It Could Happen

By Janice Shade. Originally published Oct. 29, 2019 on Medium

There we were. The richest nation in the world. A superpower. THE superpower. Sure, we weren’t all millionaires but we had it better than people in Niger or Afghanistan or Venezuela, right? So who would’ve expected this to happen?

Who would’ve thought that small pockets of people in Detroit, Oakland, Baltimore, Birmingham, and even tiny towns like Cabot, VT, and Yellow Springs, OH, could bring the U.S. banking system to its knees?

Citizen groups, self-organized and informed via the social engagement platform called ShareYourself.com, took seemingly small independent actions that were brilliantly timed to have a huge collective impact. It happened on Oct. 10, 2022, National Online Banking Day (yes, that really is a thing), when millions of people withdrew billions of dollars from the “big four” banks and moved them into locally-owned banks and credit unions.

Why did they do it? For most of 2020 and 2021, as the country sank deeper into recession and loomed on the verge of another global financial crisis, Americans watched in disbelief as the federal government once again authorized a bailout of the biggest, richest banks — financed, of course, with taxpayer money. Once again, CEOs denied knowledge of what their underlings were doing as new allegations of fraud and misuse of depositor funds came to light, and once again they escaped prosecution and walked away with their multimillion dollar salaries and bonuses fully intact.

Americans watched in stunned silence, feeling utterly powerless to do anything, especially after the national election of 2020 had proven that the concept of a democratically-elected, representative government was a sham. “If we can’t even control our own elections, and the government can do whatever it wants, what power do we have?” they cried.

A growing sense of malaise, apathy, and acquiescence swept the nation, until one person posted a question to the community on ShareYourself which was about 600,000 people nationwide. Her question was, “What if we took our marbles and went home?” She was talking about walking out on the big banks that controlled so much of the money in the U.S. She asked, “What if millions of us with accounts at these big banks all closed our accounts on the same day — could that make an impact?”

That one question ignited discussion that led to a plan that spread like wildfire. The conversations and organizing mostly took place on ShareYourself. The social organizing platform had been around for years, flying under Facebook’s radar, and slowly but surely had grown into a nationwide network of community-minded people with great ideas, and a will to collaborate. And collaborate, they did.

Since there were no advertisers or other business interests allowed on ShareYourself, no one in the corporate world had paid much attention to this quirky, do-gooder platform out of Burlington, VT. But that was its secret power. As plans took shape, its audience grew. It gave millions of Americans the ability to think globally and act locally. And when they did, it rocked the banking world to its foundations. It gave new meaning to Margaret Mead’s words:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.