Third World America (36 page)

84
The concept was simple: If enough people who had money
: Colin Barr, “Big Banks Mint Money Again: $18.7 Billion,” 21 Apr. 2010,
www.money.cnn.com
.

85
And since deposit insurance at small banks
: Kara McGuire, “ ‘Move your Money’ Campaign Wants to Sock It to Big Banks,” 14 Mar. 2010,
www.startribune.com
.

86
We launched the Move Your Money campaign
: Ibid.

87
Bill Maher compared moving your money to ending
: Bill Maher, “Stop the Abuse: It’s Time to Break Up with Your Big Bank,” 13 Jan. 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

88
About 2 million people, in every region
: Dennis Santiago, “For Bigger Banks, Deposits Remain Sticky,” 10 May 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

89
One of them, H. Lee Grove, wrote
: Comment by H. Lee Grove in the Huffington Post, 7 Jan. 2010.

90
Consumer credit unions are not owned by shareholders
: Bob Trebilcock, “Bye, Bye, Banks: Time to Join a Credit Union,” CBS Money Watch, 12 Jan. 2010,
www.bnet.com
.

91
Since their goal is not to maximize short-term profit
: Péralte C. Paul, “Credit Unions Fare Better in Banking Downturn,” 14 May 2010,
www.ajc.com
.

92
Nearly ninety million Americans belong to credit unions
: John Hielscher, “Region’s Credit Unions Weather Downturn,” 31 May 2010,
www.heraldtribune.com
.

93
Around 70 percent of credit union mortgages
: Frank Michael, testimony before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate, 8 Jul. 2009,
www.banking.senate.gov
.

94
(The exceptions are corporate credit unions …)
: Mark Maremont, “U.S. Moves to Bail Out Credit Union Network,” 29 Jan. 2009,
www.wsj.com
.

95
“A credit union saved me from Bank of America”
: Joe McKesson, in response to a Facebook and Twitter request from the author, spring 2009.

96
“All I can say is that nothing beats the personal …”
: Consuelo Flores, in response to a Facebook and Twitter request from the author, spring 2009.

97
Deborah Bohn’s nineteen-year-old daughter
: Deborah Bohn, in response to a Facebook and Twitter request from the author, spring 2009.

98
20 percent of households can afford
: “Hello Wallet: Our Story,”
www.hellowallet.com
.

99
Witness
HelloWallet.com
, a start-up
: Keith Epstein. “Will HelloWallet Transform Online Financial Advice?” 29 Sep. 2009,
www.businessweek.com
.

100
The site will automatically find
:
www.hellowallet.com
.

101
Best of all, the site is
: “HelloWallet: We make banks work for you,”
www.hellowallet.com
.

102
Another good online tool is
: Virginia Heffernan, “Home Economics,” 21 May 2009,
www.nytimes.com
.

103
And it’s important to keep track of your credit report
: Liz Pulliam Weston, “Raise Your Credit Score to 740,” 10 Mar. 2010,
www.moneycentral.msn.com
.

104
In April 2010, President Obama issued a proclamation
: Barack Obama, presidential proclamation on Financial Literacy Month, 2 Apr. 2010,
www.whitehouse.gov
.

105
I was reading
Consumer Reports
and came across
: “The New Money Rules,” May 2009,
www.consumerreports.org
.

106
Or, as Suze Orman puts it, “No Blame, No Shame …”
: Suze Orman, “Suze Orman’s 10 Tips for a Fresh Financial Start,” 16 Dec. 2008,
www.oprah.com
.

107
Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté
: Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté,
The Resilience Factor
(New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 1, 3–4.

108
Dominique Browning, who lost her job as editor in chief
: Dominique Browning, “Losing It,” 22 Mar. 2010,
www.nytimes.com
.

109
Indeed, after being fired she went through
: Dominique Browning,
Slow Love
(New York: Atlas, 2010), 148.

110
But slowly, she began
: Ibid., 23.

111
Eventually, things turned around for her
: Ibid., 5, 165.

112
Take the case of Annette Arca
: Lynnette Curtis, “Jobless Volunteer Has Time to Spare,” 16 Nov. 2010,
www.lvrj.com
.

113
Then there’s Seth Reams, who lost his job as a concierge
: Nancy Wood, “After Losing His Job, Portland Man Founds a New Nonprofit,” 6 May 2009,
www.komonews.com
.

114
More projects soon followed
: Seth Reams, “People Call Us with Tales of Hunger, Home
Loss, Job Loss, Personal Loss, and Myriad Difficulties,” 6 May 2010,
www.wevegottimetohelp.blogspot.com
.

115
“The ultimate measure of a man or woman”
: Martin Luther King Jr.,
Strength to Love
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963), 35.

116
After spending months embedded
: Sebastian Junger on
Peal Time with Bill Maher
, 14 May 2010,
www.hbo.com
.

117
But twenty-six million people are unemployed or underemployed
: Rex Nutting, “GDP to Show More Balanced Growth, Survey Says,” 29 Apr. 2010,
www.marketwatch.com
.

118
over 4 percent of U.S. workers have been unemployed
: Kevin Drum, “Who Are the Long-Term Unemployed?” 13 May 2010,
www.motherjones.com
.

119
And more and more people are entering the ranks of “the 99ers”
: Arthur Delaney, “Tier 5: The Despair of the 99ers,” 28 May 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

120
Of course, a third of America’s unemployed
: Jay Bookman, “Do Jobless Checks Subsidize Laziness? Research Shows …,” 21 Apr. 2010,
www.ajc.com
.

121
Making matters worse, there is a growing
: Laura Bassett, “Disturbing Job Ads: ‘The Unemployed Will Not Be Considered,’ ” 4 Jun. 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

122
A study by researchers at Yale
: “Rising Unemployment Causes Higher Death Rates, New Study by Yale Researcher Shows,” 23 May 2002,
www.yale.edu
.

123
Fifteen years ago, I wrote a book
—The Fourth Instinct: Arianna Huffington,
The Fourth Instinct: The Call of the Soul
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 147–148.

124
As Pablo Neruda said: “To feel the intimacy of brothers …”
: “Childhood and Poetry,”
Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems
, Robert Bly, ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1993), 12.

125
It was the happiness
: Prov. 14:21 (King James edition).

126
He’s got the right words: “When you serve”
: Barack Obama, commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, 17 Mar. 2009,
www.whitehouse.gov
.

127
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11
: “Bush Says US Will Wage ‘Long and Unrelenting War,’ ” Associated Press, 15 Sept. 2001.

128
A month later he echoed that theme
: George W. Bush, press conference, 11 Oct. 2001,
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov
.

129
Of course, the sum total of his idea of sacrifice
: Andrew J. Bacevich, “He Told Us to Go Shopping. Now the Bill Is Due,” 5 Oct. 2008,
www.washingtonpost.com
.

130
In 2009, for example, Teach for America received 35,000 applications
: Associated Press, “Teach for America Applications Soar,” 28 May 2009.

131
In 2008, 75,000 AmeriCorps members
: Alan Silverleib, “Hope in Cedar Rapids as Washington Pushes Volunteerism,” 22 Oct. 2010,
www.cnn.com
.

132
The Serve America Act, introduced by Ted Kennedy
: “S. 277, the Serve America Act,” Democratic Policy Institute Legislative Bulletin, 23 Mar. 2009,
www.dpc.senate.gov
.

133
Approximately 280,000 special needs children
: USA Freedom Corps, “Answering the Call to Service,” Sept. 2008, 19.

134
Eighty-one percent of the children
: “Independent Research Shows National Service Program Enlisting Tutors over Age 55 Produces Big Gains in Student Learning,” 7 Apr. 2009,
www.experiencecorps.org
.

135
And students working with an Experience Corps tutor
: Nancy Morrow-Howell et al., “Evaluation of Experience Corps,” Washington University in St. Louis, Jan. 2009,
www.csd.wustl.edu
.

136
When people used to offer to join
: Susan Conroy,
Mother Teresa’s Lessons of Love and Secrets of Sanctity
(Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2003), 199.

137
Geoffrey Canada provides a template
: Dan Collins, “Harlem’s Miracle Man,” 22 Jan. 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

138
As reported by
Metro: “A Model for Obama,”
Metro
, 17 Mar. 2009,
www.metro.us
.

139
He titled it “Waiting for Whom?”
: Geoffrey Canada, “Waiting For Whom?” Harlem Children’s Zone,
www.hcz.org
.

140
Susie Buffett offers another shining example
: Quotes and materials provided by Susie Buffett to the author in conversation and by email, May 2010.

141
In
The Empathic Civilization,
Jeremy Rifkin
: Jeremy Rifkin,
The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis
(New York: Penguin, 2009), 12.

142
New scientific data tells us
: Ibid., 47.

143
“An individual,” said Martin Luther King
: Martin Luther King Jr.,
The Measure of a Man
(Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), 43.

144
the Huffington Post published a story about Monique Zimmerman-Stein
: Julian Hattem, “Mom Goes Blind So Her Daughters Can See,” 28 Sep. 2009,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

145
The Stein family’s story struck
: Victoria Fine, “Help the Steins: Mother Who Went Blind to Save Her Children’s Sight Struggles with Medical Debt,” 13 Oct. 2009,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

146
“We are on the cusp of an epic shift”
: Jeremy Rifkin,
The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis
(New York: Penguin, 2009), 3.

147
“Seven billion individual connections”
: Ibid., 594.

148
In his 1963 work “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
: Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,”
www.africa.upenn.edu
.

149
Conservative commentator Tony Blankley: Left, Right and Center
, 15 Jan. 2010,
www.kcrw.com
.

150
As America’s Misery Index soars
:
www.miseryindex.us
.

151
“We have to lean on one another …”
: Barack Obama, eulogy for West Virginia Miners, 25 Apr. 2010,
www.whitehouse.gov
.

152
David Brooks has written about the need
: David Brooks, “The Broken Society,” 18 Mar. 2010,
www.nytimes.com
.

153
“Volunteering, especially among professional classes and the young”
: Philip Blond “Cameron’s ‘Big Society,’ ” 25 Apr. 2010,
www.guardian.co.uk
.

154
In 2002 in San Francisco’s Mission district
: “About 826,”
www.826valencia.org
.

155
In Brooklyn, New York, FEAST
: Danny LaChance, “An Idea Grows in Brooklyn,” University of Minnesota Alumni Association, spring 2010,
www.minnesotaalumni.org
.

156
Matthew Bishop, U.S. business editor for the
Economist: Howard Davies, “A New Take on Giving,” 10 Jan. 2009,
www.guardian.co.uk
.

157
Social entrepreneurs pinpoint social problems
: Caroline Hsu, “Entrepreneur for Social Change,” 31 Oct. 2005,
www.usnews.com
.

158
Providing microcredit to small businesses
: Devin Leonard, “Microcredit? To Him, It’s Only a Start,” 30 Apr. 2010,
www.nytimes.com
.

159
In 2008, Yunus’s Grameen bank opened a branch in New York
: “About Us,”
www.grameenamerica.com
.

160
In 2010 it opened a branch in Omaha, Nebraska
: “Grameen America Celebrates Grand Opening of Omaha Branch,” 24 Feb. 2010,
www.grameenamerica.com
.

161
The Grameen Bank’s slogan: “Banking for the unbanked”
: Emily Belz, “Recession-Proof Banking?”
World Magazine
, 20 Jun, 2009,
www.worldmag.com
.

162
Hoping to serve one million American entrepreneurs
: “About Us,”
www.grameenamerica.com
.

163
The average loan amount is $1,500 (no collateral necessary)
: Laura Thompson Osuri, “Coming to America,”
American Banker
, Apr. 2010,
www.americanbanker.com
.

164
Since 1991, ACCION USA
: “About ACCION USA: Who We Are,”
www.accionusa.org
.

165
Luis Zapeda Alvarez
: “Meet Our Borrowers: Bakery Delivery Service,”
www.accionusa.org
.

166
Another New Yorker, Lyn Genet Recitas
: “Meet Our Borrowers: Neighborhood Holistic,” ACCION USA,
www.accionusa.org
.