Special July Call: Financial Meltdown, Banking On Radical Reform

Crisis creates opportunity. There’s no bigger crisis right now than the financial meltdown that has thrown millions of people out of their homes and out of work. And no bigger opportunity to rewrite the rules that govern the financial sector and reshape our economic future. The drumbeat for fixing a broken system, and restoring productive activity to its rightful place in the economy, is getting stronger. But to achieve this, both our political leaders and the financial industry need to experience the depth and breadth of popular anger and frustration.

Join our call with a panel of economic experts and activists to discuss the roots of the current crisis and the emergence of a broad-based coalition determined to counter the weight of Wall Street in shaping the contours of change.

For more information, including how to register, please contact Mario Lugay, FCCP Program Director at mlugay [at] funderscommittee [dot] org

Featured Speakers:
Heather Booth, Executive Director, Americans for Financial Reform
Robert Kuttner, Demos and The American Prospect
Lisa Rice, Vice President, National Fair Housing Alliance
George Goehl, Executive Director, NTIC/National People’s Action

Speaker Bios:
Heather Booth, Executive Director, Americans for Financial Reform | www.ourfinancialsecurity.org
Heather Booth has been an organizer for more than 40 years, starting in the civil rights and women’s movements. She was founding Director and is now president of the Midwest Academy, training social change leaders and organizers. She has managed political campaigns and served as Training Director of the Democratic National Committee. In 2000, she was director of the NAACP National Voter Fund, which helped to increase African American election turnout by nearly 2 million voters. Just recently, Heather directed the campaign to pass President Obama’s transformational budget. Heather is now Executive Director of Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of more than 200 organizations pressing for fundamental reform of the rules and regulations that govern Wall Street.

George Goehl, Executive Director, NTIC/National People’s Action | www.ntic-us.org
George Goehl has been a community organizer, strategist, and trainer for 15 years, crafting national campaigns on affordable housing, predatory lending, and immigrant justice issues. George was the founding president of the Coalition of Low-Income and Homeless Citizens and the lead organizer of a campaign to win the first Housing Trust Fund in Indiana. He was the architect of a national campaign at NTIC to pressure the Department of Housing and Urban Development to stem the tide of rising FHA foreclosures and abandoned buildings and helped launch NTIC’s early work on predatory lending. In 2004, George worked as a field organizer for the Center for Community Change, focusing on immigration reform. In 2007 he went back to his roots and became the third Executive Director at NTIC in 35 years.

Robert Kuttner, Demos and The American Prospect and Demos | www.demos.org
Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, as well as a Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow. He was a longtime columnist for BusinessWeek, and continues to write columns in the Boston Globe and Huffington Post. His was formerly a national staff writer on The Washington Post, and chief investigator of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. He is author of eight books, most recently Obama's Challenge: American's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, Columbia Journalism Review, Harvard Business Review, and The New England Journal of Medicine.

Lisa Rice, Vice President, National Fair Housing Alliance | nfha.objectwareinc.com
Lisa Rice is Vice President of the National Fair Housing Alliance, dedicated to achieving equal housing opportunities for all Americans. Lisa joined NFHA after serving as CEO of the Toledo Fair Housing Center and the Northwest Ohio Development Agency. While at these organizations, Lisa developed and implemented the state of Ohio’s first predatory lending remediation program and worked to help pass anti-predatory lending statutes in Toledo, Ohio and at the state level. She has been involved in the investigation and resolution of precedent setting fair housing cases which have resulted in the elimination of systemic discriminatory practices in the lending and insurance arenas. Lisa also provides consulting on a wide range of fair housing and diversity issues to fair housing organizations, insurance companies, lending institutions and government agencies. She has served on the state of Ohio’s Housing Trust Fund Advisory Board, and the Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer Advisory Council and is a current member of the State Farm Bank Consumer Advisory Council.

Call Organizer Bios:
Anna Lefer Kuhn, Arca Foundation
Anna Lefer Kuhn is the Executive Director of the Arca Foundation, which supports innovative and strategic efforts that advance equity, accountability, social justice and participatory democracy in the US and abroad. Prior to Arca, Anna was a Program Officer at the Open Society Institute, where she conceived of and led a multi-year, $8 million initiative that helped to build a movement of progressive young activists leading change on critical issues. In addition, Anna coordinated OSI’s Youth Media Program, a six-year $12 million initiative that provided low-income youth with opportunities to affect public debate and to develop critical thinking and communication skills. In addition to her work at OSI, Anna has advised progressive donors and the Democracy Alliance, and worked to coordinate youth vote efforts in the 2008 election cycle. Anna serves on the board of directors the White House Project, and the advisory boards of Work in Progress, the Drum Major Institute Scholars Program and Generation Change, a project of the Center for Community Change.

Janet Shenk, Panta Rhea
Janet Shenk is Senior Program Officer at the Panta Rhea Foundation, which supports organizations that seek to hold corporations accountable to high labor, environmental and governance standards.