A few months ago I was at a lecture in San Fransisco on the BP oil spill. While I was sitting at the lecture hall with hundreds of pissed of activists around me, I thought to myself, ‘I wonder how many of these people have their money in the same banks that BP gets funding from?’
The next day I went on my computer and researched it. After learning that JPMorgan Chase and Goldmen Sachs are BP’s biggest lenders, I thought it would be cool to make a short movie about it.
The inspiration for my campaign, Claim Your Change, came from wanting to help disengaged surfers discover their power to protect the environment. Many corporations who create destructive projects get their funding from centralized banks that use our deposits for their loans.
I documented Bank of America, one of the largest funders of coal power worldwide, using our deposits to fund a proposed coal plant that would destroy people’s health, livelihood and the environment in Chile.
I started a campaign that called for people to take their money out of B of A and open accounts at their local banks, to cut off the life force of funding to environmental destruction and simultaneously support stronger local economies.
I’ve documented that over $110 million dollars of lending power has been moved as a result of the project.