Osacar Abello is the economic journalist for Next City, a web publication which reports on innovative examples of tackling long standing urban challenges.
He has written a new book, The Banks We Deserve. It is about the future of credit unions as much as he focuses on banks. He offers this reason for writing.
So how many community banks do we need? I’m not sure that me or some policymaker or expert should be the one answering that question. Maybe it should be up to each community that feels ignored or frustrated with larger, distant financial institutions to take some of that money creation power for themselves and see how they do with it.
We’ve never done anything big in this country without little banks. Yet the number of community banks in the US has been steadily declining for decades, giving way to big banks that have little connection to the communities they claim to serve.
The massive, unprecedented shift toward such a highly concentrated banking sector has weakened our ability to take action at a community level and leaves many people, especially those who have been historically marginalized, without access to capital.
The Book’s Message from a Review
In The Banks We Deserve, journalist Oscar Perry Abello argues that community banking has a crucial role to play in addressing urgent social challenges, from creating a more racially just economy to preparing for a changing climate. At their best, community banks unleash the agency and aspirations of the communities that establish them.
Abello challenges people working on racial justice, community development, or addressing climate change to start more community banks or credit unions as part of their work, while also calling for policies and regulatory reforms that will help tilt the landscape back in favor of community banking.
The Banks We Deserve tells the stories of new community banks — like Adelphi Bank, in Columbus, Ohio, the first new Black bank in 20 years; or Walden Mutual Bank in Concord, New Hampshire, the first new mutual bank since 1973 and the first chartered specifically to finance a more sustainable food system; or Climate First Bank, in St. Petersburg, Florida, which has grown exponentially since opening for business in 2021. He hopes these stories inspire others to take some of these same daunting-but-not-impossible steps.
My takeaway: Credit unions have been evolving into this community role since deregulation. Who is telling their story?
Hi Chip! Thanks for spreading the word about my book and other work of mine over the years. It’s much appreciated and I hope we can meet in person some day soon. Maybe this year? And to your takeaway, the book itself does actually include credit unions as part of “community banking,” with a few examples of established and new credit unions doing the kind of work that we need more of. I’m excited to hear what you think about the book after reading it!