Great article about the new Vashon Credit Union and Move Your Money
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-vashon-credit-union-20120504,0,4418565,full.story
It would be hard to imagine a place further removed from the brash intensity of Occupy Wall Street. This secluded island of fir forests and rolling lavender fields home to 23 organic farms, a tofu factory and a monastery that markets its own gourmet coffee has always been a counterculture retreat for those who bike to the sound of different drummers.
Yet a continent away a whole world away, really from New York, this small island of 11,000 residents has become one of the darlings of the Move your Money campaign, an Occupy effort to hit corporate banking where it hurts: the ledgers.
The movement has spurred thousands of Americans to move their accounts out of mega-banks, but many have had to resort instead to big regional credit unions. Here, a group of hard-core Vashon activists, already seasoned in anticorporate campaigns, hit on the idea of merging with a small credit union to create a new branch on the island.
That office has managed, in its first year of operation, to enroll an astonishing 16% of the population and collect local deposits of almost $20 million.