San Pedro For Bernie

CBS 60 Minutes Censorship Rings Another Alarm, Warning of Corporate Media’s Threat to Democracy By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan
News organizations cannot function under corrupt corporate control, answering to billionaire bosses and politicians. When that happens, democracy dies, and dictators r...

In 1978, banks could legally refuse women loans without a husband's signature.
So eight women pooled $1,000 each and opened their own bank.
The line stretched around the block. By closing, deposits exceeded $1 million.
In the mid-1970s, America had supposedly achieved equality for women. Laws had been passed. Discrimination was illegal.
But try telling that to the women who walked into banks asking for business loans and were told: "Come back with your husband."
Or the divorced women whose credit cards were canceled because they no longer had a man's name attached.
Or the widows who discovered that decades of building wealth with their husbands meant nothing once their spouse died—banks wouldn't recognize them as legitimate account holders.
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 had made this discrimination officially illegal. On paper, women had equal financial rights.
In practice? Banks ignored the law constantly.
Loan officers still demanded a male co-signer. Credit applications still asked for a husband's income. Women entrepreneurs were told their businesses were "too risky" while identical businesses run by men received funding without question.
The law had changed. The culture hadn't.
In Denver, Colorado, a group of women decided they were done waiting for banks to follow the rules.
If the system wouldn't give them equality, they'd build their own system.
LaRae Orullian was a businesswoman who had experienced the discrimination firsthand. Wendy Davis was an attorney. Carol Green was a banker who understood the industry from the inside. Gail Schoettler was a civic leader. Edna Mosely, Joy Burns, Beverly Martinez, and Judi Wagner—eight women total, from different backgrounds, all united by one goal.
They were going to open a bank. A bank run by women, for women.
But starting a bank required capital. Serious capital. Far more than any of them had individually.
So they made a pact. Each woman would invest $1,000 of her own money—a significant sum in 1978 (roughly $4,700 today). Together, their $8,000 would be the seed money to attract larger investors and meet regulatory requirements.
Then came the hard part: convincing the federal government to approve a new bank in the middle of an economic downturn, run entirely by women, specifically targeting female customers.
Banking regulators were skeptical. Some were openly dismissive. Women running a bank? For women? Who would take that seriously?
The eight founders prepared meticulously. They researched banking regulations. They built financial projections. They demonstrated that women represented an enormous untapped market—millions of potential customers who were being ignored or actively discriminated against by existing banks.
After months of applications, interviews, and bureaucratic obstacles, they received approval.
The Women's Bank would open on July 14, 1978.
Nobody knew if anyone would actually show up.
The founders spent the days before opening preparing the small bank branch, training staff, and quietly worrying. What if this was a failure? What if women didn't care? What if the idea was too radical, too political, too threatening?
On the morning of July 14, 1978, the doors opened.
The line stretched around the block.
Women of all ages, backgrounds, and economic levels stood waiting—some for hours—just to open an account at a bank that would treat them as equals.
Young professional women opened their first business accounts. Divorced women moved their money from banks that had required their ex-husbands' permission. Elderly widows transferred savings that other banks had made nearly inaccessible.
Some women were crying. Not from sadness, but from relief.
For the first time, they could walk into a bank and be taken seriously. For the first time, they didn't need a man's signature to access their own money or build their own wealth.
The staff worked frantically to process the flood of new accounts. The small branch was packed beyond capacity. Women kept coming, hour after hour.
By the end of that first day, deposits exceeded $1 million.
One million dollars.
In a single day.
The skeptics who said women didn't need their own bank, who claimed discrimination was exaggerated, who insisted the market didn't exist—they were proven catastrophically wrong.
The Women's Bank wasn't just a financial institution. It was a declaration.
Women deserved control over their own money. Women deserved to be taken seriously as entrepreneurs, investors, and financial decision-makers. Women deserved equality—not on paper, but in practice.
The success sent shockwaves through the banking industry. If women would line up around the block for a bank that treated them fairly, what did that say about how traditional banks were treating them?
Other women's banks opened across the country, inspired by Denver's success. The movement spread.
But the Women's Bank faced enormous challenges. Running a bank during economic instability was difficult for anyone. Running a bank that challenged established norms while also trying to turn a profit was even harder.
Traditional banks saw the Women's Bank as a threat and sometimes refused to cooperate on standard inter-bank transactions. Some male customers felt uncomfortable banking at an institution explicitly founded to serve women. Economic pressures of the late 1970s and early 1980s hit small banks particularly hard.
By the mid-1980s, financial pressures forced the Women's Bank to merge with a larger institution. The original vision—a bank run entirely by and for women—ended after less than a decade.
Some saw it as a failure.
But that misses the point entirely.
The Women's Bank proved something that needed proving: women were a massive, underserved financial market. Women wanted and deserved equal treatment. And when given the opportunity, women would support institutions that treated them fairly.
After the Women's Bank opened, traditional banks started changing their practices. Not out of goodness, but out of competition. They couldn't ignore millions of potential female customers anymore.
Banks began actively marketing to women. They started approving loans for female entrepreneurs. They stopped requiring husbands' signatures on accounts.
Not because the law required it—that law had existed since 1974. But because the Women's Bank had proven there was money to be made by treating women equally.
The eight founders had risked their own money and reputations. They'd faced skepticism, mockery, and enormous financial pressure.
But they'd changed the industry.
Today, women open bank accounts without a second thought. Women start businesses and secure funding. Women control their own financial futures.
Not because banks became enlightened. But because in 1978, eight women in Denver proved that equality was profitable.
LaRae Orullian, Wendy Davis, Carol Green, Gail Schoettler, Edna Mosely, Joy Burns, Beverly Martinez, and Judi Wagner—their names should be better known.
They invested $1,000 each when that was serious money. They built something revolutionary. They proved that when the system won't change, you build a new system.
The Women's Bank may not exist anymore.
But its impact is everywhere.
Every time a woman opens a business account without needing her husband's signature—that's the Women's Bank's legacy.
Every time a female entrepreneur secures a loan based on her own credit—that's the Women's Bank's legacy.
Every time a woman controls her own financial destiny—that's the Women's Bank's legacy.
Equality didn't just happen.
It happened because eight women decided the future couldn't wait.
In 1978, banks could legally refuse women loans without a husband's signature.
So eight women pooled $1,000 each and opened their own bank.
The line stretched around the block.
By closing, deposits exceeded $1 million.
Sometimes changing the world starts with $8,000 and the refusal to accept inequality.