By BNY Mellon Campaign
This month, the United States of America celebrated its 249th anniversary, marking 249 years of ongoing genocide. From the beginning, the United States has been defined as a settler-colonial project–a type of “colonization in which outsiders come to the land inhabited by Indigenous peoples and claim it as their own.” The settler colonialists have created, maintained, and fortified systems to ensure the continuation and expansion of their project in its centuries-long history. The capitalist financial system is one of those systems, and it relies on banks and Wall Street. Our target, the Bank of New York Mellon, has played an integral role in the construction and maintenance of that system over the course of its 240 year history.
Wall Street as a financial epicenter began its violent legacy with ethnic cleansing and deep ties to the Slave Trade. Built by captive Africans stolen and trafficked by the first Dutch settlers on this stolen land, Wall Street is aptly named after the wall meant to keep the Indigenous Lenape out. As the settler-colonists expanded the slave trade, they used Wall Street as a market to sell trafficked and captive Africans. In 1711, New York City officials decreed that ‘‘all Negro and Indian slaves that are let out to hire…be hired at the Market house at the Wall Street Slip.” Settler-colonists were forced to close the Wall Street slave market in 1762, yet slavery continued to be widely practiced and deeply embedded in the DNA of the colony. Financial support from local banks in the form of insurance policies and loans to Southern plantation owners help to maintain the institution for another century. Though the slave trade slowly faded as its main source of capital, Wall Street has continued to facilitate the movement of capital all the way through to present day.
As the white settlers depleted their stolen resources fighting British rule in the American “Revolutionary” War, they needed more capital to execute their settler-colonial project. The fledgling colonial nation was deeply in debt, without a unified currency or financial backing. That is when Alexander Hamilton founded the Bank of New York (which would later become the Bank of New York Mellon or BNY Mellon) in 1784. One of the most critical roles the Bank of New York played in the early years of the United States’ formation was to stabilize currency by providing exchange rates for the many different currencies throughout all the colonies. Over the next decade, Alexander Hamilton and his Bank of New York would be instrumental in shaping the financial systems of the United States. The Coinage Act of 1792 established a national currency and created the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The very first stock traded was that of the Bank of New York.
The Bank of New York was quickly and firmly embedded in the financial apparatus of the United States; In 1803, the profits of the Bank of New York and other banks on the nascent NYSE financed the Louisiana Purchase and allowed for the deadly expansion of the settler-colonial project. The Louisiana Purchase led to the violent expulsion of over 100,000 Indigenous peoples–the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole–known as the Trail of Tears. On its website, BNY Mellon proudly lists its contribution to the Louisiana Purchase as a testament to the role it has played in shaping the United States. The Bank of New York Mellon’s contribution to the Trail of Tears is not just historical; there is a modern-day Trail of Tears happening right now as settler-colonists violently expel and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land. The parallels between the colonies are clear- the violence is exported by the United States and financed by its banking institutions, such as BNY Mellon.
Throughout its 240-year history, the Bank of New York Mellon has directly supported the most violent empire in history and has participated in the oppression of people worldwide. As an investment bank, it continues its legacy of funding genocide and slavery by maintaining a $17 million investment in Elbit Systems–the largest weapons manufacturer in the settler-colonial project known as “Israel.” BNY Mellon is also the sole manager of the “Friends of the IDF” Donor-Advised Fund, a “charity” fund which allows rich zionists to get tax breaks when they donate directly to the IDF.
Palestine Action is famously targeting Elbit Systems and their manufacturing sites. Although in New York City we have limited access to manufacturers themselves, we have access to their funders. We view our campaign as part of a global movement against Elbit Systems and we stand in solidarity with Palestine Action and the BDS movement. Our campaign has identified and is targeting BNY Mellon because we also understand that there is no separation between the settler-colonialism of the United States and “Israel”; the tactics being used in the genocide of Palestinians echo the tactics used against the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. BNY Mellon, as a foundational financial institution of the United States, is a key player in the global system of colonialism.
We know that these settler-colonial projects can only be carried out through the backing of capital. When we challenge these projects’ access to and the legitimacy of their capital, we deliver a blow that weakens them and their ability to carry out ethnic cleansing campaigns. When we disrupt the flow of capital, we throw sand in the gears of genocide. We hope you join the growing movement for Palestinian liberation and support our campaign against BNY Mellon.
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