Source: Not The Onion. "We debated buying a bank, which we came close to doing. It remains an option for us," Carne Ross, a board member of the Occupy Money Cooperative (an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement) says. "We eventually came to this [the debit card], as the easiest way to get a financial product out there."
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According to the group, the audience for the card would include members of Occupy Wall Street plus anyone disenfranchised from the current banking system but as ABC News reports, one 'disenfranchised' person had some strong views, slamming the people behind the card, adding that, "the true agenda of Occupy Wall Street is here: to give you a negligibly 'better' option within a system that is killing us all."
Via ABC News, [7]
An offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement plans to issue its own debit card. What's next? The Occupy-edition Range Rover?
Asked this same snide question, Carne Ross, a board member of the Occupy Money Cooperative, tells ABC News that his group's intentions could not be more altruistic or more in sympathy with Occupy's larger, progressive agenda.
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"We debated buying a bank, which we came close to doing. It remains an option for us," he says. "We eventually came to this [the debit card], as the easiest way to get a financial product out there."
Though its website, Occupy Money seeks to raise approximately $1 million to produce the card,
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The audience for the card would include members of Occupy Wall Street plus anyone disenfranchised from the current banking system, including people who cannot have a checking account because of their past financial history.
The idea has not been immune from criticism.
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Wrote Ebrahimian with an acid pen: "Yes, folks, the true agenda of Occupy Wall Street is here: to give you a negligibly 'better' option within a system that is killing us all, and at such a reasonable price." She was only warming up.
Referring to the board members of Occupy Money, including Ross, she says that when she read their bios, she "went from being amused to confused to outright shocked. They are all clearly lifelong revolutionaries. Working for BlackBerry, the Federal Reserve, and Deutsche Bank, for example, are real resume builders when it comes to collective struggle."