{"id":6686,"date":"2024-02-06T17:56:42","date_gmt":"2024-02-06T22:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/?p=6686"},"modified":"2024-02-06T17:56:43","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T22:56:43","slug":"sc-progressive-network-deposits-250000-in-bank-committed-to-social-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/2024\/02\/06\/sc-progressive-network-deposits-250000-in-bank-committed-to-social-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"SC Progressive Network deposits $250,000 in bank committed to social justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(from right) Dominik Mjartan<\/strong>, Optus President; Benita E. Lefft<\/strong>, Optus Chief Operating Officer; SC Progressive Network Executive Director Brett Bursey<\/strong>, and SC Progressive Network Interim Executive Director Brandon Upson<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been nearly 50 years since Brett Bursey<\/strong> met Modjeska Monteith Simkins<\/strong> at the Harden St. branch of Victory Savings Bank and opened an account for the Grass Roots Organizing Workshop<\/strong> (GROW). They struck up a friendship and close working relations that endured for the next 18 years of Modjeska\u2019s long life which began in 1899.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modjeska was 20 years old in 1921 when the Monteith family helped start the bank with $2600 in deposits. Victory Savings, now Optus Bank, was the state\u2019s first Black bank and one of the nation’s few Black banks that made it through the Depression. Victory Savings helped many families, farms, and businesses keep going during the darkest days of Jim Crow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modjeska was engaged in the founding of the NAACP State Conference in 1935, which was one of the most active and aggressive in the South. Her outspoken manner, progressive politics, and leadership saw her pushed out of the State Conference in 1957 when her name was intentionally left off the ballot. It was the height of the Red Scare and social justice organizations and activists were deemed communists by politicians who whipped up hysteria to suppress activism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modjeska, known for \u201cmaking a way out of no way,\u201d started the Richland County Citizens Committee and remained active in local, and legislative matters. She participated and spoke at GROW events ranging from anti-apartheid pickets at banks selling South African gold Krugerrands, to anti-nuclear protests at the Bomb Plant in Aiken County,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1996, GROW organized the SC Progressive Network<\/a><\/strong> to foster a statewide movement of shared values that is gaining momentum in these days of uncompromising nationalism and white supremacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2014, when our office was in the historic Modjeska house, plans were made to start a school to teach effective citizenship and the Modjeska Monteith Simkins School for Human Rights started classes in 2015. The next year, in the archives at Howard University, we discovered that Modjeska had started a Leadership School in 1946, from the same house, with the same curriculum on good jobs, education, healthcare and racial justice we were teaching 70 years later. South Carolina\u2019s history of resistance has been continually erased, preventing new generations fighting the same problems from gaining ground. The Modjeska Simkins School<\/a><\/strong> has started taking applications for the 2024 session, teaching the inspiring history of resistance to the same problems we face today.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optus, the latest iteration of Victory Savings Bank, manifests the long and closely held tradition of social justice as “mission-centric,\u201d to community banking. The Network moved its main account to one of the big banks when Community Bank, the previous iteration of Victory Savings, went into federal receivership. Brett met with Dominik Mjartan<\/strong>, the president of Optus, and promised to return when the necessary full-service banking operations were attained. Today, SC Progressive Network is depositing $250,000, the majority raised in the last few months from individual donations, to launch a sustained, nonpartisan DemocraSC Campaign to reconstruct democracy. Today\u2019s deposit evidences our appreciation and trust in Optus\u2019 ability to meet our banking needs and their shared commitment to our mission. We encourage like-minded organizations and individuals to join us in transferring accounts to a bank that shares our values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we face the most serious challenge to democracy and equality since South Carolina led the nation to war to preserve slavery, we quote Modjeska Simkins, \u201cLadies and gentlemen, this is no sitting down time.”
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It\u2019s been nearly 50 years since Brett Bursey met Modjeska Monteith Simkins at the Harden St. branch of Victory Savings Bank and opened an account for the Grass Roots Organizing Workshop (GROW). They struck up a friendship and close working … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-network-newsevents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6689,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6686\/revisions\/6689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}