Pittsburgh, PA: Stop Banking the Bomb in Lawrenceville

Report from Pittsburgh on ongoing campaign to force banks to divest from nuclear weapons.

Last Saturday, November 10th, the Pittsburgh based Stop Banking the Bomb Campaign held a picket outside a PNC Bank branch in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh.  Stop Banking the Bomb is a campaign of several activist organizations whose goal is to pressure major financial institutions to divest from nuclear weapons.  The picket was the latest of over 20 demonstrations that the campaign has organized this past year against PNC Bank, the 7th largest retail bank headquartered in Pittsburgh.  And the campaign is currently planning 20 more public demonstrations to take place in Pittsburgh and other cities that have PNC Bank branches.

These actions, however large or small, are revolutionary.  They send a message to finance capitalists that regular people are going to start holding corporate elites accountable for the pain they inflict on the rest of us. And they also tell local patrons, bank managers, and security personnel that it’s time to start picking a side in the class war.  Existential threats like nuclear weapons and climate change do not care about income brackets and white privilege.  They kill without mercy and destroy without regret.  And if financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies continue to prop up this system of death, we will tear them out of our communities’ root and stem.

For more information on how you can get involved in the Stop Banking the Bomb Campaign, visit StopBankingtheBomb.org