Your friends get the Green Pages (and get in free to the Green Festival) when you give them a gift membership in
Green America.

Join us this weekend, November 13 – 15, in San Francisco at the Concourse at 8th and Brannon for our annual Green Festival — and  get in FREE, as our way of saying thank-you to you as a valued Green America member.

Just bring your member card or a print-out of this e-mail with you to our members-only ticket booth and bypass all the ticket lines.

The Green Festival shows that the green life is the good life — showcasing the latest in renewable energy, recycled products, sweatshop-free clothing, Fair Trade, organic food, and much more! Plus, we’d really love to meet you personally, so please stop in at Green America’s booth, where all Green America members can pick up a free “I am a Green American” button (and film your green pledge for posting at Green America’s YouTube channel).

You’ll also meet members of the Green America staff, bringing insights to the Green Festival from their areas of expertise, including Keaty Gross, of our Better Paper Project, speaking about saving our forests; Vickie Kreha, our Responsible Shopper coordinator, speaking about voting with your dollars; and yours truly speaking on accelerating our green energy future.

That’s in addition more than 150 visionary speakers on hand this year, including the Revs. Andriette Earl and Elouise Oliver, Amy Goodman, Phaera Ellis-Lamkins, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and more. Plus, you can do all your holiday shopping (guilt-free) at Green Festival, supporting the more than 350 great green businesses who will be on hand with everything from the latest solar gadgets to fairly traded gifts ideas (dolls, bags, clothes, housewares) for everyone on your list.

We’ll also have kids’ activities in the Organic Valley Green Kids’ Zone, delicious organic cuisine, a hemp pavilion, green building pavilion, cell phone recycling, and hands-on workshops on everything from green buildings to green careers.

We can’t wait to give you the red carpet treatment at the San Francisco Green Festival—see you this weekend!

In cooperation,

Alisa Gravitz,
Executive Director,
Green America

Earlier this month, our allies at the Center for Responsible Lending released a jaw-dropping report. In the midst of our current economic climate, their study found, bank revenues from overdraft-fees are up 35 percent, representing $23.7 billion in new profit for banks in 2008 alone.

How did banks increase their overdraft earnings by $6.2 billion over 2006 figures? By taking advantage of cash-strapped consumers who get charged an automatic overdraft fee — without offering them the chance to decline what ultimately amounts to a super-high-interest loan.

But overdraft fees aren’t the only problem in the banking industry. We’ve seen millions of homeowners burned by predatory mortgage lending, and millions of consumers struggling with mountains of debt from deceptive, confusing, or misleading credit card agreements. As Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren explains, the Citibank credit card agreement was a page and a half in 1980 – now it’s 30 pages long.

While this spring’s credit card legislation was a good start, the time has passed for regulating each financial product separately. As soon as one piece of legislation takes effect, the mega-banks introduce a new end-run around it, or a new dubious practice.

That’s why the Consumer Financial Protection Agency’s (CFPA) time has come. This agency – first proposed by the Obama administration in June – would be the first agency tasked with watching out for the consumer in the financial products arena, a financial parallel to the agencies that protect consumers from harmful food or retail goods.

Legislation for this agency is about to be introduced in the House of Representatives. Please take time to send a message to your representative in the House to urge her or him to support the legislation, then post our editorial about the CFPA to your blogs and Web sites (and forward to your friends).

Finally, at the bottom of this e-mail, we link you to our recent resources on community investing and responsible banking. If you’re looking to break up with your megabank, we’ve got the resources to help you find a responsible checking account, responsible mutual funds and investments, and even responsible credit cards.

Here’s to responsible banking,

Alisa Gravitz,
Executive Director,
Green America

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