Convicted Nigerian Pirate Charged Again for Second Hijacking

File image

Published Nov 14, 2024 6:15 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

 

A Nigerian pirate who was convicted and sentenced for hijacking a Dutch freighter has been charged again in connection with a previous piracy incident in 2017. 

The case has been in motion for more than six years. South African police arrested pirate action group leader Itoruboemi Benson Lobia at an airport in Johannesburg in late 2018, acting on an Interpol warrant issued by the Netherlands. A South African court approved his extradition, and in 2022, a Dutch court convicted Lobia of the hijacking and kidnapping attack aboard the FWN Rapide. The Dutch-flagged freighter was attacked by pirates off Port Harcourt in 2018, and the criminals held the 11 crewmembers hostage during a month-long series of ransom negotiations. The operator, ForestWave, reportedly paid a ransom of $340,000 to secure the release of the crew - a fraction of the $2 million reportedly sought by Lobia.  

The Rotterdam District Court ruled that Lobia was the operational leader of the hijacking gang, and he was sentenced to a term of 8.5 years in Dutch prison for the FWN Rapide attack. He may yet receive a longer penalty: Last week, he was "arrested" a second time while in prison, and he will be tried on additional charges related to an earlier hijacking - the attack on the German merchant ship BBC Caribbean. 

On February 5, 2017, BBC Caribbean was operating off Nigeria when she was boarded by armed pirates, who abducted eight members of the crew. The hostages were transferred back to Nigeria in skiffs and hidden at a compound in the creeks of the Niger Delta. Several crewmembers managed to hide and evade capture aboard the ship, and they navigated the BBC Caribbean safely to Las Palmas, 2,500 nautical miles to the northwest.  

After a month of hostage negotiations, which the pirates reportedly spent in a state of constant and severe inebriation, the kidnapped crewmembers were ransomed and released. The amount of the payment was not disclosed.

Meanwhile, the BBC Caribbean was searched on arrival at Las Palmas, and forensic investigators collected extensive evidence - including fingerprints and DNA traces from cigarette butts. One set of DNA eventually turned up a positive match: it was Lobia's. 

The Dutch Public Prosecution Service and the National Expertise and Operations Unit (LX) launched a second investigation after finding this link, and have asked authorities in South Africa - where Lobia was first arrested - for permission to prosecute him a second time for the additional crime. An examining magistrate granted a custody order to start the case last Thursday.  

 

Cybersecurity: Ghosts in the Machine

CyberOwl/HFW Report: Maritime industry pays an average ransom of $3 million in cyberattacks.

Published Nov 8, 2024 4:03 PM by Sean M. Holt

 

(Article originally published in Sept/Oct 2024 edition.)

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War
 

In the dead of night, a fully laden LNG tanker quietly navigates the narrow channel of a strategic U.S. port. Suddenly, the ship's GPS blinks and alarms, showing the vessel miles off course. The crew has no idea their instruments have fallen prey to a sophisticated spoofing attack—where false GPS signals are broadcast to deceive a ship's navigation system into believing it's in a different location. 

Without their knowledge, the tanker was silently steered off track, headed toward critical infrastructure.

Hours earlier, a shoreside vendor had completed what appeared to be routine maintenance, leaving behind a smartphone in the engine control room—a harmless oversight, or so it seemed. Unbeknownst to the crew, that phone was a Trojan horse, silently infiltrating the ship's systems despite the air gap designed to safeguard critical functions. 

As the crew struggled to regain control, the malware awoke, crippling the ship's electrical network, communications and emergency uninterrupted battery supply. The vessel, making way while not under command, drifted helplessly toward catastrophe. 

Do you think this is fiction? Hardly.

GPS Spoofing

In the dark waters off Crimea, the battleground has undeniably gone digital, truly evoking the "ghosts in the machine" scenario. This battleground embodies fifth- and sixth-generation warfare where cyber operations, electronic warfare and disinformation blur the lines between physical and virtual combat. 

AIS (Automatic Identification System) broadcasts vessels' positions via GPS inputs, but GPS spoofing manipulates this data, creating navigational confusion. Jamming, on the other hand, blocks signals altogether, leaving vessels without critical navigation and communication capabilities. These tactics could lead to catastrophic accidents in high-traffic areas like the Black Sea. In one incident, spoofed signals traced a "Z" across the sea near Crimea. It was unclear if it was the symbol for Russia's war efforts or the mark of Zorro, but it was disruptive.

In May 2023, a mass spoofing event off Crimea caused ships to appear far from their true locations. The Center for Advanced Defense Studies documented over 10,000 spoofing incidents between 2017 and 2019, demonstrating a correlation between Putin's movements and GPS spoofing incidents near Crimea. Such tactics are deployed to shield high-value targets from GPS-guided weapons, complicating the use of drones, missiles and other advanced precision systems.

In June and July 2021, NATO warships like the HMS Defender and USS Ross were spoofed near Crimea, underscoring Russia's use of electronic warfare to disrupt maritime operations and global shipping lanes. 

Just days before this article was published, the Ukrainian Navy launched an operation to combat Russian GPS spoofing, destroying an idle gas platform off Crimea. Russian forces were purportedly using the platform to broadcast GPS interference, which Ukraine claimed threatened civilian navigation. "The occupiers used this location for GPS spoofing to endanger civilian navigation. We cannot allow this," said Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk. 

The attack came just hours after Russian personnel and equipment were spotted on the platform.

On October 1, the Panama-flagged oil tanker M/V Cordelia Moon survived a major explosion. The attack, claimed by Yemen's Houthi rebels, involved eight ballistic and winged missiles, a drone and an uncrewed surface boat (videos of both attacks are online). A missile northwest of Hodeidah also hit a Liberia-flagged bulker. 

These incidents, along with the Ukrainian strike on a Russian GPS spoofing platform, underscore how low-tech, unmanned vessels, along with electronic warfare like GPS spoofing and jamming, pose severe risks to maritime safety.

As maritime systems become increasingly digital and interconnected, cyber warfare is no longer confined to the pages of a novel. It's an urgent, evolving threat lurking in the waters of global trade. 

CyberOwl & DNV: Securing Maritime Networks

The maritime sector faces increasing cybersecurity risks, driven mainly by the complexity of vessel lifecycles and supply chains. Daniel Ng, CEO of Singapore-based CyberOwl, explains that many shipping companies still treat cyber risk management as a one-off compliance task. 

"For cyber risk management to be effective, it needs to be continuous," says Ng. “This is where our partnership with DNV brings real value. By combining our expertise, we can address cyber risks throughout the vessel lifecycle."

This collaboration brings together over 70 maritime cybersecurity specialists in five global hubs from Oslo to Singapore, backed by a network of 500 cybersecurity experts and 7,000 maritime risk professionals. "This allows us to cover everything—from the design stage to vessel operations to incident response," notes Ng.

He points out that a significant challenge is the difference between operational technology (OT), which controls shipboard machinery, and information technology (IT), which handles data: "Legacy OT systems often aren't as secure as newer technologies. We align with standards like UR E26 for new systems but take a more practical approach to legacy systems. CyberOwl's technologies provide visibility into OT risks so shipowners can focus on real threats rather than theoretical ones."

Looking ahead, Ng sees the partnership driving innovation in maritime cybersecurity. He highlights CyberOwl's OT Security Manager as a key tool: "It ingests and interprets Excel documents, PDF reports and system drawings, helping shipowners assess risks without needing to deploy tech onboard." 

This approach supports compliance with the E.U.'s Network and Information Systems (NIS) Directive, aimed at protecting critical infrastructure. "Ultimately," says Ng, "we want to give shipowners peace of mind as they adopt digital technologies to boost performance and reduce emissions."

Information Fusion Centre: CYBSEC Threats & Trends

Based in Singapore, the Information Fusion Centre (IFC) serves as a critical hub for maritime security (MARSEC) monitoring and information-sharing across the Indo-Pacific. Under the Republic of Singapore Navy, the IFC collaborates with international liaison officers from over 25 countries to tackle maritime threats including piracy, smuggling and cybersecurity (CYBSEC).

The IFC emphasizes the increasing cyber risks to vessels' OT systems and the importance of continuous monitoring and rapid response. Its information-sharing capabilities have been instrumental in preventing cyber incidents from escalating into significant disruptions. 

"We've seen growing interest from shipping companies in involving us in their security drills, where we bring a naval perspective and real-time information-sharing," an IFC spokesperson noted.

Despite a 77 percent reduction in CYBSEC incidents in 2024—down to three from 13 the previous year—the IFC warns this may reflect a lack of reporting, not a decline in threats. Recent malware attacks on cargo vessels in Europe underscore the persistent cyber risks in high-threat areas.

The IFC provides regular updates on cybersecurity trends via its social media channels and advisories. Shipowners are encouraged to subscribe to these reports or engage the IFC in security exercises to boost their readiness against cyber threats. 

Tackling Cyber Espionage and Signal Jamming

Sahil Andrews Chand, Founder & CEO of ShipSafe, warns that signal jamming—disrupting communication and navigation—poses significant risks during critical operations like docking. 

"Jamming can lead to disorientation and even collisions in congested waters where precision is crucial," Chand explains. He also highlights the broader threat of cyber espionage, where attackers gather intelligence on shipping routes and cargo, creating severe security implications.

Chand addresses a common misconception in the maritime industry—the assumption that existing navigation systems are inherently secure. "This complacency can lead to dangerous vulnerabilities,” he notes. 

Many systems, primarily operational technology, can be exploited if not properly secured. Chand advocates for a structured cybersecurity approach, prioritizing critical communications such as navigation and safety, which must be safeguarded with dedicated bandwidth and strong security measures.

Chand also stresses the importance of network segmentation to isolate OT systems from administrative IT systems, limiting the impact of any potential breaches. He further emphasizes adopting robust firewalls and intrusion-detection systems to block unauthorized access.

"Limiting remote access is key," Chand continues, recommending multifactor authentication and strong passwords. However, technology alone isn't enough. "Continuous crew cybersecurity training is critical to ensure preparedness against evolving threats," he advises. Chand underscores the importance of collaboration with port authorities to share information about cyber incidents and threats.

Finally, he highlights the need to balance innovation with security, urging companies to evaluate new technologies like AI, machine learning, and blockchain through a cybersecurity lens to prevent new vulnerabilities from emerging.

Staying the Course

As cyber and electronic warfare tactics like GPS spoofing and jamming increasingly impact military and civilian vessels, experts agree that the industry must bolster defenses. Heightened vigilance, coupled with substantial investment in advanced technologies and crew training, is crucial. 

These measures are essential to safeguarding maritime operations against the evolving landscape of cyber warfare. – MarEx 

Technology columnist Sean Holt writes from Singapore.
 

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

  

Report: Houthis Are Earning $2 Billion a Year by Shaking Down Shipowners

A new report from the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen suggests that the Houthi group is extracting safe transit fees from owners - or else (EUNAVFOR image)

Published Nov 4, 2024 7:13 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

 

An as-yet-unreleased UN report suggests that Yemen's Houthi rebels have figured out a way to monetize their blockade of the Red Sea: insiders report that the group is operating a multi-billion-dollar tolling operation on the strategic waterway, extracting covert payments from shipowners in exchange for the right to pass safely. If accurate, the safe passage tolls may be among the group's largest sources of income, and would give the Houthis a significant financial incentive to continue attacks on shipping - regardless of the group's ideological motives.

In a long-running research project on the conflict in Yemen, a panel of experts compiled a 500-plus page report for the UN Security Council on Houthi capabilities, finances and alliances. The findings depict an organization that has grown rapidly, both at home and in its near abroad. The Houthi militia has developed a sophisticated international network for shipping, money laundering, smuggling, recruitment and piracy, earning revenue at multiple touch points along the way. 

The latest revenue opportunity is linked to the group's politically-motivated blockade of shipping on the Red Sea, enforced through prolific missile and drone attacks. The Houthis launched more than 130 strikes on merchant ships from last November through the end of July, the expert panel assessed. "The group’s shift to actions at sea increased their influence in the region," the panel wrote. "Such a scale of attacks, using weapon systems on civilian vessels, had never occurred since the Second World War."

Houthi leaders claim that their ballistic missile and drone attacks are targeted at ships linked to Israel and its allies. In practice, the group has repeatedly attacked a wide variety of vessels with no clear connection to Israel or the West. Some of the targeted ships have even been carrying cargoes for Houthi-supporting nations, including the group's primary sponsor, Iran.

While many analysts have put the scattered attack pattern down to faulty targeting, the UN panel's conversations with local shipbrokers suggest that Houthi forces also have a financial method for target selection. Shipowners can quietly pay the group a fee for a safe transit, implying that the shipowners who do not pay might have an unsafe transit. 

"The sources estimate the Houthis’ earnings from these illegal safe-transit fees to be about $180 million per month," the panel reported, noting that it has not been able to verify the information independently. 

If the report is accurate, the Houthis could be generating more revenue from safe-transit fees than they earn by taxing petroleum imports, one of their biggest sources of income. If Houthi leaders ever agreed to cease strikes on Red Sea shipping, the group would be giving up more than $2 billion a year in income, along with a substantial source of regional influence and leverage. 

The report also provides extensive details on the Houthis' ties to terrorist organizations (Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab and Hezbollah) and pirate action groups in Somalia, as well as details of its well-known links to the Iranian military apparatus and its "Axis of Resistance." 

"The scale, nature and extent of transfers of diverse military materiel and technology provided to the Houthis from external sources, including financial support and training of its combatants, is unprecedented," the panel concluded.

Egyptian Officials Cite “Severe Loss” at One Year Mark for Houthi Attacks

Egypt reports $6 billion impact after a year of Houthi attacks has diverted traffic from the Suez Canal (SCA file photo)

Published Nov 4, 2024 4:55 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

 

Egyptian officials quantified the severe level of economic damage to the country’s economy as the Houthis closed in on the first anniversary of the launch of their assaults on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Egypt emphasized the impact while it was meeting with the Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization Arsenio Dominguez while reiterating its commitment to maintaining freedom of navigation in the vital seaway.

Dominguez was touring the Red Sea region and meeting with leaders in Djibouti, Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. They discussed the current situation while Dominguez said the trip was meant to also express support for freedom of navigation as well as concern for innocent seafarers.

Egypt cited the dramatic economic impact as transits of the Suez Canal have declined. After record levels and a strong outlook for canal operations, reports indicate that overall traffic is down between 60 and 70 percent in the Suez Canal. The vast majority of containerships and all cruise ships diverted while an increasing number of bulkers, tankers, and car carriers have also rerouted. This comes despite the U.S. and EU efforts to maintain navigation and suppress the attacks by the Houthi. The past few months have shown a significant decline in the number of missile and drone attacks and long gaps between staging attacks.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdel Aati however reported that the loss of traffic has cost the Egyptian economy around $6 billion in the past year. He emphasized to the IMO leader the critical role the canal income plays to the country.

It is just short of a year since Houthi forces boarded the car carrier Galaxy Leader on November 19, 2023, and commandeered it into a port holding the crewmembers. Dominguez sought to call attention to the crew which remain captive despite outreach by the Philippines and others to have the crew released.

Egyptian officials also emphasized that they are committed to maintaining open transit. This came as there was an online uproar after an Israeli warship was spotted transiting the Suez Canal over the weekend.  

They responded to the online reports citing the Constantinople Convention, which was signed in 1888, that established international expectations of free transit. The Suez Canal Authority noted that it provides that “the Suez Maritime Canal shall always be free and open, in time of war as in time of peace, to every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of nationality.” They said that the authority remains legally and morally bound to uphold the agreements.

The Houthis however marked the upcoming one-year mark with the leader of the rebel group saying that the total number of targeted ships reached 202, which they called “an important achievement in every sense of the word.” The group’s spokesperson vowed that they would continue the attacks and not distinguish between vessels that had been sold and companies that trade with Israel. 

Last week, CEO of Maersk Vincent Clerc said that his company as well as the new Gemini Cooperation with Hapag-Lloyd expected the disruptions would continue well into 2025. The new alliance finalized its routing plans focused on the diversions around Africa. Other carriers however continue to selectively send vessels through the Red Sea and Suez Canal but are delayed waiting for naval escorts to enhance security.

 

New Warnings of Piracy Activity in Indian Ocean and Singapore Strait

EU forces maintain surveillance in the Indian Ocean as part of Operation ATALANTA (EUNAVFOR)

Published Oct 24, 2024 6:04 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

 

Despite the numerous reports that crime against seafarers has fallen dramatically, fresh warnings have gone out this week to vessels operating both in the Indian Ocean and transiting the Singapore Strait. EUNAVFOR warns that it is investigating suspected pirate action groups from Somalia while ReCAAP ISC in the Far East reported three new incidents in the Singapore Strait over the course of just two hours while warning of a possibility of further incidents.

The ICC International Maritime Bureau (IMB) reported early in October that crimes against seafarers were at a 30-year low in the first nine months of 2024. The highlighted progress in all regions including the Indian Ocean and Singapore Strait while cautioning that crew safety remained at risk.

Now after a lull in activity originating from Somalia, EUNAVFOR’s Operations Atalanta issued a warning this week that said groups had been reported setting out to sea from Somalia. They said there were possibly two action groups with a total of 13 armed pirates who set out late on October 22. In the past, they warned that the groups were operating further out to sea than historically threatening shipping over a much wider range. 

There was a spate of new activity beginning in November 2023 as the pirates were possibly emboldened by the incidents in the Red Sea and the increasing number of ships diverting. They were successful in taking control of a bulker and boarding other ships, although the Indian Navy and its elite forces were able to intervene and stop several incidents. One crew however was held until a ransom was paid.

Somalia pirates were also going after fishing vessels possibly to use them as motherships for attacks on large merchant ships. The incidents however tailed off after Atalanta and the Indian Navy were successful with several interventions. Speculation is that the monsoon season which is now ending could have stopped the pirates.

ReCAAP at the same time is warning that there has been a total of 39 incidents in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore since January 2024. They continue to focus on sea robbery but they are warning that in at least two of the recent incidents, the perpetrators that boarded the vessels were armed with knives. In most cases when detected the pirates flee and do not interact with the crew. The majority of the incidents are happening near the western side of the Singapore Strait.

In the early hours of October 18, three incidents were reported. The bulk carrier Nyon (35,500 dwt) was underway when five perpetrators with knives were sighted in the engine room. The alarm was raised and the crew searched the ship but no one was found and nothing was reported stolen. Just over an hour later, the bulker Aspasia Luck (37,700 dwt) sighted 10 armed perpetrators also in its engine room. The crew searched the ship and found that spare engine parts had been stolen.

A third incident happening about 30 minutes later involved the bulker Maran Spirit (93,000 dwt). A single perpetrator was seen in the engine room. The crew searched for more people but found nothing and did not report anything as being stolen.

All three of these incidents happened off Indonesia in the Phillip Channel. ReCAAP warns that 38 of the incidents were in the Singapore Strait which has been an ongoing area of concern. They continue to advise vessels to use vigilance and maintain look-outs while also calling on the local authorities to increase patrols and surveillance.

 

David Graeber’s Pirate Utopias

by Eric Laursen

Fifth Estate # 415, Summer 2024

a review of
Pirate Enlightenment, or the New Libertalia by David Graeber. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2023

David Graeber left us one last book before he died, sadly, at the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020. Pirate Enlightenment, or the New Libertalia, originally published in French in 2019, brings together the related projects that bookended his career: the anthropology of Madagascar, including how its highland communities avoid (one of David’s favorite words) the state, and the many ways that humans have organized themselves into complex, nonhierarchical societies throughout history.

The subject of his last book (really, a long essay) is once again the island where David did his doctoral field research, and his knowledge of the place is so deep that he can load the text with suppositions and speculation and still build a strong, convincing story out of scanty materials. In particular, he examines the communities in the northeast quarter of the island that developed out of the encounters between pirates and Malagasy people during the late 17th and early 18th centuries: the golden age of piracy.

As he did in The Dawn of Everything, the monumental study of early human societies that he co-authored with archaeologist David Wengrow, he knits together an alternative history of the Enlightenment era in which the pirate settlements that melded with the Indigenous peoples and were already the subject of legends and popular entertainment by the time of Voltaire, formed, “in a sense, the first Enlightenment political experiment.”

Some of the pirate crews that set up shop in Madagascar were already creating intentional, non-hierarchical communities aboard ship, David notes, and when they established settlements on land, they tried to replicate the form there. But they had no economic or cultural capital other than the booty they brought with them from raiding, and so they had to join forces with existing Malagasy communities: most importantly, with local women who were adept at raising and trading cattle, then the island’s most valuable agricultural commodity, and turning the pirates’ loot into capital.

Together, they “re-created local society,” igniting an “egalitarian revolution” that produced the Betsimisaraka confederation or kingdom, which flourished in the mid-18th century under a leader named Ratsimilaho, said to be the son of the Anglo-American pirate chief Thomas Tew, and which still gives its name to the second largest ethnic group on the island.

David’s aim in this book is to trace the Betsimisaraka confederation’s relationships with its neighbors and tease out what kind of community or polity it really was. Mostly, his tools are 18th century European accounts, all biased and many of them far from first-hand, along with some scanty archaeological finds. But all of this is great fodder for an anarchist anthropologist and historian, because as anarchists, many of us have a deep affection for cultural fusions, disappearance and evasion, and the “profoundly proletarian vision of liberation, necessarily violent and ephemeral,” that pirate culture has come to represent.

This perspective enables David to detect a story in the existing sources that’s quite different from the ones that traditional or even Marxist historians have told. In their accounts, pirates bearing booty allied themselves with local Malagasy elites to accumulate power and wealth, much like European capitalists.

In David’s version, by contrast, the pirates allied themselves with independent-minded women and outsider or subject peoples against the elites, aiming to create their own participatory, self-governing communities: a “creative synthesis of pirate governance and some of the more egalitarian elements in traditional Malagasy political culture.”

Instead of prefiguring the absorption of the Malagasy peoples into global capitalism, the pirates and their Indigenous comrades were searching for ways to avoid it. Whether you agree with his take or not—and he argues it very well—David in his last book has made a fascinating contribution to the literature on pirates that complicates how we understand first encounters between Europeans and the Indigenous in the lands that European states would later colonize. He asks us, implicitly, to consider whether it had to turn out the way it did.

This, of course, is what anarchist history is supposed to do: to not just accept the story handed down from above, but to challenge our received ideas about who can be an actor in history. As in The Dawn of Everything, David refuses to treat non-European peoples as either primitives or pure victims. In his interpretation, they were savvy, sophisticated people who made pragmatic, consciously political pacts with newcomers to further their own interests against both their own elites and the European states that would soon be attempting to take over the island.

What if, for example, the Europeans who came back from Madagascar with stories of strange pirate kingdoms had, in fact, been hoodwinked by the people they met there, sold a yarn that was tailored to meet their state-capitalist expectations? Was Ratsimilaho really a mighty king, or just a first among equals, a mock king using pirate loot to play the role of monarch?

“Much as on pirate ships,” David writes, “it was convenient to develop the reputations of all-powerful and bloodthirsty captains to overawe outsiders, even if internally, most decisions were made by majority vote, the founders of the [Betsimisaraka] confederation found it useful, especially when dealing with outsiders, to maintain the pretext of having an all-powerful king, and the existence of so much stolen finery made it easy to create something that looked like a royal court without having to make any significant reorganization of internal labor regimes.”

This proposition brings us back to the idea of avoidance, and the question of what indigenous peoples did when they encountered the agents of far-off states and had to decide how to establish relations without being absorbed or destroyed by them. Was the best course to imitate them, setting up their own states and playing the power game, as later Malagasy monarchs did in the face of French colonial pressure, or Hawaii’s kings when confronted with a creeping American takeover of their economy? Or, was it to evade, dissemble, and relocate as necessary?

Pirate Enlightenment doesn’t directly raise these questions, but David’s analysis of the Betsimisaraka confederation suggests a direction he might have taken in the second volume of his study with Wengrow; an examination of the often thin line, historically, between states and mock states, and a challenge to the materialist view of society.

Do people always set up new communities or polities to amass wealth and power—to “create economic value,” in capitalist parlance—or do they have other motivations? Elites, David writes, “are assumed to be in all important ways the same,” always “primarily in the business of accumulating wealth and power, and that if they can be differentiated, it is mainly by how much wealth and power they have so far managed to accumulate.”

Popular movements and intellectual currents that don’t fit this mold—”cosmology value, meaning—are largely written out of the picture” and humanity is “cursed to obsessive-compulsively enact the exact same play.” We are not, David contends, and this becomes clearer in the pages of Pirate Enlightenment, where he demonstrates once again that human history is far more varied, quirky, and entertaining than we’ve been taught.

Only a couple of generations separated Tom Tew and Ratsimilaho from Tom Paine in the American Revolution and Gracchus Babeuf in the French, and only a couple more from Proudhon and Bakunin. So, it’s fair to argue, as David does, that the tales Europeans imbibed about these shadowy figures on an island thousands of miles to the south, however garbled, are part of our anarchist heritage as well.

Eric Laursen is a longtime anarchist writer, journalist, and activist. His latest book is Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort, Author of “The Joy of Se” [see review in FE #414, Fall 2023 – Web archive note].

Salmon swim freely in the Klamath River for 1st time in a century after dams removed

Associated Press
Mon, October 7, 2024 

FILE - The Iron Gate Dam powerhouse and spillway are seen on the lower Klamath River near Hornbrook, Calif., March 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus, File)


HORNBROOK, Calif. (AP) — For the first time in more than a century, salmon are swimming freely along the Klamath River and its tributaries — a major watershed near the California-Oregon border — just days after the largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed.

Researchers determined that Chinook salmon began migrating Oct. 3 into previously inaccessible habitat above the site of the former Iron Gate dam, one of four towering dams demolished as part of a national movement to let rivers return to their natural flow and to restore ecosystems for fish and other wildlife.

“It’s been over one hundred years since a wild salmon last swam through this reach of the Klamath River,” said Damon Goodman, a regional director for the nonprofit conservation group California Trout. “I am incredibly humbled to witness this moment and share this news, standing on the shoulders of decades of work by our Tribal partners, as the salmon return home."


The dam removal project was completed Oct. 2, marking a major victory for local tribes that fought for decades to free hundreds of miles (kilometers) of the Klamath. Through protests, testimony and lawsuits, the tribes showcased the environmental devastation caused by the four hydroelectric dams, especially to salmon.

Scientists will use SONAR technology to continue to track migrating fish including Chinook salmon, Coho salmon and steelhead trout throughout the fall and winter to provide "important data on the river’s healing process,” Goodman said in a statement. “While dam removal is complete, recovery will be a long process.”

Conservation groups and tribes, along with state and federal agencies, have partnered on a monitoring program to record migration and track how fish respond long-term to the dam removals.

As of February, more than 2,000 dams had been removed in the U.S., the majority in the last 25 years, according to the advocacy group American Rivers. Among them were dams on Washington state’s Elwha River, which flows out of Olympic National Park into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Condit Dam on the White Salmon River, a tributary of the Columbia.

The Klamath was once known as the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast. But after power company PacifiCorp built the dams to generate electricity between 1918 and 1962, the structures halted the natural flow of the river and disrupted the lifecycle of the region’s salmon, which spend most of their life in the Pacific Ocean but return up their natal rivers to spawn.

The fish population dwindled dramatically. In 2002, a bacterial outbreak caused by low water and warm temperatures killed more than 34,000 fish, mostly Chinook salmon. That jumpstarted decades of advocacy from tribes and environmental groups, culminating in 2022 when federal regulators approved a plan to remove the dams.




Klamath River dam removal: before and after images show dramatic change
Cecilia Nowell
Tue, October 8, 2024 

Water flowing down the Klamath River where the Copco 2 dam once stood in Siskiyou county, California.Photograph: Swiftwater Films/AP


Related: Salmon swim freely in Klamath River for first time in more than 100 years

With California’s Klamath Dam removal project finally completed, new before and after photos show the dramatic differences along the river with and without the dams. The photos were taken by Swiftwater Films, a documentary company chronicling the dam removal project – a two decade long fight that concluded 2 October.

“The tribally led effort to dismantle the dams is an expression of our sacred duty to maintain balance in the world,” Yurok tribal chairman Joseph L James said in a statement. “That is why we fought so hard for so long to tear down the dams and bring the salmon home.”

Between 1903 and 1962, the electric power company PacifiCorp built a series of dams along the Klamath River to generate electricity. The dams disrupted the river’s natural flow, and the migratory routes of its fish - including, most famously, the Chinook salmon.

By 2002, low water levels and high temperatures caused a bacterial outbreak in the river, killing more than 34,000 fish. The incident spurred tribes, like the Yurok and Karuk, and environmentalists to begin advocating for the removal of the river’s dams. In 2022, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a plan to remove four dams, which would allow the river to flow freely between Lake Ewauna in Oregon to the Pacific Ocean.

The Klamath Dam removal project, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) called “the world’s largest dam removal effort”, began in July 2023 and concluded more than a year later.

“This is a monumental achievement – not just for the Klamath River but for our entire state, nation and planet,” Gavin Newsom, the California governor, said in a statement. “By taking down these outdated dams, we are giving salmon and other species a chance to thrive once again, while also restoring an essential lifeline for tribal communities who have long depended on the health of the river.”

With the removal project completed on 2 October, scientists with the non-profit California Trout captured images of a 2.5-ft-long Chinook salmon migrating upstream for the first time in more than 100 years the very next day. Yet, scientists stress that it will take many more years to fully restore the ecosystems impacted by the dams.


Yukon River salmon runs remain low, but glimmers of improvement emerge

Mon, October 7, 2024 

Yereth Rosen
Alaska Beacon

Salmon numbers in the Yukon River and its tributaries remained low this year, continuing a yearslong trend of struggles and harvest closures, but there were some positive signs, according to late-season information from Alaska and Canadian fisheries managers.

The fall run of chum salmon, which usually comes into the river system from mid-July to October, is the third lowest in a record that goes back to the 1970s, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said in a Yukon River update issued on Wednesday. It is expected to be less than a quarter of the historic average of about 900,000 fish, the update said.

However, the summer run of chum salmon, which arrived in the river system earlier, was strong enough this year to allow some subsistence harvests, albeit with various gear restrictions and a requirement that any Chinook salmon that were caught be returned to the water alive.

Subsistence fishing was allowed in both state-managed segments and federally managed segments of the Yukon River system. And it was allowed during the period when the two runs were overlapping.

Subsistence harvests of chum salmon from the summer run were allowed last year as well, after the return emerged as better than forecast.

While runs are low – and are failing to meet treaty targets for returns into Canada — there has been some marginal improvement since the worst period a few years ago, official reports show

“We hit rock bottom in 2021 for all species on the Yukon,” said Christy Gleason, an Alaska Department of Fish and Game area biologist for the Yukon River region.

There were upticks even for the river’s troubled Chinook salmon runs. As of Sept. 19, 24,112 of the fish had reached the Alaska-Canada border, according to the most recent update from Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

That is well below the goal of a 71,000-fish target in the U.S.-Canada Yukon River Salmon Agreement. But it is well above the 14,752 Chinook that made it that far up the river last year and the 13,000 total predicted in this year’s preseason forecast, according to the update.

Fewer fall chum salmon had reached the Yukon River’s Canadian border than the total counted the same time last year, however, Fisheries and Oceans Canada said.

The summer chum salmon run, which generally returns in the period leading up to mid-July, has presented a brighter picture than the fall run, which generally starts in mid-July and runs to October.

The runs differ more in the timing of their entry into the Yukon River system, Gleason said.

The summer run is bigger and has a different age composition, she said. While both have a mix of 4-year-old and 5-year-old fish, the summer run’s mix is more even while the fall run typically tilts heavily to the age-4 fish, she said.

That is important because the age-4 fish are part of an age group that was especially hard-hit by poor ocean conditions triggered by warmer temperatures, she said.

Federal and state scientists have found evidence that extreme marine heatwaves in the Bering Sea from 2014 to 2019 harmed the chum salmon that were in the ocean at the time.

Problems in the saltwater environment appear to be lingering, including for the age-4 salmon that are the offspring of the poor 2020 return, Gleason said. “The ocean conditions aren’t really improving, so we’re not seeing improvement in the fall chum,” she said.

Another difference between the summer and fall chum runs concerns spawning areas. The fall chum spawn much farther upstream in the Yukon River system, including in the Canadian headwaters, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

An additional factor hindering recovery of the fall chum salmon run could stem from that reliance on Canadian headwaters

An abrupt change in Canadian river habitat, resulting from extreme glacial retreat in 2016, created a case of what scientists termed “river piracy” that wiped out an important chum-spawning site.

That event is tied to climate change. It happened when Canada’s Kaskawulsh Glacier retreated so much that it stopped sending water to one of the two rivers it previously fed. The Slims River, which fed the Yukon River system, was the loser, and the water was instead diverted to the Kaskawulsh River, which flows into the Gulf of Alaska rather than the Bering Sea.

Exclusive The Salmon’s Call Trailer Explores Indigenous Relationship With Wild Salmon

Anthony Nash
Mon, October 7, 2024

(Image Credit: Firediva Productions)


ComingSoon is debuting an exclusive The Salmon’s Call trailer, previewing the upcoming documentary exploring the spiritual and cultural relationship between salmon and the Indigenous people of British Columbia.

What happens in The Salmon’s Call trailer?

The Salmon’s Call trailer highlights the film’s exploration of wild salmon and the Indigenous people who share a connection to them. The film dives deep into the salmon’s cycle, the unique ways of catching and preserving the fish, and the hidden dangers of fish farms on the Pacific coast.

Check out the exclusive The Salmon’s Call trailer below (watch other trailers and clips):

The Salmon’s Call is directed by Joy Haskell, an Indigenous filmmaker and founder of Firediva Productions. The film will have its world premiere at the Red Nation International Film Festival in Los Angeles on Friday, November 15, 2024. More screenings, including future festival appearances and a broadcast date for the film’s premiere on Knowledge Network, will be announced in the future.

“The Salmon’s Call is a powerful documentary that explores the intricate spiritual and cultural relationship between wild salmon and Indigenous people that has lasted centuries,” reads the film’s official synopsis. “It is told through an Indigenous lens and gives a unique voice to a vital symbol of renewal, transformation, and resilience. The film takes viewers on a breathtaking journey with the Sockeye salmon from the West Coast waters of British Columbia, traversing the Fraser River, through the Chilcotin and the Stuart River (Nak’alkoh) and Stuart Lake (Nak’albun) situated in Northern British Columbia. Along this journey, we meet various members of the community from elders to youths as they share their rich connection to the salmon.”


(Image Credit: Firediva Productions)

The post Exclusive The Salmon’s Call Trailer Explores Indigenous Relationship With Wild Salmon appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and  (

Nationalize the Banks

HEAR, HEAR

By Christopher W. Shaw

September 26, 2024

Source: Catalyst


Source: Glen Scarborough Wall Street. Flickr.

LONG READ

As a lonely critic who dared to challenge Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan during the stock market mania of the late 1990s, then congressman Bernie Sanders received recognition from the political left and dismissive coverage from the mainstream media. Sanders subsequently won significant national attention as an outspoken populist critic of the banking system in the wake of the 2007–8 financial crisis. After declaring his presidential candidacy in 2015, he cemented this reputation as the nation’s preeminent critic of bankers, using the campaign to express the anger that many Americans shared about the financial crisis and the resulting bailout. “If elected president,” Sanders pledged, “I will rein in Wall Street so they can’t crash our economy again.”1 Hillary Clinton conceded the appeal of this campaign promise when — panicked by the popularity of Sanders’s attack on finance and unable to respond effectively to his criticisms — she sought to change the subject by exclaiming, “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow . . . would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community?”2 The stand that Sanders took against the banks was compelling, true to the contemporary moment, and appeared novel. But although unfamiliar to the times, opposing the excesses and power of bankers was hardly original. Sanders emerged as the successor to an influential strand of American political culture with deep historical roots that has motivated far-reaching economic demands in the past and could do so again in the future.

As the Sanders campaign demonstrated, while banking is widely considered to be dry and dull, it’s nevertheless an issue that can energize working-class politics. Discussing and debating banking calls attention to opposing material interests, which promotes a politics that is attuned to questions of class. Workers confront the relevance of banking to their daily lives every time they check their account balance or pay a bill.3 When Sanders presented financial policy as a clash between Wall Street on the one hand and “working families” on the other, he articulated a class-based populist message that could reach a diverse spectrum of working-class voters. In the past few years, local single-issue groups promoting public banks made real headway in several heavily Democratic cities and states. Among other issues, their campaigns foregrounded green energy projects and unequal credit access due to racial discrimination. This messaging excites liberal Democratic politicians, but its capacity to forge broader coalitions and inspire the solidarity that sustains working-class politics is more limited.4

A look at the past reveals that banking programs that are framed in universal terms can offer an effective organizing device with widespread appeal. Shared commitments to remaking the banking system were the cornerstone of an influential American political tradition. In the late nineteenth century, the “money question” galvanized two mass political parties that protested Gilded Age inequality, the Greenback and Populist parties. In the early twentieth century, large numbers of workers and farmers across the nation rallied around banking reforms as a means to make American society more democratic. Seen in the light of this history, the promise of material benefits from government banking continues to present a source for working-class political mobilization today.

Recent polling indicates that the public is dissatisfied with the private banking system. In 2024, the Pew Research Center revealed that 60 percent of Americans think that banks have a negative effect on the nation. This discontent with the current banking system is bipartisan: Democrats and Republicans were equally likely to view banks as having a negative impact.5 Such an outlook conformed with the findings of earlier surveys. A 2016 poll by Edison Research found that a majority thought Wall Street — a term commonly used for large banks — did more to hurt than to help the lives of Americans, an opinion that prevailed across racial, gender, educational, and partisan lines, with one exception. The only group that bucked this pattern were those with postgraduate educations, though here, too, a plurality thought Wall Street did more harm than good.6 And these poll results aren’t a post–financial crisis phenomenon. When Louis Harris and Associates conducted polling on the subject in 1996, amid an economic boom, the firm’s chairman concluded that the public’s impression of Wall Street was “awful.” In the survey, 61 percent of Americans agreed that Wall Street was “dominated by greed and selfishness” and 64 percent agreed that “most people on Wall Street would be willing to break the law if they believed they could make a lot of money and get away with it.”7

Government banking could open up new economic possibilities. Absent the imperative to maximize profits, public banks from the local to the federal level could help advance social democratic policies. Operating under the mandate to promote social welfare, such banks could help finance universal government programs. Public infrastructure projects would be prime candidates for these loans. Importantly, government banking would bolster public control over capital flows. Increasing funding opportunities for social goods and government services would invigorate the public sector. Government banking could allow for greater public management of capital allocation among different economic sectors and make investment decisions more democratically responsive.

Securing these results would demand that the administration of government banks be organized around public transparency and accountability. Publicly appointed and elected governing committees would help hold decision-makers responsible to voters. Fostering interaction between government banking officials and the people their decisions affect would promote the leadership’s concern for social needs and public opinions. Requiring officials to consult regularly with the full spectrum of social stakeholders through advisory councils and open meetings would offer a means of institutionalizing such connections. Placing officials under regular oversight and review by elected legislatures would further promote democratic responsiveness.

Opponents of government programs habitually claim that Americans are inherently opposed to government programs. Yet voices on the political right are among those questioning this cliché. In a 2024 survey, American Compass, an organization that advocates a “new conservative economic agenda,” found “vanishingly little support across parties for reducing any of government’s major roles.” Under one-fifth of those polled thought government programs were “usually unhelpful,” while the majority were open-minded on the subject, stating that they “don’t believe a general rule of thumb [on government’s role] makes sense.”8 This undoctrinaire verdict indicates that most Americans can be receptive to the merits of government programs — an attitude that has historical precedent in the United States. The twentieth century witnessed the New Deal, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, a slew of reforms during President Richard Nixon’s administration, and numerous other government initiatives. More recently, right-wing opponents of health care reform fervidly attacked the Affordable Care Act and framed it as emblematic of “big government.” During the past decade, this law has gained steadily in public acceptance, and all but ten states — mostly in the South — have adopted the program’s Medicaid expansion.
Banking for the People

Though bankers might seem omnipotent, the nature of banking makes the entire sector susceptible to public pressure. The very mechanics of banking yield major vulnerabilities to negative popular opinion: there is always the risk of depositors withdrawing their money and closing their accounts. In the early 1980s, boycotts targeting banks proved an effective tool for activists defying deindustrialization in western Pennsylvania. In one instance, such a boycott helped protect thousands of workers’ pensions and severance pay. In another, a threatened boycott reversed plans to shutter a plant employing 650 workers.9 Strategically more significant is the leverage that the public has over banking in the political realm. While the political influence of bankers is well known, their need to pursue self-protection through political involvement is less noted. Banks are reliant on government, particularly the national government. The private banking system is both a relatively regulated branch of the economy and favored with the privilege of a federal safety net, which is integral to its existence. The banking system depends on confidence rooted in continuing support from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Reserve System, and ultimately the federal government itself. The current power of bankers is less a structural matter of course than the consequence of an absence of political challenges.

During the early twentieth century, the private banking system faced significant grassroots criticism. Keen public interest in financial questions reflected the political inheritance of Greenbackism and Populism. Influenced by these traditions, and also by the rising socialist movement, many Americans looked forward to establishing government banks.

Discussion of the subject of government banking evokes an enduring line of historical inquiry: “Why is there no socialism in the United States?” Over the years, numerous explanations have been offered to this question, including racial and ethnic animosities, high levels of social mobility, an entrenched two-party system, and an intensely individualistic culture. More recently, historians writing in the latter part of the twentieth century interrogated the premise of this question itself, revealing that socialism not only existed in the United States but had roots in the American heartland. Their research situated small Midwestern cities of the Progressive Era, the countryside of Oklahoma during the same period, and the nineteenth-century Indiana milieu that produced Eugene V. Debs at the center of the nation’s socialist history.10 When historians recovered the socialist past of the early twentieth-century United States, they also resurrected the memory of the movement’s substantial appeal to workers and farmers. In 1920, Debs famously received close to one million votes for president while imprisoned at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary due to his opposition to World War I.

Yet an important dimension of the question of socialism’s appeal remains comparatively neglected: the prevalence and popularity, beyond the Socialist Party of America, of economic ideas that intersect and overlap with socialism. In this article, I will explore an aspect of the American past that has been lost: a mass movement of working people who sought to socialize banking. During the first half of the twentieth century, widespread public condemnation of the private banking system and the bankers who controlled this fundamental feature of capitalism led to broad support among working people for creating government banks and nationalizing privately owned ones.11

The appeal of government banking to early twentieth-century Americans resulted from a remarkable level of popular engagement with financial policy questions, one largely absent today. Material concerns drove these workers and farmers to push for a banking reformation that would make the economy more equitable. Such critics of the banking and monetary status quo thought broadly about economic matters. But there was a smaller, less influential group whose interest in money was narrower. An exclusive focus on financial affairs led these critics to believe that the only necessary economic change involved tinkering with money. Among these were establishment figures whose attempt to use monetary reform to forestall other economic reforms reveals the reactionary motivations behind such programs. During the Great Depression, for example, one conspicuous lobby for inflation — the Committee for the Nation — was an organization of business executives who opposed the New Deal. There were also politically and socially marginal reactionaries, typically of an antisemitic variety, whose conspiracy theories incorporated financial nostrums. The political program of the 1930s protofascist group the Silver Shirts, for instance, addressed monetary matters. A distinguishing feature of their program was the doubtful proposition that replacing physical currency with a network of checking accounts would eliminate “money crimes” like robbery and the extortion of ransom through kidnapping.12

While groups such as the Committee for the Nation and the Silver Shirts attempted to turn mass involvement with financial questions to their own ends, elite-orchestrated and fringe political programs unfolded apart from the grassroots banking politics of working people. Truly populist banking politics, by contrast, was rooted in labor unions and farmer groups, institutions that working people organized, led, and funded themselves. Numerous worker and farmer institutions, from the local to the national levels — ranging from the Chicago Federation of Labor to the National Farmers Union and the United Mine Workers of America — provided forums where heterodox financial ideas circulated, including the belief that establishing government banks would combat the abuses of the existing financial system as a whole.

On an individual level, working people were interested in banking because they wanted safety for their savings and greater access to credit. The motive here was less about becoming rich than about attaining the modest prosperity that would offer basic financial security to them and their families. They also hoped to overcome the economic, political, and social threat posed by the concentration of vast financial power in only a few hands. Opponents of the “money power” endeavored to tame it for the sake of democracy. Working people understood Wall Street to be the headquarters of capitalism, autonomously deciding where investment would and would not be channeled. They believed that the profit-seeking excesses of large, unaccountable financial institutions frequently threatened economic stability.13 Accordingly, on this front as well, working people’s quest for financial security made reforming the banking system a priority for them, because they understood that, operating with minimal oversight, banks both caused and magnified the recurring depressions that regularly wreaked havoc in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The collective political action that emerged from policy discussions within organizations of workers and farmers drove significant changes to the banking system from the 1910s through the 1930s. A major impetus for most of the era’s banking reforms was persistent public pressure, consistently expressed through elected officials, for more government involvement in this critical sector of the economy. In comparison with today, the banking system operated more autonomously from government, stamping this reform agenda as a clear break with past practice. Still, the vigor of popular involvement in grassroots banking politics produced victories despite the burden of precedent and the banking fraternity’s bitter resistance. The possibility of government enterprise in the form of public banks presented a sweeping policy option that loomed over all contemporary financial debates. The threat of such a radical step eased reforms that now appear moderate but were opposed adamantly by bankers at the time, who attacked the FDIC, Farm Credit System, and now defunct Postal Savings System. Contrary to their fears, following its establishment in 1934, the FDIC brought unprecedented stability to the banking system. It was the keystone of a reformed financial order that no longer fueled sharp booms and busts, providing a foundation for post–World War II mass prosperity and neutralizing future demands for far-reaching changes to banking.

Historical accounts of mass engagement with financial politics in the modern society that emerged between the Civil War and World War II have emphasized monetary debates, especially the 1890s conflict over the currency that arrayed the gold standard against bimetallism (basing money on both gold and silver). But grassroots banking politics in the early twentieth century was less focused on how money ought to be defined than on the purpose of financial institutions. Making finance accountable to the material and moral concerns of working people was at the heart of this mass movement. Its supporters believed that stripping the control of money and credit from bankers would end the profit motive’s power not only over individuals but also over investment decisions that shaped larger economic developments. The idea of organizing banking to serve working people — instead of exploiting them — mobilized workers and farmers, who pursued a populist economic vision that aligned with socialist ideals. In his 2016 campaign, Sanders revealed that financial reform can still motivate working-class voters today.
Greenbackers, Populists and Socialists

The 1928 and 1932 Socialist Party vice presidential nominee James H. Maurer entered politics through his involvement in financial reform. His political activism was pivotal to the development of the strong socialist movement in Reading, Pennsylvania, that peaked in the late 1920s.14 Socialism in the city was rooted among its largely Pennsylvania Dutch working class — a background that Maurer shared. Overcoming poverty and illiteracy, he forged an alliance between organized labor and socialism in his hometown, eventually becoming president of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor. A newsboy at six years old and a factory laborer at ten, at sixteen Maurer was an illiterate apprentice in a machine shop. But his life changed forever thanks to a politically active machinist who taught him how to read. Under this fellow worker’s tutelage, Maurer embarked upon an intensive program of self-education on the topics of “banking, the gold standard, bimetallism, paper money, inflated currency, contracted currency, free coinage of silver.”15 He had become one of many working-class students of finance during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Learning about financial issues was an empowering experience for Maurer. “Before I was seventeen,” he recalled, “I believed I knew more about banking and the manipulation of money than most Congressmen did.” Although too young to vote, Maurer became an enthusiastic member of the Greenback Party. Greenbackers wanted the federal government to combat the frequent economic depressions and ruinous deflation of the late nineteenth century by printing large amounts of paper currency. Through his involvement with the Greenback Party, Maurer learned the mechanics of political organizing, carrying the flag in the party’s parades, distributing its literature, and generally doing whatever work needed to be done. By the 1890s, the Greenback Party was moribund, but its financial ideas had a new home in the growing Populist movement — a mass protest against laissez-faire capitalism that won adherents among Midwestern wheat farmers and Southern cotton farmers, Western miners and urban construction workers. Maurer found himself in great demand as a speaker at Populist events throughout Pennsylvania. “Bankers particularly came in for scathing abuse,” he recalled. “We handled them without gloves.”16

The banker was a figure who represented unearned wealth and unaccountable power. Casting a critical eye on the riches that bankers enjoyed and the undue influence they exercised helped contemporaries think in more systemic ways about the unfairness of economic arrangements that privileged some and disadvantaged others. The Panic of 1907, for example, was caused by a reckless and bungled attempt to corner a mining stock and the ensuing failure of banks connected with the unsuccessful speculators. The federal government hurried to rescue shaky banks with a sizable no-interest loan. Meanwhile, the economic depression that this financial crisis caused threw millions of workers out of their jobs. A socialist member of the United Mine Workers of America blamed the depression on the “instability of our present banking system . . . augmented by . . . stock gamblers and money sharks, beside whom a common horse-thief or safe-breaker would be a respectable citizen.”17

In the aftermath of the 1907 crisis, the largest-circulation socialist newspaper in the nation, the Appeal to Reason of Girard, Kansas, used banking to dramatize the disparate nature of government involvement in the economy. “What is a banker to do in a financial crisis if he is out of cash?” the newspaper asked. “Come to the United States treasury and help yourself to government money.” The federal response, the Appeal observed, was entirely different in the case of unemployed workers. “What is a man to do who is out of work in a financial crisis and is starving? God knows!”18 The privileges that bankers enjoyed provided the Appeal with an instructive case study of how, despite criticisms of socialism that romanticized laissez-faire principles, government was already active in the economy. Government’s finger was tipping the scale in favor of capitalists and against working people, whereas socialism would orient government efforts toward aiding the working class.

When socialists criticized bankers and the privately owned banking system, they connected with an established pillar of working-class political culture. Large numbers of workers and farmers studied, discussed, and debated a variety of financial reforms. And with a lineage extending back to the Greenbackers and the Populists, government banking was deeply embedded in this political tradition. However, as the socialist movement grew in the first decade of the twentieth century, a former Populist vice presidential nominee, Thomas E. Watson, became one of socialism’s more vociferous critics. Many participants in the Populist uprising of the 1890s — most of whom were farmers — disagreed with Watson. They considered socialism to be a fuller development of their political philosophy. “I had the pleasure of voting for you in ’92,” a resident of upstate New York informed Watson, “and it is a matter of profound regret . . . that you cannot . . . step forward into the Socialist party.”19 Yet despite Watson’s denunciations of socialism, he promoted the idea of a federal bank that would make low-interest loans more widely available. It’s unsurprising then, given these two movements’ overlapping ideas, that in Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas, historian James R. Green found that “former radical Populists played an important role in building the early Socialist party locals.” Their political efforts proved highly successful, with one in six Oklahoma voters casting their ballots for Debs in the 1912 presidential election, an electoral result that rested on enthusiastic support from farmers.20

In 1912, the Socialist Party had put aside the ideological objections of some members and embraced farmers as fellow members of the working class.21 For workers, banking was an urgent political issue because the existing system’s instability ignited and fueled punishing economic depressions. Moreover, given that periodic hard times were a fact of life, those who managed to accumulate a nest egg wanted it to remain secure. In addition to these concerns, affordable credit was an especially pressing matter for farmers, since for them borrowing from lenders was analogous to the wage relationship between workers and employers. Credit allowed farmers to purchase essential supplies like seeds and fertilizer, and the agricultural loans that farming required typically imposed high and even usurious interest payments. Therefore, when socialists discussed banking, they spoke directly to a paramount concern of farmers. A leading socialist organizer in Oklahoma, Oscar Ameringer, stressed that “nationalization of the banking system, loaning money at actual cost, would give capital to the usury ridden farmer at a rate . . . lower than his greatest expectations.”22 The high cost of farm loans motivated supporters of the Bank of North Dakota — the sole state bank in the nation today — who persevered against opposition to its creation in 1919 and subsequently shielded the institution from attacks during its vulnerable early years.23

“The collective ownership and democratic management of the banking and currency system” became part of the Socialist Party platform in 1912.24 But government banking was much discussed and highly popular among working people well beyond party circles throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Postal banking was one form of government banking that received extensive public support. Numerous labor unions and farmer organizations lobbied to secure the 1911 establishment of the Postal Savings System, whose sole function was to offer savings accounts for small depositors. Shortly after the system’s inauguration, the 1912 American Federation of Labor convention sought to expand its role, resolving that funds deposited in the Postal Savings System should “be loaned to individuals . . . preferably to laboring people striving to obtain a home.” For decades, working people continued to urge that the Post Office Department become a full-fledged bank, offering checking accounts and low-interest loans through the nation’s extensive network of post offices.25

An additional legislative victory during this era that owed much to advocates of public banks involved farm lending. From the Populist movement forward, farmers had called repeatedly for the national government to provide them with affordable credit. Farmers frequently condemned bankers as superfluous and burdensome intermediaries who extracted unearned profit through interest payments. “Why not cut out this useless middle man, and the high rates of interest?” demanded one Nebraska farmer. In 1915, the Appeal to Reason spoke to this grievance, observing that under existing practices “the farmer suffers most” — even becoming “a debtor citizen” — and proposing to replace “private control of money and banking” with “absolute public control.” That summer, the nation’s three largest farmer organizations “unanimously agreed” on a plan that would create a federal government program for loaning money directly to farmers at low interest. The Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 established an agricultural lending system that fell short of achieving the strictly governmental institution that many farmers favored. Still, this new system had access to funding from the United States Treasury and was governed by public officials. As farmers had predicted, the result was lower interest rates under more favorable terms.26
Producers and Parasites

Public banking proposals multiplied rapidly during the early years of the Great Depression, when one-fifth of the nation’s privately owned banks failed. In addition to difficult economic conditions, mismanagement and white-collar crime played significant roles in the banking crisis. In response to this financial disaster, the grassroots of the socialist movement pressed the case for government banks. “Captain Kidd in his most balmiest days would have gladly exchanged his piracy business for this ‘legitimate’ banking business,” one socialist declared in a letter to the editor. “The public ownership of all the banking institutions . . . is the only hope of the public for redemption from the present chaotic banking conditions that has helped paralyze this country.” Another correspondent implored the Milwaukee Leader “and all the other Socialist papers [to] print a form for a petition that the people could use to petition the government to establish government banks.” The Reading Labor Advocate did not promote such a petition drive but did urge that banking be “made a government function” as the “first step” toward replacing “the private profit system of industry.”27

The collapse of the private banking system in 1933 forced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to declare a national bank holiday immediately following his inauguration. The Socialist Party presented the new administration with a plan for transitioning to government banking. The Houston Post, a Democratic newspaper, predicted that recent events would make the nation especially receptive to socialist banking proposals.28 Yet given the extent to which the Depression undermined the standing of financial, business, and other orthodox economic authorities, the 1930s proved to be particularly frustrating for the movement. The Socialist Party’s emergence from World War I as a significantly reduced political force set the stage for this anticlimactic period. Socialist leader Norman Thomas perceptively observed that the New Deal undercut the party’s appeal, sarcastically remarking that Roosevelt carried out its program “on a stretcher.”29

Yet during the Depression, farmers and workers demanding government ownership and operation of banking embraced principles that socialists upheld, notably that existing economic arrangements awarded unaccountable private actors too much power, that the profit motive should not govern economic activity, and that the economy was a collective endeavor that ought to promote the common good. For example, New York City plunged into a fiscal crisis in the early 1930s, which empowered bankers to dictate budget policy as a condition for extending the loans that the city required to avoid default.30 Socialist leader Morris Hillquit recommended a municipal bank “as a protection against the domination of private bankers.”31 Appalled teachers in the public school system rallied to this cause, and their union denounced the banks for subverting fundamental democratic practice. In 1933, the American Federation of Teachers condemned the bankers’ “conspiracy to control government through their power to withhold credit,” resolving in favor of “a system of national banks under federal ownership and control.” The union had concluded that “only through government control of banking and credit can the manipulation of our financial structure for private ends be terminated.”32

Meanwhile, on the other side of the nation, the leading organization of small farmers in California — the State Grange — declared in its journal that banking “is not a producer of wealth — it is a middleman” and envisioned government banks that made affordable credit available on an equitable basis. Since banks were merely the intermediary between money and borrowers, these farmers believed it was necessary to remove the profit motive from banking by making “the government . . . the channel through which the cash and credit of the nation is made available to the people.” This arrangement would promote modest economic success, thereby supporting the financial security of citizens and sustaining the health of communities. Emphasizing that banking should not operate in the interest of profit extraction, the district grange of San Joaquin County insisted that “the service which money is designed to perform is that of a collective nature . . . private control of either the circulation of credit or the expansion of credit destroys the equitable feature of this service.” These Grangers accordingly “urge[d] a complete control of all monies by the government and the distribution of all monies through government agencies.”33

New Yorkers and Californians promoting the transformation of banking into a government function represented a prevalent opinion among working people nationwide. Support for nationalizing banking was expressed in multiple forms and in varied places, including through the state federations of labor of Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Washington; the state granges of California, Idaho, Missouri, Oregon, and Washington; and the state farmers’ unions of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Montana.34 As late as World War II, the Minnesota State Federation of Labor wanted “private persons and corporations . . . forbidden to do a banking business . . . in order that value of money, of commodities, and of Labor power be stabilized and freed from the manipulations of speculators.” During the war, a union oil worker (and devoted advocate of government banking) echoed the venerable tradition of warning that “a few ruthless, cold-blooded, brutal private bankers have the power to bring on . . . continued economic chaos.”35

Although historians writing after the cultural turn often portray each glance, gesture, and utterance of marginalized individuals as consequential acts of resistance, a historical discrepancy exists between the prevalence of grievances among working people and the comparative infrequency of political action on their part.36 In order to produce effective action, a sense of injury requires a cogent interpretation of its causes. Workers and farmers who studied banking issues regularly concluded that bankers were parasites who profited from the labor of producers. This understanding encouraged working people to believe that their labor entitled them to both a fair share of what the economy produced and greater control over economic institutions themselves. After all, even though bankers performed no productive service, the existing banking system imposed these superfluous middlemen — exploitative figures who used the money that depositors had earned to extract undeserved income from borrowers.

The sharp juxtaposition of productive labor and unproductive finance yielded a producerist analysis that promoted a sense of solidarity among working people. Producerism holds that honest work creates wealth; hence producers should receive the fruits of their labor, not idle parasites. “What do the bankers produce that they can live on the fat of the land while we who produce everything have almost nothing of what we produce?” asked one Californian during the Depression.37 This perspective expressed a stark perception of opposing economic interests — a form of class division that inspired political action. Workers and farmers who considered themselves contributors to the commonweal shared a sense of exploitation at the hands of these nonproducers. Producerist convictions inspired working people to imagine banking alternatives that would rectify existing injustices and elevate the common good. Discontent with the private banking system promoted the idea that government banking could make the economy more responsive to democratic principles. This insight advanced a sense of the possible that motivated activist workers and farmers to campaign for public banks through their membership organizations.

Of course, in spite of the strength of public support for government banking, private banking remains the default model in the United States. When the banks collapsed in 1933, President Roosevelt was compelled to impose federal control over the entire system. The prestige of bankers was badly tarnished, and banks were not functioning. “It ought to be accepted as a principle,” Norman Thomas argued, “that banks saved only by government action . . . should pass absolutely into the control of the government and not be returned to the owners who could not manage them.”38 But in this moment of crisis, Roosevelt made the expedient decision to resurrect the private banking system. One supporter of the socialization of banking with contacts inside the administration reported that “the money changers whom Mr. Roosevelt drove out of the temples in his inaugural [are] congregating in the White House and telling him what to do.” The leading administration official during the crafting and execution of the bank holiday later observed that “capitalism was saved in eight days.”39

The ability of the private banking system to survive this trial shows how firmly entrenched its power was. But the extent of this power also makes clear both how audacious the grassroots banking politics campaign was and how remarkable its achievements were. The hostile opposition of bankers, for example, could not prevent the establishment of a government bank that extended throughout the nation: the Postal Savings System, often referred to as “Uncle Sam’s Savings Bank.” Rather than deter champions of government banking, awareness of the strength of their opponents actually motivated populist advocacy. “Do not get it into your heads brother farmers that these well fed bankers are going to let you get away from their crib if they can help it,” stressed Grange leader Carey B. Kegley. “The picking is entirely too good for them ever to permit you to be relieved from paying tribute.” Proponents of postal banking maintained their efforts to extend the institution following its establishment. Kegley, for example, proposed lending its funds to farmers at low interest.40 The possibility of comprehensive postal banking remained a threatening prospect to bankers until waning public interest in financial questions allowed them to lobby successfully for the Postal Savings System’s termination in 1966.

From today’s vantage point, it’s remarkable how frequently bankers were forced on the political defensive during the first half of the twentieth century. The relative ease with which bankers have promoted their desired deregulatory agenda and extracted government bailouts in recent decades underlines this point. “The banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill,” stated Senator Richard J. Durbin during the 2007–8 financial crisis. “And they frankly own the place.”41

The achievements of banking politics in its heyday were possible because of the vibrancy of the era’s worker and farmer organizations. Institutions that working people created and maintained served as schoolhouses where members discussed and debated financial issues. These autonomous spaces were relatively free of the economic orthodoxies that were used to defend established power relations. Within this sphere, bankers lacked authority and standing, which fostered an oppositional politics that — unlike the society at large — did not defer to the private banking system and its allies. Through participation in this populist political culture, workers and farmers became more fully conscious of the extent to which their own interests were at odds with the existing banking and monetary system, and consequently freer to formulate their own visions for what that system should become. Additionally, labor unions and farmer organizations provided working people with a collective voice that amplified their influence inside policymaking circles. This institutional framework allowed working people to challenge the prerogatives of bankers.
Sanders 2016 and Afterward

The economy and resulting social structure that made possible early twentieth-century banking politics has passed into history. The small farmers who were central to this politics are much diminished in number, and the labor movement has been in retreat for decades. But the inherent economic dynamic that generated mass interest in banking questions remains relevant today. In important respects, the relationship between the public and the current banking system resembles the situation that gave rise to grassroots banking politics over a century ago. Large numbers of Americans increasingly contend with burdensome debts as a regular feature of their lives. And the banking structure has become more unstable in recent decades, producing the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, the financial crisis of 2007–8, and the spate of failures among large so-called “regional” banks in 2023. Stimulating a renewed interest in banking politics, as Sanders did, could create pressure for vital changes in American society today.

In his 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders achieved a significant breakthrough: reintroducing politics rooted in class analysis to the national scene. One of his main themes on the campaign trail was the threat that banks — and especially the large banks of Wall Street — posed to working families. Sanders demonstrated that banking could again become an issue that mobilizes voters. He described “an economy and a political system that has been rigged by Wall Street to benefit the wealthiest . . . at the expense of everyone else.” Too-big-to-fail banks and pervasive white-collar crime, Sanders argued, define the nation’s banking system, abetted by a regulatory regime that “has been hijacked by the very bankers it is in charge of regulating.” He promised a dramatic departure from existing policies if elected. “Big banks will not be too big to fail,” Sanders pledged. “Big bankers will not be too big to jail.”42

Although a democratic socialist, Sanders did not advance the nationalization of banking as the solution. The political culture of banking politics that made such proposals so common in the past had faded away decades earlier. Still, Sanders promised a true break from the status quo that included reviving postal banking, which would have “an important role in providing modest types of banking service to folks who need it.” Furthermore, Sanders made Clinton defend her affiliation with Wall Street, demonstrating that for many voters such connections with the financial sector had become a political liability. The populist analysis of the banking system that Sanders articulated echoed criticisms that were heard widely in the early twentieth century. “A handful of people on Wall Street,” he observed, “have extraordinary power over the economic and political life of our country.” But the most striking link to the past was how Sanders proposed to do something about this undue influence. “When millions of working families stand together, demanding fundamental changes in our financial system,” he observed, “we have the power to bring about . . . change.”43

Socialism received a major boost from the Sanders campaign, but today’s socialism isn’t the working-class movement of the early twentieth century. Among members of the nation’s largest socialist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, a 2021 survey found that more than 80 percent had a college degree and 35 percent had an advanced degree.44 But when Sanders talked about banking, he reached a different audience. A key strength of Sanders’s 2016 candidacy was the clarity of his class-based message. By addressing banking, Sanders communicated a commitment to advancing the material interests of working people. Placing discussions about banks, bankers, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve at the center of his campaign allied Sanders with struggling workers — those harmed by financialization, deindustrialization, corporate outsourcing, foreign-trade agreements, and the other economic reconfigurations that have disadvantaged workers. His depiction of finance offered structural clarity and presented specific reforms without becoming overly technical. Rebuilding working-class institutions and political power requires this type of compelling analysis of issues that are relevant to the everyday lives of citizens.

Consumer banking services are fundamental to daily life. At publicly accountable government banks, working people would benefit materially from consumer services that are not grounded in profit extraction. At public institutions, the profit motive wouldn’t inspire administrators to shave expenses and inflate revenues by increasingly monetizing, minimizing, and even eliminating functions that depositors and borrowers value — a never-ending push within the private banking system.45 The agenda of officials wouldn’t revolve around levying high interest payments, imposing large fees, inventing entirely new fees, automating customer service jobs, closing branch offices, and devising various strategies to reduce services and nickel-and-dime consumers. Instead of commodifying personal financial information, public banks could offer privacy protections. Credit unions represent a notably successful example of cooperative enterprise in the United States because they provide their members an attractive alternative to for-profit banks. Government banking would attract patronage and win public support for the same reason.

Government banking could have a salutary macroeconomic function, offering countercyclical support when economic conditions worsen. Stepped-up lending during such periods could reinforce other fiscal and monetary responses, including jobs guarantee programs. At the state and local levels, government banks could brace sagging budgets amid tax-revenue declines. The funds of government banks could create opportunities to extend concrete gains to working people in normal economic times as well. The following discussion suggests some ways that government bank assets could be used to benefit working people in their everyday lives.

Austerity policies have diminished numerous public goods, but government banking could provide affordable opportunities for financing a diversity of job-creating public works projects at the federal, state, county, and municipal levels. Instead of confronting burdensome interest payments through the typical array of private lenders and bondholders, government agencies could borrow funds at more attractive terms, making possible projects that would otherwise be deemed unviable.

The nation’s public spaces are too often poorly maintained and even crumbling. Educational facilities such as schools and libraries, in addition to more specialized structures like museums and planetariums, could be constructed and renovated using financing provided by government banks. Buildings that serve the public, from municipal hospitals and clinics to community centers and post offices, could be transformed from blueprints into bricks and mortar. New and improved recreational spaces, including parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, tracks, baseball and softball diamonds, and basketball and tennis courts, could be another outcome of such financing. Cash-strapped public transit and other infrastructure systems struggling to make needed improvements and repairs could also benefit. The Tennessee Valley Authority stands as a legacy of the New Deal and evidence of what government infrastructure initiatives can accomplish.46 Government banks could finance infrastructure projects involving transportation, energy, water, communications, and other sectors from the local to national levels.

Affordable housing is a pressing issue throughout the nation. Increasing numbers of working-class residents of both major cities and rural areas are finding it difficult to maintain a stable housing situation. Fiscal constraints are an obstacle to otherwise workable government-owned and rent-regulated solutions. While private investors avoid housing projects that don’t promise high returns, government banks could fill that void by financing social housing programs, ones that need not repeat the mistake of mid-twentieth-century public housing projects of limiting eligibility to lower-income residents. Shoddily constructed, poorly maintained, loosely managed projects intended only for very low-income residents were a recipe for failure. This unfortunate precedent supports not being so exclusive in the future. Many people in middle-income brackets would welcome the opportunity to participate in quality, well-managed social housing programs.47

Using the financial power of government banks to save jobs would forge a critical connection between these institutions and the lives of workers. In response to the deindustrialization that devastated numerous communities during the 1970s and 1980s, a movement emerged among workers to acquire and operate discarded manufacturing facilities. In 1987, the historian and labor activist Staughton Lynd observed that such ideas “have made something akin to socialism acceptable to middle American working people.”48 However, in order to be viable, this concept requires workers and their allies to secure large sums of money. Under the private banking regime, lack of the necessary financing for such endeavors has impeded this strategy. Although the wave of intense disinvestment that created the Rust Belt has passed, corporate abandonment has continued.49 Government banking could alter the calculus when workers face job losses.

Government banking presents opportunities for a host of public policy options, serving as a stimulus for potential government solutions to existing social problems. Objections on financial grounds frequently halt proposals for new and expanded public services and projects. The pool of funds in government banks would loosen this restraint. In this way, government banking could combat public resignation to the status quo. While it would remain necessary to set policy priorities, ideas once dismissed as unrealistic would be deemed worthy of further consideration. Proposals that previously appeared unrealizable would look more attainable. It would become easier to imagine viable social change. The basis of political life would move toward possibilities.

During the first half of the twentieth century, millions of Americans supported government control of banking in a nation where socialist principles supposedly lacked appeal. They wanted the economy to operate in the service of the workers and farmers whose labor underwrote national prosperity, and they believed that realizing this populist vision required a banking system oriented toward public service instead of private profit. Although most advocates of government banking did not identify as socialists, they were sympathetic to the socialist ideal of democratizing the economy. The recent rise of Bernie Sanders in national politics reveals latent support for socialist ideas among working-class voters, including the white working class, who are frequently dismissed as innately reactionary.50 The history of banking politics in the United States is a striking reminder of what organized working people can achieve. Similar financial grievances circulate among the American working class today, serving as a potential source of popular political action in the future.

Notes.

1. Bernie Sanders, “Remarks on Wall Street and the Economy in New York City,” American Presidency Project, January 5, 2016. The people who figure in this article tended to switch between such terms as “Wall Street” and “bankers” when referring to those who had financial power. Their analyses, however, were drawn primarily from the actions of banks and bankers, which are the terms I favor in this article.

2 Kirsten Powers, “Hillary’s Bernie Problem: Pie-in-the-Sky Sanders,” USA Today, February 16, 2016.

3 For millions without bank accounts, the absence of banking services is a relevant matter.

4 Jared Abbott et al., Commonsense Solidarity: How a Working-Class Coalition Can Be Built, and Maintained (Brooklyn, NY: Jacobin, Center for Working-Class Politics, YouGov, 2021); Matt T. Huber, “Still No Shortcuts for Climate Change,” Catalyst 4, no. 4 (2021).

5 From Businesses and Banks to Colleges and Churches: Americans’ Views of U.S. Institutions (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2024).

6 Philip Bump, “Shock Poll: Everyone Hates Wall Street,” Washington Post, June 30, 2016.

7 R. Thomas Herman, “Many Think Selfishness, Greed Are Widespread on Wall Street,” Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1996.

8 The American Appetite for Government (Washington, DC: American Compass, 2024).

9 Michael Schroeder, “Mesta Plans More Pay,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 11, 1983; R. Lee Hotz, “Coalition’s Muscle Keeps City Nabisco Plant Open,” Pittsburgh Press, December 22, 1982.

10 Frederick A. Barkey, Working Class Radicals: The Socialist Party in West Virginia, 1898–1920 (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2012); Richard W. Judd, Socialist Cities: Municipal Politics and the Grass Roots of American Socialism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); Donald T. Critchlow, ed., Socialism in the Heartland: The Midwestern Experience, 1900–1925 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986); James R. Green, Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895–1943 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978).

11 Christopher W. Shaw, Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019).

12 Herbert M. Bratter, “The Committee for the Nation: A Case History in Monetary Propaganda,” Journal of Political Economy 49, no. 4 (1941); Scott Beekman, William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and Occult (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005), 83–93.

13 This commonly held interpretation corresponds with Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3, ed. Frederick Engels (New York: International Publishers, 1967),544–45.

14 William C. Pratt, “The Reading Socialist Experience: A Study of Working Class Politics” (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1969); Henry G. Stetler, The Socialist Movement in Reading, Pennsylvania, 1896–1936 (Storrs: University of Connecticut, 1943).

15 James H. Maurer, It Can Be Done (New York: Rand School Press, 1938), 90.

16 Maurer, It Can Be Done, 90, 110.

17 United Mine Workers of America, Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Convention (Indianapolis: Cheltenham Press, 1908), 235.

18 “The Banker Knows,” Appeal to Reason, January 25, 1908.

19 “Letters From the People,” Watson’s Magazine, April 1906.

20 Green, Grass-Roots Socialism, 27, 29, 244–52.

21 John Spargo, ed., National Convention of the Socialist Party, 1912 (Chicago: Socialist Party, 1912), 192–93; Lawrence C. Goodwyn, “The Cooperative Commonwealth and Other Abstractions: In Search of a Democratic Promise,” Marxist Perspectives 3, no. 2 (1980): 20–22; Donald B. Marti, “Answering the Agrarian Question: Socialists, Farmers, and Algie Martin Simons,” Agricultural History 65, no. 3 (1991).

22 Oscar Ameringer, Socialism for the Farmer (St Louis: National Rip-Saw Publishing Co., 1912), 28.

23 Michael J. Lansing, Insurgent Democracy: The Nonpartisan League in North American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 97–99, 147–49, 153, 232–34; Alvin S. Tostlebe, “The Bank of North Dakota: An Experiment in Agrarian Banking” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1924), 123–62.

24 Spargo, National Convention of the Socialist Party, 197.

25 American Federation of Labor, Report of Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Annual Convention (Washington, DC: Law Reporter Printing Company, 1912), 379; Christopher W. Shaw, “‘Banks of the People’: The Life and Death of the U.S. Postal Savings System,” Journal of Social History 52, no. 1 (2018).

26 “Bankers Have Bound the Farmers Hand and Foot,” Appeal to Reason,February 27, 1915; Christopher W. Shaw, “‘Tired of Being Exploited’: The Grassroots Origin of the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916,” Agricultural History 92, no. 4 (2018).

27 “The Banking Pirates,” New Leader, November 21, 1931; “Banking,” Milwaukee Leader, February 17, 1933; “When Will the Banks Open?” Reading Labor Advocate, March 17, 1933.

28 Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941 (New York: Times Books, 1984), 136–42; Shaw, Money, Power, and the People, 183.

29 John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988), 114–15; Herman E. Krooss, Executive Opinion: What Business Leaders Said and Thought on Economic Issues, 1920s–1960s (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1970), 20–21; Arthur Mann, “Socialism: Lost Cause in American History,” Criterion 19, no. 3 (1980); W. A. Swanberg, Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 204.

30 Cynthia Horan, “Agreeing with the Bankers: New York City’s Depression Financial Crisis,” Research in Political Economy 8 (1985).

31 “Hillquit Proposes a Municipal Bank,” New York Times, October 20, 1932.

32 American Federation of Teachers, Proceedings, Seventeenth Annual Convention (n.p., 1933), 462; American Teacher 17, no. 1 (1932): 27.

33 “State Owned Banks May Solve Problem,” California Grange News, July 1934.

34 Shaw, Money, Power, and the People, 183, 206–7, 230, 259, 269.

35 Minnesota State Federation of Labor, Proceedings of the Sixty-Third Convention (St Paul, MN: The Federation, 1945), 112; Oil Workers International Union, Proceedings, Fourteenth National Convention (Fort Worth, TX: OWIU, 1943), 201.

36 E. P. Thompson, “The Crime of Anonymity,” in Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, Douglas C. Hay et al.(New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 304–8; Vivek Chibber, The Class Matrix: Social Theory after the Cultural Turn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022), 106–10.

37 Shaw, Money, Power, and the People, 24–26, 267.

38 Norman Thomas, “Timely Topics,” New Leader, March 11, 1933.

39 Ernest H. Gruening to Norman Thomas, March 9, 1933, reel 1, Norman Thomas Papers, New York Public Library; Rexford G. Tugwell, In Search of Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 272; Raymond C. Moley, After Seven Years (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1939), 155.

40 Washington State Grange, Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Session (Olympia, WA: Recorder Press, 1913), 37.

41 Robert Weissman and Joan Claybrook, The Corporate Sabotage of America’s Future and What We Can Do About It (Washington, DC: Essential Books, 2023), 33.

42 Sanders, “Remarks on Wall Street.” See also Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2016), 296–317.

43 Sanders, “Remarks on Wall Street”; “Why Bernie Sanders Wants Post Offices to Offer Banking,” Scripps News, October 29, 2015.

44 DSA Growth and Development Committee, DSA Member Survey Report, 2021 (n.p., 2021).

45 Ralph Nader, In Pursuit of Justice: Collected Writings, 2000–2003 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004), 208, 236–37, 371–73, 399–401; Bob Sullivan, Gotcha Capitalism: How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day — and What You Can Do About It (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), 57–69.

46 Robert D. Leighninger Jr, Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 102–17.

47 Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Joshua B. Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II (New York: New Press, 2000), 105–24.

48 Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982); Mike Stout, “Eminent Domain and Bank Boycotts: The Tri-State Strategy in Pittsburgh,” Labor Research Review 1, no. 3 (1983); Staughton Lynd, “The Genesis of the Idea of a Community Right to Industrial Property in Youngstown and Pittsburgh, 1977–1987,” Journal of American History 74, no. 3 (1987).

49 John Russo and Sherry Lee Linkon, “The Social Costs of Deindustrialization,” in Manufacturing a Better Future for America,ed. Richard A. McCormack (Washington, DC: Alliance for American Manufacturing, 2009).

50 J. C. Gillies, “‘Feel the Bern’: Marketing Bernie Sanders and Democratic Socialism to Primary Voters,” in Political Marketing in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, ed. J. C. Gillies (Cham, Switz.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); E. S. Fertik, “The New Political Arithmetic: Who Voted for Bernie, Who Voted for Hillary, and Why,” New Labor Forum 25, no. 3 (2016).



Christopher W. Shaw is the author of Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic and First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat.