Meck Memorial Lecture–Not the Master’s Tools: 5,000 years of Money, Credit, and Community Banking
November 13 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Presented by
Oscar Perry Abello
Senior Economics Correspondent, Next City
While the laws, regulations, and structure of banking greatly influence land use, urban planning and housing, banking itself is poorly understood—even by many who work in banking. Looking around today, it may seem like big banks have always lorded over the economy, but in reality, it was community banks that did the bulk of the work to finance the expansion of infrastructure, homes, small businesses and industries that built the cities and rural economies that make up our country today. Even less understood is how the pattern of local ownership and local control over the banking system that helped build this country is part of a pattern that has shown up in thriving cultures and societies going back 5,000 years, to the very earliest written records of human activity we have found so far. While it is true, as Audre Lorde wrote, that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house, banking and money and credit were never the master’s tools to begin with. It’s time for communities to take them back again.
Oscar Perry Abello is currently the senior economic justice correspondent for Next City, an independent, not-for-profit, online publication covering cities from the lens of social, racial, and environmental justice. He is also the author of The Banks We Deserve: Reclaiming Community Banking for a Just Economy, forthcoming in February 2025 from Island Press. Oscar’s writing has also appeared in Yes! Magazine, City & State New York, Impact Alpha, Shelterforce, and other outlets. Oscar is a child of immigrants descended from the former colonial subjects of the Spanish and U.S. imperial regimes in the Philippines. He was born in New York City, and raised in the inner-ring suburbs of Philadelphia. He has a bachelor’s degree from Villanova University, majoring in economics and minoring in peace and justice studies. He spent several years embedded in the international development industry before transitioning into journalism full-time in 2015. He currently lives in New York City with his domestic partner and the two most photogenic kitties in the world.