Women, Money & Democracy Committee Engages New Members & Plans Retreat for Future Strategies

By Marybeth Gardam

November 2021

While recruiting new members, forging new collaborations and doing remarkable outreach, W$D Committee will be doing strategic planning for the next 2-5 years at a half day planning retreat on Sunday, Nov. 14^th (9am-noon pacific/noon-3pm eastern/11am-2pm central).  All Committee members are invited to participate.  It’s just the latest effort at reshaping the Committee’s plans to take advantage of both an activist drive and an analytic imperative.   

“Our racist-capitalist owner-based economy is built on the principle that the majority of people must be poor in order for the top 1% to be rich”, notes Committee Chair Marybeth Gardam.

“Our Committee wants to re-envision a caring economy and how we get there. How we effectively prioritize our real values in budgets that are moral documents… and work to transform the existing economy.”  She concedes that interim steps are necessary to get to a re-envisioned economic, banking and currency system and the Committee supports the Biden Buy Back Better deal as an imperfect but necessary first step.

The W$D Committee of WILPF US has been engaging in outreach, education, organizer training for action.  Their work with partner An Economy of Our Own (AEOO) has increased WILPF’s visibility with an entirely different set of women, who value our feminist perspective on peace especially as it intersects with women’s economic solutions.

Here are ways that the Committee is doing targeted outreach and training.

• The next AEOO ‘Zoom Of Our Own” webinar will be Monday, November 22^nd (at 8pm eastern) and will focus on ANCIENT MONEY WISDOM, banking and debt. Featured will be the ‘under the radar’ methods of loans, banking and bartering being used successfully in immigrant communities, mutual aid circles and religious traditions.  Register here.
• The first Women’s Learning Circle offered a series of webinars over four months´ time to provide hands-on training for women who wanted to know more about the benefits of Public Banking, how to talk about it persuasively, and how to advocate for it in their communities.  The webinars featured expert public banking organizers and inspired participants to work locally on this effort.  They were so well received by about a dozen participants, the Public Banking Women’s Learning Circle will be offered again next year and with invitations for more women to participate.
• In 2021 AEOO and W$D presented at two national conferences: the National Organization of Women conference in July and the WILPF National Congress in August  “Working Our Way Out of the She-Cession. W$D also presented at our WILPF Congress on Changing the Intent and Purpose of Money
• W$D co-sponsored a showing of the new film THE NEW CORPORATION in July, with a follow-up webinar interviewing film producer Joel Bakan and the original Corporations v Democracy team that wrote and distributed our Corporate Study Course across WILPF US.   
• W$D produced the June ONE WILPF Call with passionate speakers promoting Caring Wages.  In September they collaborated with the National Welfare Rights Organization to present the webinar A Caring Wage: Our Time is Now, with inspiring speakers that set today’s caring wage movement in historical context and called for more reforms.

W$D work still includes analysis and welcomes that deeper perspective.

We continue to study the money creation system´s bias toward inequality, reckless growth and war; corporate corruption of our elections, and best ways to support a caring economy. The Committee continues to build collaborations and partnerships with other allied organizations.

The W$D Committee also promotes practical ACTIONS.

Like all the Issue Committees, W$D will be creating practical ACTIONS to be listed on the new website for WILPF members and the public, to advance the work of W$D and WILPF’s mission as it relates to economic justice.  Our committee members will propose action strategies at our November retreat.

W$D webpage describes its work, with lots of ways people can connect and get involved.  We work closely with the Earth Democracy Committee and the DISARM Committee. We are excited to work more closely with the relaunched Advancing Human Rights Committee of WILPF from a feminist, anti-corporate power and equity perspective.     

Women, Money & Democracy meets every third Tuesday evening at 8pm eastern.  (Formerly 8:30pm). A democratically run committee, we offer continual opportunities for education, skill building and leadership on projects and for leading the Committee itself. Contact the Chair to register for the next meeting, to visit our committee, or to join our work.  If you have a passion for economic justice, this is where you belong in WILPF US.

Contact the current Chair Marybeth Gardam: mbgardamATgmail.com.