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Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina

Organizing for Economic Justice

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Letter from the Executive Director on CRA-NC's Economic Justice Organizing


Dear Friend of the Community, The fight for economic justice has never been as important as it is right now. From the recently passed overhaul of federal bankruptcy laws to the N.C. Senate’s plans to cut social services for our most vulnerable citizens and re-authorize the payday lending debt trap, our social safety net is under assault. We must stand together and resist these measures, while building public support for progressive policies that reinvest in our communities. The Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina is working on multiple fronts to make a difference in this fight. Since 1998, CRA-NC has catalyzed more than $40 billion of lending commitments from financial institutions to minority and low wealth communities. Our advocacy for protecting North Carolina communities from predatory lending has had a national impact on corporate and federal policies related to subprime mortgage and payday lending practices. To educate and mobilize consumers, CRA-NC produces financial literacy television and radio programming that has state and national distribution.
Payday Lending
	Payday lending is an abusive, predatory lending product that captures a majority of borrowers in a debt trap, costing them 500% APR interest on short term consumer loans. CRA-NC is in its third year of being in the vanguard of the state and national fight to end this practice. Our tactics have included research and policy analysis, street theatre, shareholder resolutions, grassroots mobilization, consumer education, media advocacy, and building citizen coalitions.
The results have been victories at the state legislative and federal regulatory levels, corporate policy changes, and shifts in the public debate. We have generated consistent media events on the issue helping to frame the cultural values fight over payday lending. Our goal is for the issue of payday lending in North Carolina to be resolved favorably in consumers’ interests, and to use the ongoing struggle against payday loans to empower the community by highlighting broader issues of financial literacy and economic justice. CRA-NC is conducting corporate advocacy against banks who continue to fund payday lending. In the past few months, we have filed shareholder resolutions calling on Republic Bancorp and Wells Fargo to end their national payday lending activities. We partnered with the Delaware Community Reinvestment Action Council to lead a letter-writing campaign against First Bank of Delaware, a Delaware-based bank that funds internet payday loans and high-fee tax refund loans in North Carolina and nationwide. The campaign resulted in more than 250 letters signed by Delaware citizens delivered to the FDIC, calling on the agency to fail the bank on its current Community Reinvestment Act exam. We saw the FDIC issue a Cease and Desist Order against another Delaware bank funding payday lenders, County Bank, which funds 42% of all payday loans made in North Carolina. This action caps two years of CRA-NC advocacy against County Bank. We are seeking to end payday lending in North Carolina by ending the partnerships payday lending chains have formed with out-of-state banks.
We are mobilizing N.C. citizens in a statewide campaign against Senate Bill 947, an industry-sponsored bill that would re-authorize payday lending in North Carolina. We are rallying community members in opposition to this bill and using the fight to educate the public about how payday loans function to trap unsuspecting borrowers into debt. Our efforts have already delivered 1000 hand-signed letters statewide from legislators’ constituents who strongly oppose this bill. Click here to send an e-mailed letter against SB 947

Shareholder Advocacy CRA-NC conducts shareholder advocacy to change financial institutions’ corporate lending policies. We have created the Love Meter, a research tool to evaluate lenders’ corporate responsibility scores, and are working to provide it to socially responsible investors. We have conducted five shareholder actions against predatory lending and payday lending in the past year with SunTrust, CCB, ACE Cash Express, Republic Bancorp, and Wells Fargo.
	Community groups marched in support of CRA-NC's anti-payday lending shareholder resolution to be voted on at Wells Fargo's annual shareholder meeting on April 26, 2005. Members of CRA-NC and the California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC) followed a money trail of oversized dollar bill footprints leading from the Wells Fargo Bank at 3027 16th Street in San Francisco to a nearby Money Mart. There, a giant check for $55 million was presented - the amount that Wells Fargo funds Money Mart to make 460% APR interest loans.
We developed a partnership with the Duke Community Enterprise Law Clinic to conduct legal work in this area and partnerships at the national level with other progressive advocates. We are working in partnership with local African-American churches to help entire congregations become shareholder advocates. Results from our corporate advocacy work in the past year include greater commitments to diversity and improved lending to low wealth communities in North Carolina by SunTrust, and sustained press attention on how predatory lending practices harm our communities. Media Advocacy CRA-NC adapted The Other Side, a children’s book about race relations, into a video that won national recognition at the San Francisco Black Film Festival. Nuestro Barrio is now in production as a mini-series about Hispanic life in the United States. The show uses the popular “telenovela” or soap opera format to address financial literacy and human relations issues. We are developing an innovative radio show that uses advocacy to build community engagement on problems and economic justice issues facing the African-American community in North Carolina.
Originally produced for local cable access stations as part of a collaborative statewide fair housing campaign, Nuestro Barrio has become a multi-episode telenovela now under production, designed to address important financial issues faced by Hispanic individuals and families living in the United States.
If CRA-NC is to build upon its proven record of organizing N.C. citizens against predatory lending and other practices that perpetuate poverty, we need the support of partners like you who wish to stand with us. We can’t do it without your help. Join us today in the fight for meaningful economic justice. Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible contribution. Please visit our website at www.cra-nc.org for more information about our work and do not hesitate to contact us with your questions and ideas. Sincerely, Peter Skillern Executive Director The Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina’s mission is to promote and protect community wealth. Committed to creative advocacy, CRA-NC uses research, education, mobilization, media, litigation, regulatory challenges, legislative advocacy and stockholder actions to initiate change. Founded as a project of Legal Services of North Carolina in 1986, CRA-NC was spun off as a new 501c3 in 1998. Its board of directors includes progressive advocates, nonprofit directors and community leaders from across North Carolina.