If holding a picket sign in the street isn’t your thing, take heart: There’s plenty of activism to be done via how you spend your money. Jasmine Rashid is a financial activist and Director of Impact for Candide Group. She joins host Krys Boyd to discuss why taboo discussions about wealth and money need to happen for social change, how shopping small businesses can put pressure on multi-national corporations, and her easy how-to guide for a budding activist that starts with pinching pennies. Her book is “The Financial Activist Playbook: 8 Strategies for Everyday People to Reclaim Wealth and Collective Well-Being.”
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Transcript
Krys Boyd [00:00:00] When you think of revolutionary moments of activism, you picture the National Mall filled with marchers, the tents and picket signs of Occupy Wall Street. Those highly visible moments attract attention and make headlines. But if joining a protest isn’t your thing, you can still do your part. And it starts with how and where you spend your money. From Kera in Dallas, this is Think. I’m Krys Boyd. Jasmine Rashid is a financial activist, writer and impact investing professional, as well as director of impact for the Candide Group. And she says, to live out our values, we have to break down the taboos of talking about money and put our dollars in the places that work to combat climate change. Lift up minority owned businesses and build generational wealth. But that all starts with what we might consider the chump change we hold in our back pockets. And she has created an easy to use guide to make those pennies powerful. Rashid’s book is “The Financial Activist Playbook: Eight Strategies for Everyday People to Reclaim Wealth and Collective Well-Being.” We spoke recently in front of a live audience at Dallas’s Paul Quinn College, and today we’re going to hear that conversation. Jasmine, welcome.
Jasmine Rashid [00:01:11] So great to be here with you, Krys. Really excited.
Krys Boyd [00:01:14] So first things first. What does it mean to be a financial activist? Why is this something we might want to think about?
Jasmine Rashid [00:01:21] So financial activism is the kind of broad, encompassing term for decisions that we make that are intentional about money, with the goal of shifting the flow of power and helping people reclaim wealth and collective well-being. So these are some pretty high and lofty ideas, but essentially understanding that, like we were talking about earlier, the economy is ours to make, right? We all participated in every day, but so many of us often feel powerless in actually decision making, especially when it comes to our financial systems. And so financial activists are people who choose to reclaim agency around the ways our financial systems impact our lives by virtue of how they use their money, but also by virtue of how they influence the money around them, whether it’s their local budgets, their institutions, their places of work and so on.
Krys Boyd [00:02:11] So our goals can be personal, just making sure that we have enough to get by. They can extend to our communities and our country and our society. What are some ways financial activists can push back against the dominant financial system that works so much better for a tiny fraction of us than for the rest of us?
Jasmine Rashid [00:02:30] I think we always need to ground ourselves in the reality that the current financial systems we operate under were created by a very small group of landowning white men who could never have imagined this room, us having this conversation. And the massive innovation that has happened on a global scale. Right. And so I think that’s when it comes to challenging the dominant financial system. We first need to talk about what that actually looks like and means of the material reality of people’s lives. And so often, even just the concept of finance and money in general is so taboo, right? It’s to the point where, you know, we see massive exploitation in terms of wage theft because people don’t feel encouraged to even talk about money, their own money. There are studies that show that the majority of U.S. adults don’t talk about money, even with their intimate partners, with their spouses, with their families. So there’s really some deep ingrained taboos around money. And so I think financial activism also really starts with just acknowledging the reality of the capitalist system that we live under of all the different economies, local, global, international economy. And starting from that perspective, that even if we aren’t experts in finance, I myself am always proclaiming I am not an expert in finance, I work in the world of finance, but I am very much an expert in my own lived reality and everyone else is too right again because everyone lives, works, plays in this economy. And so really empowering people to understand the ways in which they already make decisions every day and can have those decisions be in line with the current extractive economy. You just explained, which we know leads to increasing wealth inequality or to help build something better, which I’m excited to talk more about.
Krys Boyd [00:04:20] Well, let’s talk about that. You draw a difference between the extractive economy and the regenerative economy, so let’s get those definitions out of the way.
Jasmine Rashid [00:04:29] Absolutely. So the extractive economy and this is coming from, you know, decades of work laid out by organizers and activists, particularly from the climate justice movement, who wanted to make sure, as we’re trying to build a better world, build more green infrastructure, that we’re not, for example, just throwing people who work in coal mines to the side. We cannot build a future that is going to work for everyone and not actually think about everyone’s role in that. So the current extractive economy is based on the. Paradigm of profit maximization of shareholder supremacy. So how do we make as much money for our shareholders as fast as possible as the primary goal? And that also leads to things like extracting from our natural resources in ways that are going to not be able to sustain us, you know, for the next generation, all the generations to come. And so it’s very shortsighted. It is very, again, designed around this intention of profit as the ultimate goal. When we move to a more intentional regenerative economy, we’re thinking about the ways in which our highest measure of wealth is our well-being collectively. You know, at the community level and also with the planet and all the rest of the inhabitants of this world. And so a regenerative economy really asks, how can we maximize well-being for as many people as possible in ways that are also making sure that we are thinking about not just us right now, but, you know, taking from indigenous wisdom seven generations at least, to come in the future.
Krys Boyd [00:06:08] You give us five big questions that can guide us on our path to becoming financial activist. The first two are related, and they are. Why is this like this? Yes. And how do I feel about it?
Jasmine Rashid [00:06:19] Yeah. So I think, again, like so often we talk about finance and economics. We try to go straight to numbers, equations. For me, I, I studied peace and conflict studies. I studied social movements and the ways in which, you know, people really from the grassroots against the odds were able to make massive changes in their society. And it starts always with the questioning of why the conditions are the way they are of asking. Let’s take some examples of, you know, why are the big you know, why are the small businesses in my town being replaced by big box stores? Why is it so hard for my coworkers and I to see what our 401ks are invested in who lent us all this compounding student debt and why? Right. And so just being able to question and just take a moment to say, who’s profiting from this? I don’t know if it’s me. I don’t know if it’s anyone I know. But when we start to lead with that curiosity, we’re also able to take a step to, you know, just reflect on how we feel about this work, because it’s really easy, honestly, to ignore the emotional, psychological, spiritual effects of wealth, inequality of money and all of the taboos that we have been trained in our culture to associate with that. And it’s much harder sometimes to actually sit with the facts that a lot of us have a trauma around money, and we’re embedded in a culture where financial trauma is a norm, right, for so many people. And so when we start with that curiosity and then also make sure we are in tune with ourselves, it can feel a little woo woo, right? So think about how money must also start with the kind of inner well-being. But it does come back to the fact that when we are in an activated, nervous state, when our nervous systems are just reacting to the conditions around us, when we’re feeling the effects of that trauma without addressing it, we’re often likely to be treating others and ourselves with less than full dignity. And we see that time and again in social movements. We see people’s trauma then projected onto others. And though we aren’t responsible for many of the conditions that got us here, I think that we all can reclaim agency around our own healing so that we are better prepared for the other steps of financial activism.
Krys Boyd [00:08:43] So your next question is what is possible with this thing we think we might want to change? And are you thinking about concrete details or are you thinking pie in the sky? In a perfect world, what is possible?
Jasmine Rashid [00:08:55] So I love doing exercises with people, including vision boarding for a just economy. Let’s just start laying out the imagery. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What is it? What would it mean for you and everyone that you love to live with more dignity and self-determination agency. And so sometimes that is words and that is tangible, but other times it’s again, just playing in the imaginative space without being bogged down by what might just be immediately practical. Right? I ask people to think about, let’s take the student debt example. What might it look like? What might be possible if student debt were abolished? And people go, there’s so many things. There’s so many things that we’ve do. It’s like just the question, right? Thinking about what might be possible when we start from that place of like purpose and why, and just let ourselves again dream, then we are much better prepared to go back to the tactical, to go back to the strategy, without letting that fear stop us from goals that we think are actually really valuable.
Krys Boyd [00:09:53] And that leads to your next question, which is what can I do right now? Which. Yes. We don’t have to wait around until the absolute perfect solution and all the power necessary to implement it are available to us.
Jasmine Rashid [00:10:06] Yeah. We’ve been talking to hear a lot about choice and how to be human is to have so many choices. I studied under Dr. Barry Schwartz, who has this amazing philosophy around the paradox of choice and how actually sometimes we are stifled because we feel like there’s so many choices in front of us and therefore there can’t be a right choice. And what I really love to, you know, encourage people to think about is that we’re already making choices every day, right? So when it comes to practicing financial activism in, you know, minute details of your day, it might look like, okay, I am buying a birthday gifts for my friend. Like, is there a way where I can also be supporting a small local owned business? I am making I’m getting lunch with my coworkers, you know, can we instead of going to, you know, a big multinational corporation like, again, support the local taco spot? And so when I frame it as looking at the decisions that you’re already making and seeing if you can make tweaks there, I feel it becomes a little bit more accessible because I’m someone who is chronically overwhelmed with the amount of choices in our life. And so, yeah, encouraging people to again claim agency or the money decisions they’re already making, which prepares them for the bigger work of influencing the money around them.
Krys Boyd [00:11:30] This question is what can we do together? How do you identify people who are similarly outraged and motivated?
Jasmine Rashid [00:11:39] I love that question because I think there’s so many spaces historically from union organizing to, you know, immigrant communities who understand that the systems they’re living in were not built from them, who have alternative systems of mutual aid. Right? And so I think starting where you are is really important looking at who are you already connected to? So often when I bring up conversations about, you know, what if we didn’t have to choose between building wealth for ourselves, especially for those of us who may be, you know, first generation building wealth for the first time, who are women, who are young people, people of color, how do we build wealth but also participate in a system that we don’t feel great about? The answer is we have to do it together and figure it out so that we can make that massive system change. And there are so many amazing collectives that are out there that are specifically designed to facilitate that organizing, both from campaigns and strategy. I think about the debt collective, which is the first union of debtors around the country. I think about both medical and student debt, right? And how many folks have that. I think about third acts, which is for elder Americans in their third act of life, who are really passionate about climate change and how do we make sure that the world exists for the future. I think about dissenters which organizes people all around the world against the global war machine. There are so many collectives that you can find on places like Instagram, on their websites that are really engaging in these social technologies, but then also in the streets, they’re also in workplaces. So I think, you know, connecting exactly where you are and then also looking to you if there’s chapters or if there are organizations, I list a bunch of my book because I think that collectives are the answer and often don’t get enough shine.
Krys Boyd [00:13:38] Jasmine, you do not strike me as someone who wants to just burn it all down. But you do have a pretty radical vision for a much more egalitarian financial system, economy, society. So how do you make peace with the progress of incremental change when what you want ultimately is revolutionary change?
Jasmine Rashid [00:13:58] Yeah. So, you know, Angela Davis posits that the term radical really just means grabbing by the root. Sometimes we need a little burning, right? But ultimately we need to think about long term sustainable change and the the positions that got us here to this current state in which, again, we see an economy that is growing a wealth gap even as wealth is increasing, we’re still seeing, you know, dismal conditions in the wealthiest country, in the wealthiest period of the world. We really need to be thinking about all of the layers that got us to the position and recognizing it’s on one hand, it took many years to get us here and will probably take many years to get us to a place that feels much more sustainable. On the other hand, remembering that that’s all man made and it’s was intentional decisions over a series of really long and intentional, you know, culture building. Ultimately, that formed our current financial systems that have to be man, woman, people unmade and remade and redesigned and remixed. And so fundamentally, I think the values of our financial systems need to be radically reimagined. At the same time, the ways we get there is not throwing everything away and starting from scratch, because the reality is people need to eat. People need to live in on a day to day basis. And the idea of revolution can often feel so far away when sometimes it’s already in our grasps or at our fingertips in those small ways. And so again, navigating the contradictions and not approaching social change as a binary.
Krys Boyd [00:15:45] It feels the way things are now, like only government officials and maybe already very wealthy people are in control of how and where money flows. But you say that’s not true.
Jasmine Rashid [00:15:56] Yeah, they do have so because of the massive wealth disparities. Obviously people who have a lot of wealth do have a lot of influence politically, obviously financially in the ways that decisions are currently made. Ultimately, though, they are doing so with the consent often of everyday people. Whether or not people are fully aware of the ways in which, for example, our tax laws are working or the ways in which we, you know, just accept that maybe the only place where we could buy a certain good is a conglomerate like Amazon. And so, you know, money is a part of power, but it’s not all power. Power is also and capital for that matter, is relationships. It’s culture. It’s, you know, the generations of stories and recipes and all of these things that make up, again, all good life. And when we’re able to combine our resources, when we’re able to actually see from that what we call asset based approach, what do we already have, as opposed to focusing on our deficits, we can then use that to build upon of what else do we need. And so for me, you know, I really think the work of financial activism has to be by the 99%, because we’re trying to build an economy that actually works for the 99%. And there isn’t a billionaire who’s going to just generally save us. And even if they try it, it wouldn’t work.
Krys Boyd [00:17:29] You say that financial activists don’t have to just absolutely love and want to acquire money. They don’t have to hate money and think it’s evil. How should a financial activist think about money?
Jasmine Rashid [00:17:40] To borrow from Edgar Villanueva, who is someone who has worked in philanthropy and really brings in indigenous economics to the ways we think about how wealth flows, what would it happen if we just looked at money as a tool, as a tool, just like anything else, or as medicine, right? That could heal broken relationships. Money in and of itself is a concept, like it’s real in terms of it could be, you know, it could be your credit card ecosystem of money, it could be your dollar bills. But ultimately, it’s a it’s often a concept that has very, very real implications. But it’s because we collectively agree to assign value to whatever that money is. And so there are, you know, ways in which when we again, coming back to unpacking a lot of our collective trauma around money and the ways in which we see it as either something that is inherently evil or something that is, you know, the ultimate goal of life, when we are able to take a step back and look at money as a tool for everything else in life, I think it becomes a lot easier to work with.
Krys Boyd [00:18:46] Does a financial activist have to be some kind of financial expert?
Jasmine Rashid [00:18:50] I don’t think so, because coming back to the idea of we are all people who live and work in the economy and are experts in our own lived reality, you’re not going to understand what it’s like to, you know, be someone who works and doesn’t have bathroom breaks because it’s not a part of what your labor contract is. That is a that is a reality. That is an expertise and a story that ultimately needs to be shared so that we can inform, okay, how do we go about solving that issue? And so I think coming back to the concept of in order to do real financial activism, it needs to be grounded in where people are. Very, very few people are actually working in the financial sector, in philanthropy, in impact investing. I’m I feel privileged to be able to be in that space. But I also wrote the book because I knew that’s not where the majority of people are. The majority of people are, you know, working at supermarkets or stores. They’re cashiers. They’re, you know, a wide variety of jobs. And increasingly among my demographic, people are changing jobs. They’re identifying less and less with what they do and more and more with how they live. And so financial activism is really about how do we collectively craft the ways in which our finance flows to support how our next generation is living, as opposed to just thinking about our place of work or employment being the only lever or tool that we have at our disposal.
Krys Boyd [00:20:20] There’s been a lot of recognition lately and many decades too late of the importance of diversifying the people who work in the institutions that make our economic system work. You do not disagree with the importance of diversity, but you also don’t think that’s the only solution we need?
Jasmine Rashid [00:20:36] Absolutely. I kind of joke in the book that exploitation by a woman of color is still exploitation. And I think we fundamentally need to remind us if we’re trying to change a game, just changing the players in that game isn’t enough. We really need to, again, come back to the root of what are we trying to achieve. And if the goal is maximizing well-being as opposed to profit maximization for a few, then it is really important to have people who represent the lived experiences in those positions. And again, with the intentionality of change and not just normality.
Krys Boyd [00:21:11] You call financialization the biggest trend. Most people have never heard of. So educated.
Jasmine Rashid [00:21:17] Absolutely. So essentially, financialization is and this was taught to me by this really great organizing group called Take on Wall Street. Financialization is the process really starting in kind of the early 80s around imbuing profit maximization into virtually every aspect of our lives and profit maximization for very few. So that looks like why everything from veterinarian practices to daycare centers seem to now be driven by faceless private equity firms. It’s the ways in which our financial system has increased its role in every factor of our lives, again, because they see an opportunity for profit rather than they see an opportunity for innovation or well-being or increasing that. So financialization is something that I think already affects many of us but is not something we collectively talk about.
Krys Boyd [00:22:11] You mentioned earlier that we struggle to talk about money, that many of us have private money traumas that are still informing the way we interact. Can you talk about the difference between a money script and a money story?
Jasmine Rashid [00:22:25] Yes. So Dr. Brad, clients proposes that they’re essentially for money scripts. I won’t go too deep into the kind of layers of each, but the scripts are essentially either you worship money, you are, you know, I’m forgetting the exact language, but some of us really feel like money is a sense of our value. Some of us are really ashamed and feel weird about money. Like we all have different kind of course scripts and often a combination better informed by our childhoods and by how we grew up. And so money scripts are, I think, helpful in kind of recognizing that you’re not alone in your weird money stories, but in your weird money scripts. But your money story is something that is as unique as a fingerprint. It is not only the combination of how you grew up, but it’s also I like to ask people about what is your ancestral story around money? What do and don’t you know about how your ancestors thought about money leveraged? What kind of wealth did they have? What was your growing up story? What are your earliest, earliest memories? What were your biggest kind of financial events? Did you take out debt? Did you get an inheritance? Thinking about your current money story, where you are today and the ways in which money flows in and out of your life? And then also thinking about your future story, the ways in which you want to be remembered. Not to be dismal, but to think about our finite time on this earth. And we all are going to have some legacy. And how can money actually help you in that legacy building so that you’re able to again, claim agency over who you are in this world? And so money story is a combination of, you know, environmental of your family, of your internal sense of who you are. But there is no one money story that looks like and I love I’m an only child, so I’m really always interested in sibling dynamics. And I’ve always been so surprised to see the ways in which two siblings who have grown up in the same household could have vastly different money stories, even though the actual money that they may have. Had in their household growing up was the same. So money stories again are the more than just the networth or the numbers. They are the texture of, you know, who we are, how we interact with our financial systems and how they make us value ourselves.
Krys Boyd [00:24:48] Overconsumption is baked into the financial system we have now, the capital system we have now. Companies are counting on selling us more than we actually need. So I have a double question here. One is how can we get a handle on what we do actually need and want because it’s okay to spend a little money here and there on on treats and how can people build companies that don’t rely on overconsumption?
Jasmine Rashid [00:25:13] Yes. I love both of these questions. So starting with the kind of individual level I. I’m someone who loves to talk about, you know, the value of budgeting. And I personally struggle with it. You know, budgeting is not necessarily sexy. It’s not something that we have been taught is life giving or fun, but it’s also really essential to just taking stock of what we do and don’t have at any given moment in our lives. It helps us lay the foundation for what goals we’re working towards. And again, coming back to the concept of money being a taboo. We don’t talk about money with others, but we also don’t talk about it with ourselves in ways that, you know, people don’t look at their bank accounts until like something is wrong or and this is a generalization, but I think overall as a culture, I have been leaning into and listening to stories from households who are practicing something called enough budgeting, or that’s at least what we’re kind of calling it. And enough budgeting really starts again from that perspective of like, what is enough for me so that all of my needs are met, but also that most of my wants are met too, because we do live in a society and a culture and a reality in which there is abundance that is currently hoarded, fragmented and not distributed in ways where the reality is that we do all have enough for both what we need and what we want. So being able to map out clearly what your actual needs are, what your, you know, monthly cost of living is at any given point in your life, what’s your goals are, you know, what kind of vacations you want to take. Like budgeting doesn’t have to be this, you know, really draconian of like, cut here, don’t do this. No lattes for you. It can be something that actually just helps you prioritize. What are you assigning value to in your life? And I think budgets ultimately are moral documents. And so that brings me to the piece around the kind of organizational and collective, you know, the piece about overconsumption is, is one piece of like, what is the actual product or service that you’re producing? But actually zooming, zooming back out when we think about businesses and what is enough for a business. So many businesses again, are premised on the concept of there is no such thing as enough. Enough means how do we keep growing, how do we keep expanding and scaling? But then you do see these really amazing, you know, purpose driven businesses that have baked wellbeing into the core of their business. And so it’s kind of regardless of what they are producing in terms of their product or service, obviously they want to be producing something that is both good for the earth, that is sourced responsibly, that is not dependent on the exploitation of others or the planet, but that also they are thinking about things like how my our workers actually be owners. How might we have policies that really respect human dignity? So how can we start kind of internally with having that deep impact at the company level? And I think that often is what drives the products and services to match that same energy.
Krys Boyd [00:28:21] There are lots of established nonprofits doing very good work that make it easy to make a contribution. I happen to work for one and we’re deeply grateful for community support. But you remind us in the book that’s not necessarily the only way to do something philanthropic with the resources you have.
Jasmine Rashid [00:28:39] Yeah. So one area that is very much in deep development right now is around the concept of community investing. How can we, you know. Actually bet on the people we know and love, the businesses in our communities that are serving us in ways that we are also partial owner or that we’re able to make a financial return and it becomes a partnership rather than exploitation. So, you know, any of us could go get on a flight right now, head to Las Vegas and spend. Thousands of dollars. Our entire bank account we can cash out. But it is not currently legal in many cases for people who have under who are not millionaires, essentially to invest in many private companies. That has changed in recent years with a few different acts that, if included, to allow for community investment, have allowed for community rounds in larger investment structures. But it’s an area that really does need more people building on and working. Like now we can legally do it. But I think many people, you know, are caught up in the kind of fairly so the logistics of it. So we need lawyers. We need, you know, people who are deep in the weeds of budgets. We need strategists. We need people from all elements to help us walk through this next stage of what investing means for communities.
Krys Boyd [00:30:08] For people who are fortunate enough to have enough extra to be, say, putting money away for retirement. You mentioned it can be hard to know where those dollars are invested if we’re investing them through a company plan. Can you talk a little bit about how we can know that the money we are investing through very traditional means is not doing things we don’t want our money to do?
Jasmine Rashid [00:30:31] Yeah. So there’s a lot of great tools being developed and that are in development where you can plug in the little the ticker, the those little acronyms for whatever company you may be invested in. And you can find out, you can find out. One resource I love is the investigate database by the American Friends Service Committee. They are rooted in a long history of financial activism as a Quaker institution, and they have done the research that basically will tell you whether or not the company or fund, which is, you know, when people are often investing in buckets of many companies and post just individual companies, you can see what kind of exposure you have to things like fossil fuels or prisons or border militarization. But you have to seek that out. You know, that’s not something that you can go to HR and be like, Tell me what’s happening. You can try and maybe they’ll be receptive, but that’s not something that our, you know, for example, it’s not something that our like HR people are necessarily equipped with because it’s just now becoming a question of public consciousness. And so, you know, for now a lot of the resources are kind of like you have to actively seek that. But I think again, seething with the question of remembering that our investments make an active impact in the world, helps us be better informed to then approach with that lens of curiosity of like, what is it actually doing and do I want the money that I worked hard to earn supporting things like prisons or fossil fuels?
Krys Boyd [00:32:01] I didn’t realize this, but you don’t have to be a major shareholder to make your voice heard with any company that you’re investing in.
Jasmine Rashid [00:32:08] That’s right, yeah. So again, rules are always changing. We love our friends at the SCC and all of our financial organizations. But I think the current and maybe I’ll fact check this afterwards, but the current amount is $2,000 worth of shares in any given company, a publicly owned company. So a company that is traded on the stock market or another exchange, you are then able to submit what is called a shareholder resolution or proposal in which you can say, Hey, board of this company and leaders of this company. I really don’t like the fact that we still don’t have gender wage equity, that women in the company are being paid remarkably less than men. And so we have seen time and again people who have those shares either themselves or can partner with activists who can serve as their as kind of proxies for them to go into those meetings and get it on the on the table. And the goal for, you know, getting awareness is not necessarily like we’re going to get 51% of the vote. It, again, is planting the seed of drawing awareness to an issue that you can then rally and organize greater support around. So hopefully it can get to the level of the board actually paying attention and seeing this is what our constituents want.
Krys Boyd [00:33:28] What are ESG goals?
Jasmine Rashid [00:33:30] ESG stands for environmental, social and governance, and essentially it is used mostly as a screen for investments to again, take out things that are harming our environment, that are socially irresponsible or that have poor governance policies.
Krys Boyd [00:33:45] And so these are that’s a good place to start if we want to be socially responsible investors.
Jasmine Rashid [00:33:50] Absolutely. Yeah. So it is the practice of, you know, how do we filter out some of these harder, you know, harder to find systems. So a lot of companies offer ESG funds now as a way to ensure you that where your money is going is not actively harming others or the planet. I will say that, you know, we have seen as our world changes. The social issues change, too. You know, five years ago, private prisons and detention centers capacity to screen. Because it’s a relatively new industry that has only started, you know, really preying on vulnerable communities. They’ve also worked in systems like health care, and they’re constantly rebranding. So they’re they’re kind of sneaky. And so ESG screens also need people who are taking the cap, who are holding them accountable to make sure that they are regularly updated and taking into account the material reality of social issues as time goes on.
Krys Boyd [00:34:48] You share a great story in the book about following the money on the private prison system and and being able to effect some change.
Jasmine Rashid [00:34:55] Will you share that with us? Absolutely. So this is actually my personal kind of entry into this big world of financial activism. The summer of 2018, many of us remember it was a time in which there was news and imagery of family separation and immigrant detention under Trump’s family separation policies. And, you know, many of us may have felt powerless to do anything about it. We’re seeing we’re seeing this imagery. We’re saying, how can this be happening in 2018? And it becomes serialized that over 70% of migrants are being held in for profit institution, for profit prison corporations where there is a literal heads for beds, profit motive to lock up as many people as they can in dismal conditions. And so once that was exposed, saying these companies didn’t just appear like they’re getting contracts with with Ice and with governments, but they’re also getting loans and not to get to in the weeds, but they’re structured as real estate investment trusts that our lovely big banks are investing in. And those are big banks that we as everyday people have trusted our money for our savings, for our deposits. And when that money is in the bank, it’s not just sitting there, right? It’s actively being lent out. And so we had a strategy under what would become known as the Families Belong Together coalition of bringing awareness to the reality that this is a this is a for profit enterprise that’s happening this this massive issue that we’re all, you know, feeling a lot of hurt about. We followed the lead of immigrant women in particular who had experienced family separation. And we started talking to our banks like our local bank branches. I helped lead a protest outside the Wells Fargo headquarters in San Francisco. It was Valentine’s Day. So we had we tried to, you know, enjoy the time we were there. We had we were, you know, serenading the bank with songs of heartbreak, asking them to break up with private prisons or else we would break up with them, you know, and really saying like, hey, we are your customers. And if you stop doing like if you don’t stop lending your money in this way, I’m going to go to a different bank. And so we had that really public strategy. We had a mariachi band outside Jamie Diamond’s house. And at the same time as that really public strategy that activated everyday people who have bank accounts. We also worked with investors and asset allocators, brought them into the coalition to have those conversations with the big bank representatives around the reality that this was a terrible policy, first of all, but that it was also ESG risk, that we were going to keep putting pressure on them in the media, in public, and they had an opportunity to be among those to make a decision to make a change. And so we saw JP Morgan Chase commit to no longer lending to private prisons, then Wells Fargo, then Bank of America. And so ultimately, $2 billion, the majority of the industry’s financing was affected. All during private prisons, companies ability to raise capital to this day. So the coalition did that. People power did that.
Krys Boyd [00:38:09] In a room full of what I believe are everyday people who rely on our banks. You know, we’re almost grateful that they’re willing to do business with us. It’s easy to forget that they are for profit companies and they are not the only alternative.
Jasmine Rashid [00:38:23] That’s right. Yeah. So banks are structured as for profit businesses that have often an obligation to maximize shareholder profit, just like many other businesses in our economy. There are many banks that are really imbuing social responsibility and thinking about how to change their business model. But something that is really interesting and goes against just the incremental change to the point of really radically reimagining is thinking about the idea of public banking institutions in which people actually own the banks and therefore banks do not have that same often perverse incentive to maximize shareholder profit at any cost. So public banking is really common in many other countries. We have one bank. We have one public bank in the United States in North Dakota. But there are many propositions right now to legalize the ability to even start thinking and planning for public banking institutions again, in which everyday people are both the beneficiaries of banking institutions. Again, these are the institutions we rely on for our home loans, car loans, savings, all of these elements that are really personal that we actually also get to own the solution.
Krys Boyd [00:39:34] We all understand the amazing things that entrepreneurs can do to generate jobs, to create services that people really want and need. What is an interest for newer?
Jasmine Rashid [00:39:43] Yeah, I was introduced this concept with my friend Naima McQueen, who I look to as this amazing financial activist who’s always making change. She’s always, you know, flowing money to particularly black woman owned small businesses. And she does not own her own business. She works within other businesses and is able to be often like a voice of of change, of saying, what if we tried this? And so intrapreneur are the majority of of people who are working today. They are people who see that even though they don’t necessarily own a company or, you know, have that leadership stake, they can still be leaders in changing the direction of the company so that it can provide, you know, more beneficial returns to community, to constituents, to workers and so on.
Krys Boyd [00:40:34] What are some ways we can design our jobs to yield maximum good if indeed we work for somebody else?
Jasmine Rashid [00:40:41] Yeah. And this is something that there is no one like everything in financial activism, no one size fits all approach. Some of us are privileged to be in positions where we really do feel respected at work, that our opinions matter. Others of us are just showing up for a paycheck because that is the reality of the economy we live in. What makes the work of organizing from within a company much easier. Obviously we can look at the history of unions who have built really amazing wins like the 40 hour workweek. Again, that was not just inevitable. That was a win from organized labor organizers. But when we start, you know, talking to her coworkers, our colleagues, when we start identifying that we have the same issues, whether it’s around insufficient parental leave or that we actually want more ESG options in our retirement funds, the more folks you can get internally to be on the same page again, no one has to, you know, automatically strike if that’s not what feels accessible to them. But getting people to see how change could benefit their live realities as well as their as well as their workplace is really step one to saying, Cool, now we have a plan. We can go to management, we can go to leadership and show them that this would ultimately benefit our ability to keep working here.
Krys Boyd [00:42:05] I want to end on what you call the divine right to rest, which is something that gets lost very easily in our hustle culture. You say in an economy that works for everybody, we will not have to choose. We should not have to choose between making enough money to live and having enough time and space to recharge. How different would this country be if that existed for everyone?
Jasmine Rashid [00:42:29] Yeah. How different would this country be if we weren’t all cranky and overworked and sleep deprived? This is really personal to me because I am someone who didn’t know how to rest and rest. Seems like such a natural human thing to do. Right. But again, I grew up in an ultra capitalist culture in which productivity was associated with value, not because someone explicitly told me that, but because that’s what I saw around me. And so I had to do a lot of work. I actually started working with a professional coach because I was like, I want to get a raise in my career. I want to like, find my purpose. And her response was, You need to learn how to nap. Because what happens when we are really passionate about something and we continue to try and push the needle forward and we know we’re going to be met with resistance. You know, burnout is often inevitable. And so napping, resting and not just sleep, but actual restoration leisure. That is also what the financial activist before us fought for, right. When they fought for the 40 hour workweek. They weren’t just fighting for a limited number of work hours. They were fighting for every other element of our lives, time with our families, time resting and just luxuriating in in what it is to be human. And so, you know, Ress really needs to be central to the sustainability of our movements, of our personal lives. And I really owe a lot to the people who lovingly have held me accountable in taking time off and in resting, as well as people like Tricia Hersi, who is the Minister, has an amazing, amazing book “Rest is Resistance.” That really, I think, puts a fine point on the need for rest as revolutionary and radical work.
Krys Boyd [00:44:15] Jasmine, thank you so much.
Jasmine Rashid [00:44:16] Thank you so much.
Krys Boyd [00:44:25] Jasmine Rashid is a financial activist and director of impact for the Candide Group. Her book is “The Financial Activist Playbook: Eight Strategies for Everyday People to Reclaim Wealth and Collective Well-Being.” Think is distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and listen to our podcast for free wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for KERA Think. Our website is think.kera.org. That’s where you can find out about upcoming shows and sign up for our free weekly newsletter. Again, I’m Krys Boyd. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.
