phone call and And I started to get escalated and she started to get defensive because she could feel that I had all this fear in my body and you could feel it over the phone and it was palpable and We commenced the worst fight we'd ever had that only lasted about three minutes and it happened so fast and I can't even believe that the power and the harm and the destruction that happened in that one phone call and There's such things as like I said It started to say well, what about what about weapons, you know manufacturing and prisons and and what about the chemical industry and big egg And what do you mean? I mean he doesn't you can go outside of your investor I mean he you can you can invest in other things besides what Jake tells you because Jake says invest He's interested in you, you know keeping your money with him and she's going, you know, I Don't have any opinions about this, you know, she's getting really shut down I said mom you're the person that went with me, right in high school didn't we go to the Lakota reservation and we learned about the Sun and the moon and about the cycles of earth and aren't you that person that That cares about people and loves people, you know And I kind of start to attack her humanity and she shuts down completely and that conversation becomes something that's impossible to have and so that's the beginning then of two years of Trying to figure out. Where do I not speak and Not be authentic and not use my voice because I love my family and want to value relationships But it's all also resonating from a book I had just read raising our hands how white women need to stand to the front lines and Take their rightful place in social change And I start to notice that my silence about thinking about how this money is invested is critical to the entire Survival of our family and the identity of our family moving forward and the idea of generational wealth Continuing and that known of your children or their children or their children will ever have to work again is the new mantra and That's the the the central value of the family now for which my questions about what our investment values are is a direct challenge and So making sure that any ideas I have about that are silly our mean our Hateful are causing my you know that I'm causing problems for my family because I want to and I want to be challenging for the sake of it Becomes my identity within my family, which is starting to heal Slowly slowly it takes time. It takes dialogue. It takes patience and a lot of self-esteem and But through it all I really You know, I really began to lament how alone I felt in these concerns my Astounding astoundedness with how money funnels directly to the stock market which funnels directly to war and to prisons and chemicals in the Destruction of the land in a very direct way returning 12% profits during COVID for two years in a row Can't beat 12% and I began to really lament that I didn't have any elders That could teach me about how to heal the earth and myself and It was around that time that I Got the book screw nomics and I and I had that incredible Incredible blessing of me meeting Ricky guard diamond who's become a very important elder for me and Somebody that has the wisdom that I need that I've always needed So the amount of knowledge and facts that she can bring to this conversation about why Why are we filled with fear and anxiety and Disconnect when we think about money and when we experience things with money and the answers That she can bring through the way she has excavated human history recent human history around money is Such a gift to us today and it is my incredible pleasure and honor to introduce Ricky guard diamond Induction how will I ever live up to that? Huh? I'm terrified. No really I am actually thrilled to be here in your company and be talking and hearing you all talk about things that I You know here the echoes of conversations. I've had while looking up at the ceiling in my bedroom late at night, you know, I am Here to convince you of the value of becoming an Amateur economist. That's what I am. I'm an amateur Economist now my husband doesn't like me to use that term because you know it kind of Makes you less serious. No one's going to take you Seriously if you call yourself an amateur, but the root word the root of that word Amma any of you study Latin in school? love it's love and We have a love starved Economy right now that is very much waged as war and you here are all talking about an Economy waged as life as living life, right? And so I will I just am thrilled to be here in your company. There is so much energy and Ray I loved your What loved your story even though, you know, oh my god, what a story But I'm an amateur economist because every mistake in the book I probably made it and the book that I wrote is a Kind of combination memoir Feminist economic tone it has little Definitions I heard someone say they didn't know what a commodity was Don't be ashamed of that. Nobody talks about what an account commodity is. You're expected to know that right? It's all in Schoonomics and I want you to know that the schoonomics books back there were heavy for me to carry here I hope not to carry any of them out of here again This is at half price is ten bucks if you don't have ten bucks take a book anyway I put some extra dollars in the Kleenex box there So I really would like not to take any of those books home Maybe you have friends who might be interested in in it, but we want to Use this money not for me to take home but for Us to come back again, maybe next year and begin to talk about and catch up on What we've what we've learned from our experience what we've learned from our own bodies what we've learned that we can apply to a Therapeutic therapeutic journey to financial freedom. Yeah All right, so I'm going to sit down which will prevent me from falling off the stage here when I turn See what I'm gonna say. All right, so you can all hear me, right? Yeah, okay Speak more into the mic. She says okay, so let me let me start this so that we can see where we're gonna go Okay SWP got it wrong. This is she writes press. They were the publishers of my book and I love them They're a great press, but this is the first Prototype of the cover of the book and they really got it wrong. You can see the title is screw nomics you can see the little asterisk there that Defines what screw nomics is it's a word. I had to coin to name what I saw all around me The idea the economic theory that women should always work for less money And even better for free, right? So, um the book I Wrote has my own story in it, but also the stories of a lot of different women who had different ideas about this the economy and This is the picture not of what I wrote about but of the economy as it is today Do you recognize that hand gripping that those bucks? This is the libertarian free market, right? This is it the way this is success you're looking at and it's every man for himself And you got to try to be the smartest guy in the room, right? That's not what I found when I talked with women about the economy. It looked like this. I used to Cut out paper dolls. I'm that old but I never did it with a dollar before but I think it's a beautiful picture and I said when you put this on the cover You've got to make sure it curves up because they've got to be dancing Right, so that was when I've learned that when women have a say in the economy They they they say different things and a couple of the women in the book are a Woman you probably recognize Emma Goldman who said if I can't dance I won't join your revolution uh-huh and The wonderful illa bot Who is the founder of Siwa anybody here know what Siwa is? No, of course not. It's not in the newspaper, but you should all know about it It's the self-employed women's association of India and illa bot was a union organizer She's the one who said we are poor, but we are so many She thought you know these women need to organize they were out in the streets the poorest of the poor dealing in rags and You know food stuffs from their garden Just the poorest of the poor and she said you've got to organize We're gonna form a union and the unions all said well, you can't you can't have a union You're yourself employed you're entrepreneurs. You're one of the business owners and she said well Let's change the rules and they did become a union and they envision themselves I don't have a picture of it here, but they envision themselves not as a you know the typical Corporate triangle with the titular head way up here and the lowly worker is down at the bottom Greatest numbers of those no they pictured their organization as a growing living Banyan tree with all kinds of leaves and branches and all kinds of roots It's a wonderful idea to envision your company as a living thing So Two women that were important to me Now we're gonna talk about what is seldom talked about in economic circles because it's kind of rude to say it out loud But our economy is the product of a man-to-man Discourse that is about 2400 years old. They've been talking together About the economy for 2400 years When that word Was coined by the Greeks Translated it literally means a household management, which we know a little bit about But we have not been part of that conversation at all The little diagram is a picture of how the story is told in that Discourse, you don't see any women there anywhere and you can see the glorious outcome, right? We've evolved So let's take a look at Another more gendered picture Women's economic big picture. This is gonna take a little while. These are fancy slides, aren't they? I'm so excited about this This is this this is the paleolithic Figurine called Venus of Willendorf. She is 30,000 years old. She was carved with stone tools from a woolly mammoth tusk. Can you believe it? So we were we were around Alright This is the Neolithic period like 12,000 years ago and this is a literally a model of the The goddess series who's atop our state house next door And we'll talk a bit more about why she's holding a sheaf of wheat and why that matters to the economy And this is a figure you recognize right away, right? Who is she? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so now let's talk economics. So what did women do? Well, 30,000 years ago women are credited by Archaeologists with having had the ingenious idea of twisting fibers together to form threads And then weaving them together with these looms they built with sticks and stones Yarns and they invented cloth which you know in the Ice Age probably was kind of important Think about it. All right, so going back 12,000 years. This is a an outdoor oven because when women were out gathering food which They were mostly providing most of the food for most households meat was a specialty They would sometimes drop seeds through the Cloth that bags that you see there that they had made they were carrying their babies they were carrying bunches of Herbs and and plants and bringing it back home. Some of the seeds would drop out and they began to know this When you got these sprouts and then women About 12,000 years ago began to invent what's called agriculture, right? Oh I need to keep it. I'm sorry. Okay Is that better? Oh now it's echo echoing How's that? Oh? Yeah, okay. All right, so the seeds dropped in the on the ground they archaeologists credit women with having invented agriculture and Then they had to have because they had surplus food for the first time They had to have containers to store it and they began to bake clay and make pottery Which is also women's realm right pretty good invention and then Because they had stored grain they began to do things like bake bread Can you imagine if you were out? you know digging up roots and that sort of thing how good bread would smell when it was baking that was our doing and then ah This is a Is a what do you call this? Yes, a circular saw. Thank you very much. This was actually invented 250 years ago No, I take that back. I don't know when she invented this but What I wanted to say about the Statue of Liberty was that she marks the period when the our forefathers in 1776 declared our liberty from the King George remember and At the time they happened to be the richest men in the colonies and they happened to be killing natives and bringing over slaves and also marrying women who under the common law of that day Any property that she had any rights that she had were subsumed into his identity So Tabitha Babbit was a shaker woman who invented this circular saw by Attaching it to her spinning wheel Yeah, now by that time the spinning wheel was old hat You see because the industrial revolution which was fueled by coal and oil had made it possible for men to Take over the textile industry which had been women's realm and Make a lot of money at that making it a commodity and also By then they were cooking food in tin cans and making a lot of money too and they began to transform women producers of really ingenious items And and renamed us as something they still call us which is consumers. It's not a very flattering term We are producers We're not consumers consumers is Like we have fires in California that are consuming. Those are what we need to think about, right? What the takeaway from this is is that women were the very first property back in the day if you needed a bigger population or you needed You know The Romans did it. They they invaded the Sabines. They raped the Sabines as a famous story. There's all kinds of literature and and Statuary that depict that you stole the women and then she belonged to you and so the The first property was our reproductive powers and our labor controlled by force law Religion and customs as wives concubines don't forget them and slaves The past 5,000 years the foundation of every so-called civilization and its wealth Rape and control of women's bodies is still being weaponized today. We know that from the dobs Decision the latest proof of that and misogyny is still used to control and devalue all things and all genders Supposedly Female and therefore soft. So let's talk about more recent history Because the shadow of Survival being controlled by men Survival of you whether you were a slave a concubine or a wife is thrown a long shadow So this is a picture of The famous world famous control toe singer Marion Anderson in 1939 She's giving a famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial and she's outdoors because she's been denied a concert at Constitutional Hall Her race was the reason The halls owners were the daughters of the American Revolution Not the daughters of the Confederacy mind you but the Mayflower daughters and Despite the 13th 14th 15th and 19th amendment to the Constitution by then So now we're citizens no longer property But women's hard-won rights remain very intersectional and here's why I say that Our rights were won by sections first women black and white one Education that had been denied them until very recently You can see how recent that is and property rights were won in now. What was it 1858? I can't spare enough a way. I can't read it in my right 48 okay, and those rights were mostly won by women because White women rather because most black women remain property until 1865 oh Look at that. Okay. That way I can look at you. That's good. Thank you Okay, so now let's look at even more recent history. This is from my lifetime I know you've seen this in postcard collections and it's funny, right? But this was real stuff when I was growing up. This was actually in the magazines. I was reading. All right so This is an attitude that the Republican parties are a good portion of it seems to have adopted The evangelicals still want it to be arranged this way But I I'm here to say that no a black or Latina or lesbian woman I know would ever put herself in this position, right and The women who started the second wave of the feminist movement didn't either So and yet I want to say that systemic sexism and systemic racism still are dividing and conquering us Oh That looks different huh In 1920 the 19th amendment grants the vote to white women and I say that because Brown and black women didn't really win their right to vote until 1965 with the Voting Rights Act and then in 1973 when women were beginning to see each other as a Group which they've been discouraged from thinking of themselves in that way We began to make some progress. So we got Roe v. Wade in 1973 1990 we got Americans with Disabilities Act in 2015 we got LGBTQ marriage and now We're looking at possibly losing those again. So our unity is more important than ever This is a picture of and this is the latest information we have on average family wealth by race Now wealth is different from your paycheck your income Wealth is the assets that you own the property that you have When you look at those three figures there Can you guess? Which is White families, which is Latina families and which is black families The order I just said it in anybody else want to argue with her about that No, it's actually white Spanish and black So white families actually possess 10 times the amount of wealth that Black families have so you've all played monopoly. You know how that works, right? So it's still dividing us and when we allow that to happen. We're all weakened as a result Why? Because you know that guy in with the tie. He's still with us. He lives on Wall Street This is a cartoon character from screw Nomics. Yes screw Nomics does have cartoons in it and My collaborator Pico Todd and I created this character blaze Bernays who is has a business card that says it's your right to profit no matter who pays and That's because There there remains that money really still is talking in a male voice very much Economics banking and money remains a man's world and if you doubt that you just need to look at the Wall Street trading floor To see what's going on there and it's a fact that even though now women work in banks. We have bank accounts Sometimes we even manage banks and yet the bigger the pile of money The fewer women are going to be allowed in the vicinity and if they are allowed It's because they're doing that any Oakley number anything you can do I can do better, right? It's possible, but is it what we the majority of us want and I want to just give this Disclaimer I mean it may be that you work in this money world or your husband does or your son does or your brother Does that doesn't mean that he is blaze Bernays and this Economan that I'm talking about Rather he is like a mythical Creation that we aspire to that really needs to be challenged and questioned and if anybody is going to do it. I think it'll be women Feminist economics are not just for women it includes all of us Which is why? We changed the horn the pronoun in In our organization what I'm going to talk about next Virginia Wolf back in 1920 or 24 Said that a woman needed two things and you probably have heard about this essay she wrote She said you need an income and you need a room of your own so you can You can think your own thoughts you can find your own voice but we believe after decades of living with Pay disparities that we've been talking about for decades now We believe women also need an economy of our own a whole new set of rules a whole new way of No more business as usual So we put together an organization that you can see in the white at the bottom Right-hand corner. It's an economy of our own dot org And I had met a number of marvelous women who are doing really cool things and these are some pictures of Crystal Arnold who's with has a podcast Wilf which is women's International League for peace and freedom a hundred year old organization founded by Jane Adams Did you know that? There's a committee women money and democracy At Wilf that is working closely with an economy of our own Also, Rianne Eisler is anybody know that name? She wrote the chalice and the blade and she also wrote a wonderful book called the real wealth of nations and She's working with us Carmen is the one in the pink fuzz there Carmen Rios She's our digital director at an economy of our own Mary Beth Gardham down below is The with women money and democracy Jamila Medley is no longer with the Philadelphia area Cooperative Alliance, but Philadelphia is loaded with cooperative businesses and she's now working with black women Cooperatives can as a consultant Here's about it Here's jump about a chair. Yeah, who's with in Oakland at insight Center for Community Economic Development doing great work with Centering women in the economy centering black women in the economy There I am I should have my little pointer here, huh? There I am in my younger days at bear pond books and Pico Todd is with the leopard there. She's the cartoonist I have a column at Ms. Magazine called women on screwing screwnomics because I keep on meeting Exciting women are doing new things. So I had to talk about that Gwen Hall Smith some of you may know she's up there with braids and She's not here in Vermont right anymore, but she's still very interested in these economic issues Didi Perchaus is another Vermonter with the land and leadership initiative and she is Also the author of a great book about the connections between health and the environment And Ellen Brown with the Public Banking Institute. We'll talk about that more in a little bit and And and the bottom there at Praxis Peace Institute was founded by Georgia Kelly who does seminars that go to Mondragon Spain for learning about the world's largest cooperative Corporation in the world operated totally differently and Boss Spain just a few decades ago well, maybe more like 50 or 60 years ago was the poorest region in the nation of Spain and now is a tourist destination because Georgia says one of the things that you'll notice is that there are no Homeless there are no Hubbles and there are no gigantic McMansion neighborhoods either. It's kind of interesting Another way of doing things so our overarching question is How do we transform an economy waged as war into an economy? Oh, I see this translated into PowerPoint a little differently Into an economy waged as life. Okay So we were just going to go to conferences and and talk to people face-to-face and then As happened in your life COVID happened. So we had to re-strategize and think about what we could do So we created a zoom of our own Which we put we we got women to come into a room together and talk about elements of the economy That women generally don't talk about things like Currency, you know, who creates it? What is it really used for? How does it work? We talked about An economic future that could actually afford Childcare and health care and other things that were told we can't afford right We talked about cooperative businesses. We talked about public banking We talked about the way the GDP the gross domestic product makes women invisible Because caring is nowhere visible in an account that only counts money only money counts with the GDP and It's never subtracted. It's only added, you know so Then we also talked about new economic models We were interested in the environment and and what's happening That we all are concerned about and new economic models that are circular oddly enough mimicking natural cycles So all of these are posted on our On our let me go back here on our website under resources. They're all freely available We have a YouTube channel and each of these Videos that by now they're about 10 of them on other subjects. I haven't mentioned but they all have a You know a curriculum. I hate to use that word. I wish you could come up with a better word for Just a book list a movie list ways you can learn about these things that you might not know about and are only going to Learn about if you make that effort and not all of these, you know, the economy is very very complex There are lots of different pieces and not all of them are necessary for you to understand So go with whatever your body is telling. Oh really you can do that then go there and Explore it and become an amateur economist learning about that So then because we wanted to take a little deeper dive into particular subjects We created what we're calling learning circles so far. We've only had one kind of learning circle That's the public banking learning circle where I met Jacqueline and Shonda and We can talk more about What they're what they're doing here in in Vermont, but We thought that public banking how many of you here own a bank anyone? No. Oh, oh well, you know, it's a great business model because Even if you fail even if you make everybody fail as happened in 2008 No worries because the taxpayers are gonna bail you out, right? So it's a great business model if only you Could own a bank Well, public banking is a way that we could Collectively own a bank and set its direction and tell it what we wanted to have our money go to like environmental protections Women's entrepreneurial ideas not business as usual You name it. We could we could do it if we owned our own bank So that's what that learning circle is about now You're probably asking what is a public bank and how is it different from anything else, right? So while details can be complex Shonda and and Jacqueline are learning more about the particular details of how do you how do you make a public bank? It's complicated, but the value of public banking is very easy to understand So this is just a short video From the public banking Institute Ark is a great idea But how will they pay for it? The city needs to borrow money But borrowing money means the city has to pay a lot more money and interest and fees that could double the cost of the park and That money leaves the city it goes to Wall Street investors who really don't care about the park or the city at all This is a bad deal for the city and its residents There's a much better option an option that's been proven around the world a public bank a Public Bank is a bank owned by the residents of the city state region or territory Private Wall Street banks just want to make profits for their shareholders But public banks have a mission to serve the public good They have to reflect the values and needs of the community and that makes all the difference Politicians don't run a public bank Their job is to just set it up by listening to what the people need and want Public banks are run by skilled local bankers who know their neighbors Residents are on the supervising board to keep tabs on what the banks doing Public banks can save communities lots of money. First, they cut out expensive Wall Street fees Which can be hundreds of millions of dollars a year in a big city Second, they can lower interest rates on the city's loans, which means there's more money to spend on other projects Third, their profits go back to the city not to Wall Street. So a public bank can make money for the city All this means the people of the city have a lot more money to fund all the things they need such as bridges, good roads, good schools, renewable energy, affordable housing, lower taxes and The park the people wanted they now control their own money and they can build their own future Join the movement to find out more go to publicbankinginstitute.org So we now have One public bank in the nation and it's a hundred years old. Have any of you heard of it? Do you know anything about where it is? No, it's in a red state the very red state very conservative state North Dakota and for a hundred years they've been using a public bank to support local businesses and farms and Some some infrastructure for things that we might not want to but They've made the decisions about what they're going to finance and they've actually returned money to the The people of North Dakota. They were also the first ones to create student loan programs that forgave loans or reduce loans and I actually heard the Former president of the or he was the former CEO of this bank Speak about a program that they had just started One of the things that I first noticed when I began to notice economics that I was shocked by was that when you get a loan from a bank say you get a mortgage and Your credit you don't have a lot of money, right? And so You you when you don't have as much money when you don't have a good credit history You don't pay less because you can afford less at the bank in interest You pay more interest that's part of what brought on the 2008 crash So Well, I'd love for you to share that with me It's kind of tricky to a public bank is capitalized by public money and I would be surprised if that New Hampshire Bank is using We just had a new bank started here in Vermont that people were excited about but it was private capital That capitalized it. What do I mean by that? Private money private investors who invested their money to create the bank with a public bank it is the it is we the people our State revenues our tax dollars that are capitalizing the bank and that's a big difference They're looking for founding partners, right? Yeah, and and there is a movement and it's a good thing when local investors Because the Wall Street banks are not loaning to Vermont Shonda, you like to say that the bank that holds our our public money M&T Bank how many of you knew that M&T Bank? Do you know who M&T Bank is? Yeah, oh, you do know good. Well Shonda, you like to say what? That they don't they're not that interested in He just recently purchased people's United Bank to become the 11th largest bank in the US and so They're having quite a considerable amount of trouble with the merger and takeover. I don't know if you've read the news But in the state of Connecticut where people's headquarters were they fired everybody in Connecticut in Vermont they came and gobbled up a portion and threw out most of the employees and You know kind of made everybody kind of Regroup and re-introduce for their positions. I luckily got out before that happened. Yay me So Yeah, it was kind of like a nasty merger but Yeah, it's Wall Street money big banks gobbling up because as you may or may not know People's United Bank in your local community started out as Chittenden Bank right and then I think Chittenden Bank became Was it people's? And then people's is now M&T. So the gobbling just keeps continuing The gobbling is kind of built into the system the expectation that you've got to grow you've got to grow You've got to grow bigger and bigger and bigger Which sounds a little bit like cancer doesn't it? Yeah Yeah So a credit union and local banks which actually benefit a lot from a public bank happening our citizen deposit banks They have services for you. You go you open a bank account Typically with a public bank the only Bank account is the state of Vermont so the state of Vermont I believe but don't quote me on this that there's a nine billion dollar annual budget for Vermont so nine billion dollars every year comes in and goes out and we put it all in a bank account and We put it in a bank account with M&T Bank But we could just put it in a bank account with our cell And banks can lend 10 times more money than they have So that nine billion dollars becomes 90 billion dollars of lending power that our own state could have and we cut out Wall Street on both sides of that where we deposit and where we borrow for our public systems Credit unions and local banks typically but the credit unions really try to avoid it They are especially like VSE see you even though they're merging with New England Which I think could be a positive thing after talking to a banker from there yesterday They are looking for new systems We're hoping that the credit unions in Vermont and the Association of Credit unions will stand behind the public bank initiative and Continue what they already do which is to try to find different things to invest in besides Wall Street They will typically more invest in government bonds to avoid Wall Street for example But this is an even more generative approach they can have in Wall Street or North Dakota has Five times more local banks and credit unions than any other state for capital That's how much a public bank supports because the public bank helps to capitalize Credit unions and local banks to do more lending so they partner with them and do what's called participation loans Do you resistance to public banks? Yeah, well and again credit unions are the best you know in terms of credit unions local banks and big banks credit unions Will avoid Wall Street the most out of those three but any anybody any bank or individual or my parents that invest in Wall Street It's because it's the quickest return. You're stealing up land. You're stealing up water rights. You're building private prisons These are very very lucrative things that Wall Street does so Get a big return when you're investing in Wall Street and because you're destroying the most things as quickly as possible effectively Yes 0% interest is $2 instead of $0 And if you invest your money on $1,000 and if you invest your money locally like a credit union You know they give so much more to the community than any place else and like to actually move your money outside of the state Supposedly you think you're getting this like better interest rate. It really the return on investment for the community It's so much better to keep your money and in answer to you say generally credit unions make money off of lending to other people in the community So they charge an interest rate and then they give you a teeny tiny interest rate of your savings account They might have like a side thing if you've been there pretty good It's like investment side where you are like buying stocks and things like that But in general what they're doing in their business They make their money that they invest into you They're still selling most of the I Like to pass a piece of paper around because one of the pivotal moments in the public banking work will be Contacting our legislators with a very quick email or phone call Because we're going to create a bill to try to bring a public bank forward and when even 10 or 12 or 13 Constituents contact a legislator if they were to say please co-sponsor this public banking bill That will make a legislator line up to do that So every one of your voices can really move your legislator to hop on to a public banking bill So if you would be Open to me connecting you at that moment when we say it's time to contact your legislator about the public banking bill Then please please put your email on this paper. I'm a pest around okay You're great So let's um oh I don't think that my clicker is working in In this city in anywhere you in this city in anywhere, USA the rest Okay great So let's invest in what women are told Americans cannot afford He is not our measure. I think that's something everyone here in this in this room can agree with Money is not our measure real wealth is our creativity and our relationships we have many more elements of the Economy on our our web page at an economy of our own and some goals That I'll just talk about Peaceable livable lives are really talking about the time of our lives and what we would like is to challenge why The old 40-hour work week standard to support a family is now 80 to a hundred hours We need a social wealth index to account for The caring that family community and environmental environments Makes the economy even viable. We need the best way To ensure economic well-being by seeing the picture more clearly than we now can with our money only count We need pay equity. We need a $15 minimum wage, but why stop there We want a 30-hour work week standard for 40 hours paid and if you think that's crazy Iceland is experimenting with this already and I'll just note that they have a good many women legislators and prime ministers so there seems to be some connection between women serving in the legislature and These kinds of moves being made Technology has increased our efficiency and should grant all of us not just billionaires Ample family leave time and universal vacations for rest and renewal and It's all about our time Invest in sustainable energy including our own This is shifting from fossil fuel to a green new future publicly financed Along with health care and child care for all of us. It's like the real The most wealthy country in the world Somehow cannot afford Healthcare and child care for all It's it's crazy. It's unsupportable and it isn't sustainable long term and then The third one invest in universal basic needs Yeah, we're talking housing education safe local farming good food systems water and waste systems Roads and bridges and capital for Main Street small businesses our lack of these comes from this economy's purpose waged as war every political issue today is really Economic when you look at it more closely and who gets to decide will it be money kings or the people? Including women and all genders of all races this time While you are busy watching life on Main Street Waging life on Main Street for our health and happiness Wall Street is still waging economic war for global Domination and you see that happening now with what's happening in Ukraine, right? This is a fool's goal with our forests burning our seas rising and deadly viruses Mutating crashing economics broke culture women are delivering macroeconomic policies for fair trade fair taxes Debt-free currencies and an end to corporate personhood with a bought and paid for political system so you can learn about all of this on a e o o's web page and in screwnomics and Seek out any any pieces of it that speak to you that you think you might be able to make a difference in and and don't worry about doing it all because Whoops That's the last slide. Yeah, I was about to say with the last slide that It can feel overwhelming it can feel intimidating because it's been obfuscated Just exactly to make you feel in Intimidated so don't let that bother you it's overwhelming when you think about it as a whole but just remember that inspiring women's March where you just walked one step at a time with other women and Made an incredible statement So I think we can continue that that March toward an economy waged his life and I think there's a another March happening. I just heard about this October 8th. I believe anybody know about that anybody here involved in that Another thing to put in your calendar, right? So make it if you can but if you can't just know that But What was it that Ray said We're generating magic here and we are connected whether we're out on the street or not, okay So I did I do this on time so that I can take any questions or Any questions or anything that you want to say in response to what I've shared question is concerning like this state banks versus a sort of Wall Street banks and stuff like that And I've never really had to Think about it that much because I've never had any extra money to invest anywhere I just like unless this goes in it goes out but I Just think that there are quite a few people that make more money than they know what to do it and when they Have that extra money what they want to do with it is Send it to somebody like Jackie was they like to say a stockbroker or something I want you to make more money with this money that I have because I don't need it right now Can you make more money with it? So it just seems like the biggest likelihood is that they're gonna want to take it to the stock market and Exploded into whatever is gonna give them the most return and they just don't really care about Why they just wouldn't be like, you know, like whatever, you know blindfold themselves I don't care how you do it. Just turn this $50,000 into $500,000 in five years, please, you know, so so I guess what I'm wondering is I Hate to use this impression. I don't want to use it Bang for the buck, you know, it's like it's like You know like people want to get this money back from their money Can you do that with the state system like in that that kind of The proportions seem so crazy to me when I hear people talk about like Oh, I'm gonna invest this little money And then they're gonna go take that and do this stuff with it and turn it into tons more money, you know That's what I'm wondering Yeah, I mean, I guess I just feel like it's kind of a hard sell To to ask people who have all this extra money floating around Can you by the way, can you just keep that in our state instead of sending it to Wall Street? So you can get this huge amount of back on your investment because a lot of people just don't really care about the fact that our Planet is about to die or whatever From all the wars and all the poisons and everything like that. Well, I think you're right I'm and the public bank wouldn't affect any any investor who wanted to invest outside of the state that should surely do that But the tax money that they pay to the state would be part of what would go into the public bank That's right. Yes. Yes. It's our shared revenue as a state But do whatever how you want Yeah, I see so yeah, and it's I'll just mention some women I know that Capitalism it has a bad rep and So does socialism for that matter But like Rianne Eisler says, you know, those isms are sort of beside the point what we're really talking about is a spectrum of That ranges from domination over here to partnership over here and Both capitalism and socialism have had its share of both of those along that spectrum, right? So There are women who have money who are trying to make a difference for instance I've just learned about an organization called invest for better women lead the way and They're they're creating actually we stole the idea of learning circles from them They have investment circles where women are getting together and learning about investments And where can we put our money that would give us the return that we are looking for? One of that organizations founders has written a book called activate your money That's the title. I forget the subtitle right now, but so so there are Capitalist women who understand that this version of capitalism with this extreme domination by a very small group of billionaires is not the only possibility for capitalism and And I think ideally we'll we'll sort of kind of mix it all up to come up I mean because some of things we do want to do Collectively and other things we want to do Individually and independently so yes And I and because I was staying home mom and you know broke out for divorce and his poor boy working for a part-time job When I met you know, she was my You know, I have a very small time and there's been a million times that I thought about I have no idea What's behind that money and it terrified me and I feel ashamed of that Because so what small steps is One of my thoughts to do to find out because I'm like, oh my god, this could be going to the washing Where those funds Be as small as they might be are going right and what small steps could we all take could we take She would at least educate ourselves over that much and then can we even move now? I know it depends on where your money is and what funds you're talking about and you know in some detail So yeah, it takes some some Conscious thought about it and you know, I I know what you mean about it being intimidating It's it's you know my story and Screnomic starts at the welfare office where I I was working full-time I thought I was something wrong with me because I couldn't seem to support my my My family even though I you know worked on my budget and obviously I couldn't make it I was so ashamed to go to the welfare office But I didn't know Until I came to Vermont Where women were beginning to organize and look at these things systemically? They were talking about this pay gap back then it was like 59 cents on the dollar So my ex-husband had you know a job in support of the family and I couldn't but I didn't have an explanation For why why am I so stupid that I can't make my budget work? You know until I began to hang out with other women who were looking at the system Collectively and I think that's what's behind the whole idea of having learning circles There are some surveys in your in the papers that we handed out Where we're asking an economy of our own is asking you You know what do you want to learn about because I think in a small circle of women where you can just you know be yourself and Relax and talk with other women who are like-minded Or maybe not like-minded and and learn it in a safe Circle is a good way to start out And even if it's just one one girlfriend, you know start having a glass of wine On Thursday nights to talk about This with a girlfriend and see what what results you can get I think that's what it takes begin to Learn the words Speak the words And it'll begin to come naturally more naturally. I think I sense that's the learning circle developing about That's this question. How do you know how would you do this for Wall Street? Oh The gatekeeper to all money my stock worker or the retirement fund or whatever they've got it You're not supposed to call enough to ask questions If you ask what's in my portfolio, they'll say I'd give you a virtual list You can't usually even get a whole list of the stock that are in a portfolio. So yeah, and they'll make you go really down for asking questions Yeah, really don't and you always have to know they're working for me. They're working for me because they're really Thank you trying to feel like it's the other way around But how do you divest from Wall Street and with your retirement fund? It's an excellent question Yeah, they've made a very very very strong Wall against their being easy answers to that question and that's a big part of our work Yes, so I Received a large portion of retirement funding my divorce and right now it's just sitting in a vanguard account It's not invested because I refuse to I have divested but I'm I'm like still sitting on this money and and I can't do anything with it for like You know another six years. I can't touch it without big huge penalties Where can I invest that like Where are there places to invest that? That are not going to let you say the few people that I spoke to about investments made me feel shitty and Stupid and like questioning them like I don't want to invest in fossil fuel I don't want to do that and they're like, well, you can't not do that. So, you know, it's like Yes, I can so but in the meantime it's sitting there And I'm just like where where can I invest it Where it will do some good CDFIs are a basic baseline I'm an amateur economist and I don't specialize in investments, but but but um, I I do know about invest for better.org I think that would be a good place to look they have learning circles and they're and we might want to start one here in this area And and also the book that I mentioned activate your money Because there are a lot of women who are asking similar questions who who want want to divest and Want to put their money where it's going to do some some good? Yes And also Just extra thoughts on it that there are there are companies that even in vermont that like specialize in Helping you like figure that out And I also Struggle with like the guilt of how careful I am with Well thinking I should need to be really careful and that I have this huge responsibility about where my money goes and Uh, I'm reminded and remind myself that I'm actually like I'm not the problem so Not that we You know shouldn't have any intention about where our money goes, but like Anyone in this room, you know with the exception of like Jackie. Maybe I don't know Just because you told us like my like probably don't have the level of wealth to like Like You know, if we like divest and like if we have some of our Stocks and fossil fuels that we're going to like totally change the world and I don't mean to dig away our power I mean to say like I mean to take away the guilt like we still live in the society and I Disagree with capitalism ever being a solution. I used to think it was okay, but like that's a whole other conversation but um, we still live in it So we either choose to like go live in the woods and not interact with any of it Or I'm doing that like great. So like we also have to To some extent meet our basic needs and like if you're not needing your basic needs Then, you know spending all of your nights staying up like feeling guilty about having your money in oil is like Like don't put that on yourself because the problem is like so much bigger And there lots of things we can do But like holding all of that guilt Doesn't help anyone. No, I'm certainly not coming from a place of guilt I'm just trying to figure out how to use this money And share resources and I can't I right now it's not doing it's not it's not Making any it's not that money is not making any money. That wasn't a response to what you said, by the way Sharing all that my my like quick like That's what wasn't meant as a response I just want to say ricky guard diamond