Tuesday, May 24,  5 pm PT / 8 pm ET

Lucille Eckrich is a founding member of the Alliance For Just Money, and has served on its Board and Executive Committee since its inception in 2018.

Steve Norris is the Alliance For Just Money Vice President and member of AFJM’s Youth Caucus. He is also Cleveland Move to Amend Co-Coordinator

(full bios below)

RSVP below to receive the Zoom link and dial-in phone number

Private commercial banks are arguably the most powerful corporate sector in the US and globally today because they secured—first in 1694 England and in 1913 in the US—the legally sanctioned privilege to create, via interest-bearing loans, almost all of the means of payment denominated in the currency of our nation that the rest of us, and our governments, use to engage in any and all means of commerce. Though this system failed within 20 years in the US, legislation in the 1930s shored it up and it has more or less survived ever since, extracting more and more wealth from our planet and the 99% into the pockets of the 1% and financial corporations, even on shakier grounds ever since the 2007-08 financial crises.

This is why members of the Alliance For Just Money (AFJM) believe that changing our money system is necessary to change our world, and that Just Money reform is in concert with Move to Amend’s We the People Amendment. AFJM’s Mission is to research, educate, and organize to pass legislation that makes our money a sovereign liquid asset of the people whose name it bears, whose commerce it circulates, and whose public good and democratic practice it exists to serve now and in perpetuity.

Hear the presentation and join the discussion about the nature of our existing money and banking system and how to correct its flaws to achieve the justice, sustainability and democracy that MTA and AFJM espouse and that our children and grandchildren demand of us now to ensure a livable world.

RSVP below to receive the Zoom link and dial-in phone number

SPEAKER BIOS

Lucille Eckrich is a founding member of the Alliance For Just Money, and has served on its Board and Executive Committee since its inception in 2018. She majored in economics and African studies in college, and then worked in rural Botswana for three years, after which she did anti-apartheid and urban education work in Chicago until she started graduate school in 1990. It was through her 1998 dissertation on Value in Economics, Ethics, and Education that she came to a critique of modern money that has informed her life's work ever since. Lucille is an Associate Professor Emeritus at Illinois State University, where she taught leadership ethics and philosophy, sociology, and history of education in the College of Education 2001-2020. She has published on the student debt crisis, public school funding, urban education, and philosophy of education. She is married to a master cabinetmaker from Germany who fully renovated their 1896 home in central Illinois and with whom she raised three children who now live far afield. A bit more, including links to some of her publications, is available here. 

Steve Norris is a software developer in Ohio. He studied computer science and music at Denison University where he met his now wife Emily. He took an interest in Socially Responsible Investing when looking into saving for retirement and barriers to structural reforms. Increasingly concerned with the big money in politics, he became co-chair of Move to Amend Cleveland. He heard about monetary reform through John Howell’s presentation for a Move to Amend event and deepened his connection with the Alliance For Just Money through the Youth Caucus. As Vice President of AFJM, Steve has supported social media outreach and diversity, equity, and inclusion work.