The recent kerfuffle over private health insurance companies refusing to accommodate those with plans acquired through the Affordable Care Act exchanges has exposed a glaring issue -- why don't we have a public option to compete with private health insurance profiteers?

The same could be said for banking, as well.

Have you ever found yourself in traffic, behind a car that had a message on its bumper so profound that you wanted to step out of your car to give the other driver a high-five?

Are you curious about how other PBI activists are advancing the public banking message in their communities?  Check out these updates from our North Carolina and Canada affiliates.

PBI Chair Walt McRee has announced the creation of a bi-partisan Public Banking Caucus, a strategic campaign to link together the many local and state elected and appointed officials (and candidates) already supporting public banking.

The key concern over the Trans-Pacific Partnership is its potential effects on the public's right to control common assets. Both the treaty and its underlying economic philosophy are blatantly hostile to state-owned enterprises and, in the larger sense, the idea of noncommercial or extracommercial economic activity, even when such activity may be necessary to create stable markets. 

The bulk of new policy demands from the Black Lives Matter movement are economic demands--not moral pleas for people to stop being racist or stop purveying or facilitating violence against people of color (although those demands are necessary), but demands for economic security, because economic insecurity makes historically disenfranchised communities more vulnerable to violence and exploitation. These demands include a Universal Basic Income--a policy increasingly embraced by everyone from technology experts to economic justice advocates. 

If you're thinking of campaigning for a public bank in your city or county, you aren't alone. People form new groups almost monthly, in over 30 states in the U.S., and most of them contact PBI for resources. So here are five resources you may not know about yet, all of which I consider essential for the local education, strategic planning, and grassroots execution necessary to get that seat at the governance table, where you can make the case for a public bank. 

Progressive Democrats may not have seen their candidate, Bernie Sanders, achieve the victory they wanted him to, but his issues won't go away. Chief among them is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and it's more apparent every day that the centrist leadership of the DNC is taking a huge risk by continuing to flirt with the trade deal, which Hillary Clinton has repeatedly insisted she no longer supports. But Clinton's word isn't enough for rank-and-file Democrats. 

Redlining is the practice of either denying services outright, or making services more difficult to acquire, because of race or ethnicity. The Fair Housing Act was supposed to end it. It's re-emerging, as we've documented, in Baltimore, St. Louis, and Detroit (and certainly elsewhere). 

Roughly an hour before the post you're reading got posted, multiple sources had confirmed that the likely Democratic VP pick will be Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. For those watching to see if Hillary Clinton was serious about her apparent shift left as the primary wound down, Kaine is the anti-Warren, the antithesis of Sanders, and a walking course reversal to Clinton's recent rejection of the TPP and plans to reign in Wall Street.