Terri Friedline - Banking on a Revolution: Why Financial Technology Wont Save A Broken System

Professor Friedline condenses complex economic phenomena into distinct issues and connects the work on segregation, predatory credit, and other financial issues to the everyday work of advocacy. She weaves flawlessly between both macro and micro economics and offers institutional critiques and paths toward economic activism. Every social worker, teacher, scholar, and student interested in achieving racial justice should read this book.

Mehrsa Baradaran, Law Professor, University of California,
Irvine, and author of The Color of Money

This book provides an insightful and passionate diagnosis of how modern finance has been the root of a plethora of social issues. Friedline presents a compelling call to action for social workers and ordinary citizens to confront the pervasive injustice built into our economic system.

Ken-Hou Lin, University of Texas at Austin, and
author of Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance

Too often books about low- and moderate-income people show only what they cannot be or do to make finance fair. Either the banks are too big or the movements are too weak. Banking on a Revolution offers a refreshing corrective, demonstrating how it is possible to have social movements succeed in turning banks into social institutions that work for the people most in need of service. While also documenting discrimination and redlining, even in digital finance, Banking on a Revolution insists that another reality is possible and provides a roadmap to get there. An important read, well timed.

Frederick F. Wherry, Professor, Princeton University, and
Founding Director of the Dignity and Debt Network

To fight for justice, we must understand injustice. Friedlines book is an indispensable field guide to the financialization of our economy and our democracy. She chronicles the sucking sound heard across the nation as the financial industry extracts wealth from Black, white, and brown communities in new and audacious ways, and tells the stories of the people who have had enough, and are fighting back.

Porter McConnell, Americans for Financial Reform Campaign Director, Take on Wall Street

Friedlines Banking on a Revolution speaks directly to the questions of our time, in its unwavering focus on how our financial system is calibrated to whiteness. Friedlines keen understanding of the relationship between small, incremental change and a larger strategic movement for revolutionary change and economic justice is especially visionary.

Diane E. Thompson, former deputy assistant director of the Office of Regulations at the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and author of Truth in Lending

A fundamental book to understand how the financial system decisions are classist, racist and deepen social inequalities. It calls Social Workers to organize the collective political struggle to democratize these decisions for a more just and humane Social Order.

Silvana Martnez, Global President of International Federation of Social Workers

A refreshingly real and frank examination of our financial system. The book offers important insights and research on how we place the burden of fixing our problems on the individual instead of the system that perpetuates economic inequality, the likelihood of fintech to digitally replicate redlining, and the critical fact that a non-racial analysis and approach of any financial system development will continue to exacerbate the already vast racial wealth, income, and access inequalities we see today. Thankfully Friedline doesnt stop there, but offers up a surprising potential vehicle for financial revolution. Friedline examines and provides evidence for so many dynamics and ideas that Ive observed and felt in my gut and through experience in the financial industry for the past 12 years.

Erin Kilmer Neel, Executive Director and Chief Impact Officer at Beneficial State Foundation

The financial systems that govern our lives purport to be fair and impartial. But as Terri Friedline reveals in her smart, provocative and brave book they are yet another rigged engine that perpetuates our nation's entrenched racial and class divides. Banking on a Revolution is a persuasive and important argument for a more just and inclusive system, one that will lead to a better world for all of us.

Helaine Olen, Senior Managing Editor for the Public Seminar,
Opinion Writer for the Washington Post and author of Pound Foolish

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Friedline, Terri, author.

Title: Banking on a Revolution Why Financial Technology Wont Save a

Broken System / by Terri Friedline.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020024607 (print) | LCCN 2020024608 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780190944131 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190944162 (epub) |

ISBN 9780190944148 (online)

Subjects: LCSH: Discrimination in financial servicesUnited States. |

Financial exclusionUnited States. | FinancializationUnited States. |

CapitalismSocial aspectsUnited States. | RacismEconomic aspectsUnited States. |

Social changeUnited States. | Race relationsEconomic aspects. |

EconomicsSociological aspects.

Classification: LCC HG176.63.U6 F73 2021 (print) | LCC HG176.63.U6 (ebook) |

DDC 332.1089/96073dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024607

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024608

To the people who push for revolution every day, thank you.

And to my family, I love you with all my heart.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

Arundhati

In March 2020, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick raised eyebrows when he suggested that grandparents should be willing to expose themselves to the novel coronavirus COVID-19 and die to save the economy for their children and grandchildren. At the time, the coronavirus outbreak was spreading through the United States and impacting every aspect of life: closing schools and businesses, forcing people out of work, overwhelming hospitals, and killing agonizing numbers of people. Yet even though families were experiencing death and devastation, much attention was on the stock market. I dont want the whole country to be sacrificed, Patrick said [in an interview with Fox News]. Ive talked to hundreds of people... and everyone says pretty much the same thing: We cant lose our whole country. Were having an economic collapse.