This is a short, Move Your Money, and call to action diary.
Like most of you I receive several e-mails a day asking for money from all the usual suspects and two nights ago it occurred to me that if I enter my CC# and hit donate I don't know, but highly suspect, where the money gets deposited. This is no small thing. The Obama campaign continues to project that it will raise a billion dollars during this silly season. The total spent on all campaigns will be many multiples of that.
So I whipped out the old e-mail composer and fired of e-mails to OFA, DNC, to the WA State Democratic Party and to Maria Cantwell's senatorial campaign asking where what bank they used for their campaign war chests. I noted that my county Democratic Party has banked with a CU for years and that I myself bank with one. I also indicated that I knew that CUs do have their limitations but that that there are other banks besides the too big to fail Wall St. crowd that are available.
So far I've been totally underwhelmed . There was no response from OFA or the DNC. Maria Cantwell and the State Party did send me another request for donations. I replied that I was withholding further contributions until my question was answered but I doubt that an actual human will even see it. I suspect that the requests I received were an auto-responder my first e-mail.
I'm not a investigative reporter and don't have clue how to find out about the federal campaigns but I can keep sending them messages that they aren't getting any money from me. However I can find this out about our local candidates or at least put them on the spot by showing up at their fundraisers and meet and greets and asking the question. Where is your campaign banking? If I get the wrong answer then I have a teachable moment.
As a member of the local Democratic Party I believe I can get our delegate to the WA State Democratic Party to find out for me. Then I can, if necessary, male a motion at the next county meeting for a resolution to be sent to the state that they move their money.
This is an Occupy tactic that virtually anyone can be a part of. We may be able to convince some campaigns to actually move their money and we will probably also learn some things about our candidates that we don't know. Are they just doing lip service to the cause or willing make a tangible show of support.
If you know where to get information about OFA and such or have local information you can share, would be willing to investigate local campaigns, or just let them eat pie, please add your voice to the comments.
In the meantime I'm not going to send any money off to anyone until I know it's not going directly to the too big to fail guys. Yes I know that despite all the e-mails they tend to ignore small donations except at the local level but like the drip, drip, drip of one person after another closing their account at banks we can have an impact on campaigns. There is one thing that absolutely gets to any politician and that's the money stream. If they think we can block or slow it down we have a chance to make this stick.
By sharing information we can create an Anti-Money Bomb.