 Between 2021 and 2024, I had the honor of being the co-director of Stop the Money Pipeline alongside Jackie Fielder. In July 2024, with the full-throated support of all of us here, Jackie left Stop the Money Pipeline to run for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Four months later, Jackie not only won her election, she crushed it ― winning a whopping 59.7% of the vote in San Francisco’s District 9. Now, I’m so excited to share that Supervisor Fielder is planning to introduce a ballot measure that would tax some of San Francisco’s largest financial institutions to create a municipal public bank in the city. A San Francisco public bank would be great for San Francisco. By providing low or no cost loans for affordable housing, public transportation, and small businesses, a public bank would help the city hit its climate goals and become a more sustainable, affordable, and thriving city. As Jackie put it in this video announcing the next stage of the SF public bank campaign: “Right now, Wall Street is in charge of our billions and billions of dollars. But if the public bank were our own bank, we can be in charge of our own money and where it’s being invested. Then, our money wouldn’t be going to industries like fossil fuels, weapons of war, and ICE detention centers. Instead, it’d be going into our own economy and things we actually need like affordable housing and small businesses.” Creating a public bank, however, is no small feat. First, the State of California had to pass legislation legalizing the creation of municipal public banks. After years of advocacy, that happened in 2019, when the state passed the California Public Banking Act of 2019. Even with this law on the books, however, the process remains complex. As this article in Mission Local, Jackie’s local paper, explains, setting up a San Francisco public bank will require $400 million in seed funding – that’s where the ballot initiative and the tax on large financial institutions come in. If the November ballot measure passes, the money raised from the tax, which will be leveraged on credit card companies and other large financial institutions, will be used to set up what’s known as a “municipal financial corporation,” a kind of midway point to a full public bank that can issue loans but cannot take deposits. All being well, this “municipal financial corporation” will start getting loans out the door in 2029. Only after it’s operated successfully for a few years, will the “municipal financial corporation” be able to apply to regulators to become a fully-fledged public bank in 2032. Before any of that though, in order to pass in November, the public bank ballot initiative must win two-thirds of the vote. In short, winning a public bank is no quick solution, or easy organizing effort. But ever since I first worked with Jackie, back in 2016, when we were fighting the financiers of the Dakota Access pipeline, that’s what I’ve admired about her: her ambition, and commitment to bringing about long-term change on a systems level. And if San Francisco is successful in winning a public bank, it could be nationally important, too. Globally, there are 586 public banks, managing some $35 trillion in assets. In many parts of the world, public banks play a key role in driving the energy transition, by providing low or no cost loans for projects that benefit people and the planet, such as affordable housing and large-scale renewable energy and public transportation projects. However, there’s only one public bank in the United States, the Bank of North Dakota which was founded in 1919. There hasn’t been a single new public bank created in the United States in the one hundred and eight years since then. But a public bank in San Francisco would change that. And who’s to say that what starts in San Francisco will stay there? The Bay Area is known, after all, for exporting its innovation around the world. Often what’s exported around the world from the Bay Area is of dubious value to society―whether it’s social media disinformation or AI slop―but if the Bay Area’s next big export to the rest of the country is a model for how to set up and run a successful public bank, that will be an unalloyed good. So, if you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area you’ll be hearing more about this from us in the coming months. But if you want to make sure you don’t miss a thing, and if you’re in the Bay Area: sign up here for updates & opportunities to plug into the campaign. In Solidarity,
News & Updates from the Coalition.– No War, No Kings As the Trump Administration launches a reckless, illegal, and deeply immoral war on Iran, it’s more important than ever that we demonstrate – to the country and the rest of the world – just how deeply unpopular Trump and the MAGA agenda truly is. Our next big opportunity to do that is on March 28th for No Kings Day #3. The first two No Kings Days were two of the largest single-day mobilizations in American history. Let’s make the next one even larger. Join a No Kings Day event near you on March 28th. – Costco Has No Excuse Now In February, we released the Better Options report, a first-of-its-kind report assessing the climate performance of the 20 largest credit card issuers in the United States. The key findings? Eight of the financial institutions analyzed did not provide large-scale financing to the fossil fuel industry in the time period analyzed. This means that companies like Costco have no excuse now: they need to find a better partner for their co-branded credit card than Citigroup, the world’s second-largest funder of fossil fuel expansion. Join the campaign here. And read about the campaign in the news: “New climate-finance campaign targets Costco’s partnership with Citibank.” – Shifting Politics Means Shifting Strategy In 2024, our bank campaigns saw real progress. That year, Citigroup – our primary target – committed to end financing for new oil and gas projects in the Amazon and implemented a goal of reducing their oil and gas financing by 29% by 2030. But when Trump was elected, major banks started backtracking on their climate commitments. That meant we had to change our strategy. In a recent headline article in Bloomberg, I talked about what some of those strategy changes have and should look like. Read the full article here, “Wall Street’s Oil Deals Have Climate Activists Resorting to New Tactics.” – Insure our Communities campaign gallops along The Insure Our Communities Act is gaining momentum in New York. After the bill's prime sponsor left the legislature, we’re stoked that Senator Nathalia Fernandez has agreed to become the bill's new prime sponsor in the Senate! As a member of the Senate Insurance Committee, Senator Fernandez is well-placed to help the bill advance. If this bill passes, it would prohibit New York-licensed insurers from providing insurance to new coal, oil, and gas projects anywhere – an impact that would be felt globally. So, if you’re in New York, check out the campaign website and get involved:
– Confronting Big Oil in Houston, TX. Every year, fossil fuel corporations, Wall Street financiers, and government officials convene in Houston for CERA Week, where they plot out how they can keep profiting from fossil fuels, even as frontline communities face toxic air and the brunt of climate chaos. This year, dozens of organizations are coming together for Confronting CERA Week. Over three days, there will be workshops and skillshares, art builds, community events, and actions. Plug into the Confronting CERA Week organizing in Houston this March 21 - 23. – Gulf South Communities file Human Right Grievance Against Major Insurer Last week, frontline communities in Louisiana and Japan joined our partners at Rainforest Action Network and filed an official human rights grievance with the insurance company, Tokio Marine, regarding its coverage for Venture Global's risky LNG operations. This is a major move to expose the human rights abuses that follow in the wake of the LNG buildout in the Gulf South, and elsewhere. Read more about the Human Rights Grievance filed with Tokio Marine. – First-of-its-kind Climate Risk Lawsuit Filed This week, a landmark new class action lawsuit was filed against one of the world’s largest real estate corporations, Cushman & Wakefield, alleging that its retirement plan managers failed to properly manage climate risks to workers’ hard-earned savings. The legal challenge, filed by ClientEarth and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, is the first of its kind and, if successful, could set an important precedent for addressing climate risks to millions of American workers’ deferred wages. Read about it in the Financial Times (if you hit a paywall, view the article here), or amplify the news using this toolkit from our partner at Stand.earth. Wanna learn more? Register for the legal briefing on March 25th. – Federal Court Strikes Down Texas’ Anti-Climate Attacks on Banks Good news out of Texas, where a judge has struck down Texas’s 2021 “anti-ESG” law that directed the state government to boycott financial institutions that took common sense steps to address the climate crisis. The Texas law was the high-point of the so-called “anti-ESG movement” that punished banks and investors for taking action on fossil fuels. The court's findings are a win for the climate, and for commonsense. – Several Ways To Make Fossil Fuel Companies Pay To kick off the state legislative session, our friends at the Make Polluters Pay coalition held a week of action. In all, there were 37 events across 14 states, advocating for bills to make the fossil fuel industry pay for the mess they have created, based on Vermont and New York’s climate superfund bills, which were passed in 2024. Across the country, a second creative way to put the fossil fuel industry on the hook for paying for climate programs is also gaining steam. In California, New York, and Hawaii there are bills in play that would authorize state attorneys generals to sue fossil fuel companies on behalf of residents whose insurance premiums have soared amid climate disasters. The Guardian had an excellent piece about this strategy here. – Pushing Democrats to Hold Firm on ICE Accountability We’re now nearly three weeks into the government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. A shutdown like this is not something to take lightly. It means thousands of workers furloughed, including workers from critical agencies like FEMA. But this is also the Democrats only leverage to win real changes from ICE, an increasingly paramilitary force accountable only to Donald Trump. Democrats must use this leverage. Already, 6,000 of you on this list have sent emails to your Senators, and hundreds of you have made calls. If you haven’t done so yet, contact your Senator here and urge them: Hold the line and hold ICE accountable. – Epstein and the World’s Largest Funder of Fossil Fuels One thing I am pretty sure we haven’t talked about enough is the deep ties between sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and JPMorgan Chase, the world’s largest funder of fossil fuels. In 2023, JPMorgan CEO, Jamie Dimon, testified under oath that he’d never heard of Jeffrey Epstein until 2019. But one of his top lieutenants later claimed that he’d talked to Dimon years earlier about Epstein. And we now know that a top executive at the bank, Mary Erdoes, who is often touted as potential next CEO, was deeply involved in Epstein’s account, and long knew about his conviction for soliciting sex from fourteen-year-old girls. In the UK, members of the Royal Family and senior politicians have been arrested in the wake of the release of the Epstein Files. In the US? Not so much. Read more about how the world’s largest funder of fossil fuels also enabled Epstein’s crimes in the Guardian, the New York Times, and Anand Giridharadas’s The Ink. – and to close, a WIN in Davis, CA After a months-long campaign waged by the intrepid Cath Posehn, the City of Davis, CA, voted to sever the city’s engagement with the Musk Empire — committing to do no business with Tesla, SpaceX, X, Neuralink, xAI, The Boring Company, and Tesla Robotaxis. No new contracts. No new purchases. No Musk platforms in official city communications. We’ve been honored to support Cath in her work to achieve this win, and you can read all about how she did it here: One protestor got her city to divest from Elon Musk - here’s what she can teach the rest of us. 
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