Boston UCC church is among interfaith leaders withdrawing $1 million from Citizens Bank to protest detention center ties

Two weeks ago, faith leaders of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) gathered in a bustling plaza outside of a Citizens Bank in Boston to urge the bank to end its practice of financing two companies notorious for running detention centers and private prisons.

With a symbolic giant withdrawal slip in hand, the group announced its withdrawal of $1 million from Citizens Bank, as well as plans to routinely withdraw $1 million until the company agrees to schedule a meeting with GBIO organizers and ultimately change its practices of financing companies that build and run detention centers.

Among the faith leaders who spoke at the May 4 rally was the Rev. John Edgerton, senior minister of Old South Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in Boston. Edgerton spoke with UCC News about organizing money as protest, solidarity with migrant neighbors, and the call of faith to commit to local, collective efforts to make a difference.

‘People of good conscious will not stand for building deportation machines’

As a 365-year-old congregation, Old South has well-resourced financial resources from monetary gifts received over the centuries, which means the church can creatively bring money to bear in organized efforts like this one with GBIO, Edgerton said. Old South is a member of GBIO.

“We ought to use the tools that we have to further God’s realm, to further God’s kingdom, right? And to build up the beloved community. Money is a tool that we can steward and deploy to make a difference in the world,” he said.

At the GBIO rally and withdrawal event, Edgerton joined around 40 others to launch a strategic protest of Citizens Bank’s use of customer’s deposits to finance CoreCivic and GEO, two companies at the forefront of running ICE detention centers.

“We need to let the banks know that people of good faith, people of good conscience, people of goodwill, our neighbors, will not stand for building private prisons, for building deportation machines, for crushing our neighbors underneath their wheels for profit,” Edgerton said at the rally.

“We call upon Citizens Bank to become citizens of justice,” said the Rev. Greg Groover at the rally, pastor of the Historic Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston. “Stop supporting these humanly unlivable prisons and this current administration’s effort to deport our good-meaning sisters and brothers in ungodly ways … or in the name of the Jesus of justice, we will stop doing banking with you.”

Against valuing profit over people

At the center of this protest is the well-being of immigrants who have been targeted and detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.

Emmanuel Damas, a Boston resident, died in ICE custody after being sent across the country to a detention center in Arizona. Damas was legally present in the United States, and he died on March 2 after being denied timely medical care for a toothache, his family said.

“He died from a lack of basic care,” Edgerton said. “And that lack of basic care is one of the ways that CoreCivic keeps its bottom line high. They are valuing money over people.”

Both CoreCivic and GEO Group – private prison companies receiving financing through Citizens Bank – have opened nine new detention centers for ICE use and reported a 13% increase of $2 billion in revenue last year.

“Citizens Bank is one of the only banks that provides financing for building out these large detention centers, and they actually increased their line of credit for these kinds of projects earlier this year,” Edgerton said.

A public voice of faith

A key piece that faith leaders can bring to the public sphere right now is a public, organized moral voice.

“For the country to be going in the direction of building these mass deportation centers, these places where people’s rights are ignored, it’s a shameful period of our history unfolding right now,” Edgerton said.

Detention centers are being built through a tie between the government, private prison corporations, and private banks, which allows them to be built outside of local oversight processes, Edgerton said.

“They’re subverting the normal processes of democracy by partnering with organized money. That’s a very strong form of power, and we are attempting to slow that down, to cause enough of a reputational crisis for Citizen’s Bank that this becomes something that they have to abandon,” he said. “That means that CoreCivic and GEO Group and their plans for building out these abominable institutions will have to go back to the drawing board on their financing. This will at least slow them down.

“I don’t know that it is within our power to stop this, but it is within our powers to resist it, and to slow it down.”

Other groups and individuals who hold accounts at Citizens Bank are invited to join GBIO by pledging a commitment to join the collective protest. Greater Cleveland Congregations, a sister group to CBIO, has joined in pledging their deposits.

Using money for God’s work in the world

Old South has banked with Citizens Bank for 20 years.

How churches use the money that people entrust to them, and how that money works in the world, are considerations of what it means to steward resources towards God’s work in the world, Edgerton said.

“It matters to me deeply how the church uses its money because I know where it comes from. It comes from a Starbucks barista who comes in and gives their cash tips in the plate. It comes from retirees who are making gifts from fixed income. It comes from people who are trying to get their 529s filled for their kids’ college education and also still being generous to the church,” he said. “People give their money to the church expecting us to do God’s work with it, and Citizens Bank is using our deposits to make money with loans to private prison companies. This means that the money that comes back into church is, in a certain sense, blood money.

“That’s not a responsible use of the money people give to the church expecting us to do the work of God with it — not to profit from vulnerable people dying.”

Show the world churches like this exist

Edgerton was featured on The Rachel Maddow show to discuss the GBIO’s efforts, and following this, he received many comments from people across the country. The most common one, he said, was people saying they had no idea there were churches like this.

“I think it’s important for us, as the United Church of Christ, to be bold and hopeful and spirit-filled, and let people know that what we are doing is because of our faith,” he said. “They literally do not know that churches like this exist. So we need to do the work of our faith, whatever it is in our local setting, in an explicitly faith-filled, hope-filled, God-inspired way. That is an enormous gift to the country, which needs churches, needs people of faith.”

He described being horrified by Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities, and also being enormously proud of the way UCC colleagues and people of faith responded. These efforts of financial protest began coming together within GBIO around that same time, Edgerton said.

“I believe very much in creativity of the people of God to do what is right, especially because if what we are doing is trying to further the causes of God, then we will have God as our partner,” he said. “If we’re doing things that we could easily handle on our own, we need to set our sights a little higher – set our sights on things that we can get at, but with God’s help, we might do something that is beyond our power.”

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