Occupy Burlington

Dump the bailed-out bank picket

The Too Big to Fail economy and Wall Street created crisis are leaving Vermonters’ fundamental human needs unmet. Come together on the steps of a Burlington bailed out bank with your friends and neighbors and speak out.

https://www.facebook.com/events/385928781438705/

Vermont Credit Union Members Assembly Platform

Revised 03/21/2012

1. Increased Member Participation: We, the members of the Vermont Credit Union Members Assembly, believe that, in order to fully honor the democratic principles in which our organization is rooted, our credit union and its board of directors needs to actively work to increase member participation and buy-in. Sparsely attended annual meetings that serve more as rubber stamps than opportunities for meaningful participation in governance signal a troubling democratic deficit that can only be remedied through conscious action. Therefore, we task our delegates with enacting the following policies intended to strengthen our credit union’s democratic, participatory culture:

1. Actively promote annual meeting participation and work to increase accessibility for members of diverse means and cultures by offering child-care, a free or subsidized meal to all attendees, translation and signing services upon request, and scheduling the meeting for a time that is comfortably outside of normal work hours.
2. Disperse decisions about community giving directly to the membership. After the board determines the community giving budget, allow every member in good standing to nominate one non-profit organization working within the area served by the credit union, and provide every member with five votes. The community giving budget will then be dispersed to the nominated organizations pro-rated by the number of member votes they received. By directly empowering members to determine the distribution of community giving funds, the credit union will serve as the mechanism through which members support valuable community projects, rather than an organization that simply acts in their name without their meaningful input.
3. Engage in conscious community building through organizing and promoting member volunteer efforts, investigating the viability of a “member-work” program similar to that of Burlington’s City Market, and sponsoring events that serve to build a sense of shared identity among CU members.

2. Increased Transparency: For democratic governance to effectively function, those with power must be accountable to their constituents. This is impossible if the constituents don’t know what their representatives are up to, so we task our Delegates with initiating reforms that increase our credit union’s transparency and the accessibility of the board.

1. Create email accounts for all board members, the addresses of which shall be posted in an easily accessible location on the website and in the branches.
2. Make board meetings open to any member of the credit union, and include a period for comment by the membership. For any topics that legally require confidentiality, the board shall go into executive session, but the default state of a board meeting should be open, and public minutes should be posted on the CU website.
3. By-laws should be made available to all credit union members upon joining, and a document shall be drawn up to serve as a guide to the exact nature of the rights and responsibilities of credit union membership.
4. All potential sources of conflicts of interest for board members should be disclosed publicly and posted on the website.