CHAPTER 1 We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For

This is our moment to act: a massive wealth transfer over the next 25 years will shift tens of trillions of dollars into the hands of a generation eager to address existential challenges.

—DEB NELSON, founder of the Just Economy Institute1

In many ways, this Playbook is both a tool for and a love letter to the underestimated players no one expects to influence how and where money flows, fundamentally changing finance and its role in our society.

From retired elders to mid-career construction workers to burgeoning creatives, financial activists all over the world are shifting cashflows and traditional toxic relationships with money so that we can all live more freely. We’re not responsible for the systems that got us here, but we can choose to be accountable to one another, from the spreadsheets to the streets.

I’ll draw from my own positionality throughout the book because I think it’s important that we—as women, as people of color, as young people, and anyone who might be counted out—own our own stories. So here goes.

At the time of this writing, I just turned twenty-seven. I work a full-time job as the Director of Impact at impact investing firm Candide Group, I treat my pit bull and French bulldog a little too much like children, and I love the Oakland, California, condo my partner and I call home (despite the fact that I’m sitting on the floor because a ceiling leak recently rearranged our furniture setup—and by “recently,” I mean months ago).

As a millennial/Gen Z cusp baby, I wasn’t surprised to learn through my research that most Americans born between 1997 and 2004 view capitalism as a whole negatively.2 To me, that discontent is good news: it opens portals for change.

My personal love story with “people power” deepened in the summer of 2018, when I fell into the work of organizing alongside hundreds of others under the coalition banner of #FamiliesBelongTogether as part of my work with Candide. The backdrop was loveless: Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric rang over constant media coverage of chaos at our southern border with Mexico. Imagery of brown children in cages became unavoidable to the American masses. Everyday people were asking big questions like “How is this happening?” which led to other big questions like “Who’s funding this mess?”

Financial activists knew who was funding this mess. Over 70 percent of migrants at the time were being detained in for-profit prisons (also referred to as private prisons or PRIVATELY OWNED prisons).3 The business model was quite literally to make as much money as possible by locking up as many people as possible, for as long as possible.4 The cages were corporations.

To connect these dots for everyone, activists started publicizing the fact that private prisons were receiving close to $1 billion a year in contracts from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), or almost $2.8 million of taxpayer money a day.5 As in, everyday people’s taxpayer money. They also broke down the fact that private prisons were financially structured as real estate investment trusts (REITs), a tax-advantaged type of investment that required the prisons to distribute 90 percent of profits to shareholders, making them heavily reliant on bank credit lines.6

So, the banks were funding the migrant detention centers separating families. Who was funding the banks?

That’s where everyday people came in. Namely, the majority of Americans with checking and savings accounts at big-name banks. On weekly CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY strategy calls with leaders from advocacy groups like MomsRising, Worth Rises, and Presente.org, we decided to support consumers—people with bank accounts—to start putting pressure on their banks to stop investing in private prisons with our cash.7

On Valentine’s Day 2019, we physically delivered “love letters” to bank headquarters in the form of thousands of pages of PETITIONS , signed by over five hundred thousand bank customers, threatening to close their accounts and take their business elsewhere.8 Outside the Wells Fargo San Francisco headquarters, we carried “break up with private prisons” signs in the form of broken hearts, while migrant moms who had recently been incarcerated in these for-profit detention centers bravely shared their harrowing stories, adorable kiddos in tow.9

At the same time on the East Coast, our coalition partners in New York showed up with a mariachi band, serenading songs of heartbreak outside the house of JPMorgan Chase executive Jamie Dimon.10 Across the country, people joined in on DIRECT ACTIONS by going to their local bank branches in groups to demonstrate love for migrant families and make it known they disapproved of their bank’s relationship investing in and profiting from private prisons and immigrant detention centers.

Additionally, coalition members experienced in the language of traditional finance set up calls with bank officials themselves. We played a lot of “insider baseball,” getting the banks’ human rights lawyers on the phone, referencing the unflattering financial documents that we gained access to, reminding them of the real cost of mounting reputational risks, and so on. Other coalition members spent time in Washington, DC, directly LOBBYING politicians to listen to their constituents and outlaw the use of private prisons. We sent bank executives a letter signed by investors we reached out to—collectively representing $2.9 billion in assets—expressing their concerns about the human rights violations and financial implications of the business dealings.11

After months of this organizing, news started to break.

Other funding dominoes—SunTrust Banks Inc., BNP Paribas, Fifth Third Bancorp, Barclays, PNC—began to fall.15 The stock prices of the two largest private prison operators, CoreCivic and GEO Group, reached record lows.16 Credit rating systems downgraded private prison stock to “junk,” and the prisons had to disclose their profit losses to investors, which lost them more partners and made them rely on more expensive forms of capital.17 The vast majority of big-bank financing to private prisons—over $2 billion—dried up.18

Everyday people did that.

I had my first taste of large-scale financial activism and what’s possible when we mobilize for change. Everyone had a part to play.

Play Your Part

There are some “day jobs” that clearly have potential to shape our money systems. Financial analysts and economists, lawyers and policy advocates, nonprofit directors, philanthropic workers, and more can be key players in our fights for change. However, these positions represent just a teeny-tiny fragment of places where financial activists, and people in general, find themselves.

According to a 2023 analysis, the top ten most common jobs for Americans (in order of most prevalent to least) are cashiers, food preparation workers, stocking associates, laborers, janitors, construction workers, bookkeepers, servers, medical assistants, and bartenders.19 Younger generations can be found en masse in roles like web developers, market research analysts, healthcare workers, firefighters, and product managers.20 Not only is there potential to influence the flow of money in line with the next economy in each of these positions, but international labor trends show that an increasing number of millennials and Gen Zers are likely to explore many positions, careers, and industries over the course of their lives.21

What does that tell us? People are identifying less and less with “what they do” and more with “how they live.” In other words—the unique skillsets, personality traits, relationships, affinity groups, hobbies, and gifts that make up one’s quality of life. Financial activism is a piece of that “how we live.”

Five Steps to Claiming Your Role as a Financial Activist

Among the financial activists who shared their success stories with me, a clear pattern emerged across even the widest of experiences. Participants first recalled early moments when they dared to ask questions others weren’t asking (1). Then they opened up about how the challenge in front of them affected them on an emotional level (2). They imagined how things could be different (3), then started with a small money experiment of their own (4). Eventually, they found their way to connect with a larger community (5), and together they moved noteworthy amounts of money in unprecedented ways.

Let’s take, for example, an interview I did with Sasheen Andregg, who begins by recalling January 2023, when she wasn’t able to shake a feeling of darkness overshadowing the promise of a new year.23 Forty-five minutes away from her, in Half Moon Bay, California, seven migrant farmworkers had their lives abruptly stolen by another disgruntled employee with a gun, whose rage allegedly stemmed from a dispute over $100.

Sasheen found herself grief-googling. Her mind reached for any way she might be able to help. She remembered in the not-too-distant past seeing a news clip of the vice mayor of Half Moon Bay supporting a farmworker advocacy organization, so she found his contact info and emailed him for guidance. “Like, I feel bad if the vice mayor is getting inundated with emails,” she laughs through tears, “but I need to know how to help because I’m not going to feel good in my soul if I’m not taking steps forward.”

Hitting send on that first email catalyzed momentum for Sasheen. She found herself next writing a heartfelt letter to the executive sponsors of the employee resource group (ERG) she belonged to for people of Hispanic heritage at her midsize tech company. Here, she detailed the tragedies that had unfolded and shared that other coworkers within the company were also feeling rattled. She encouraged the executive sponsors to make a statement acknowledging the mass shootings and contribute financially to the Half Moon Bay victims’ families.

To be clear, no one gave her permission to reach out to company leadership and make this ask. She just did it.

While there was some back-and-forth about legalities and logistics on the company’s side, Sasheen ultimately convinced the executive sponsors to draft and publish a statement. And it didn’t end there: a collective fundraiser was set up, inviting contributions from employees across the company’s other ERGs. These contributions would be matched by corporate donations, unlocking much-needed funds for Ayudando Latinos a Soñar (ALAS), the Half Moon Bay–based nonprofit organization providing support to the victims, their families, and the local farmworker community at large. “Within the first week, we raised over $5,600. Which I know is a drop in the bucket, but it’s a start and it’s more than I would have been able to do just on my own as one person,” Sasheen says.

Sasheen recognized the need for immediate financial support for survivors in the wake of the tragedy, and that support was needed long before the shootings and would be needed long after. For example, she knew about the harsh conditions these workers faced, and that they likely lived in overcrowded substandard housing with their children and families on site, where they toiled day in and day out.

“I’m a proud Chicana. . . . My grandparents were farm laborers from the time that they were young children. They were pulled out of grade school and made to work the fields,” she shares. In other words, Sasheen knows who she is and whose she is.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the shootings exposed how the seven farmworkers and their families—twenty-seven people total—were housed by their employers in converted trailers with deplorable conditions.24 And despite being the ones sustaining our food system, more than 60 percent of farmworkers reported having trouble paying for food since the pandemic hit, as detailed in the LA Times article aptly titled “Shooting Uncovers ‘Plantation Mentality’ in a Rich, Liberal California Enclave.”25

In response to public exposés and financial activism like that of Sasheen and her coworkers, the farm employer has announced that they will build safer, permitted, and up-to-code housing for workers by next year.

“I hate giving presentations, I hate standing up and speaking in front of people, I’m not that person,” Sasheen admits with a shy smile, “but it was still something like ‘this needs to be done, this needs to be done.’”

Rather than receiving the backlash so many of us might fear when we choose to speak up in the workplace, Sasheen reflects on how her advocacy instead opened more doors to a larger community of people like her, who share values and dreams of a better society, and who now root for each other’s success. “You attract what you put out,” she reflects. “This idea of service is something we’re all brought up with. You owe it to yourself and to others.”

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Check this out.

As the descendant of migrant farmworkers, Sasheen connected the dots about the ways the shooting victims and their families were made vulnerable to violence and exploitation—questioning “Why is this like this?” (1). In trying to process the tragedy, she walked me through some of the raw, big emotions that came up for her, why it hit so close to home, and how she began sharing those feelings out loud with others—reckoning with “How do I feel about this?” (2). Of course, there’s no one way to solve for issues as big as mass shootings. But in terms of addressing the real needs of those affected and ways she could work to make things even incrementally better from afar, Sasheen allowed herself to ask, “What’s possible?” (3).

She felt motivated to just do something, which started with looking up the email address of the vice mayor of Half Moon Bay and writing to him to express her concern for the families, as well as her willingness to learn more about direct service groups to support—answering the question “What can I do right now?” (4). Then, she was ready to go bigger . . . and started brainstorming with people in her workplace about how they could collectively make a difference when they chose to address “What can we do together?” (5). The collective leveraged their unique access to corporate sponsors to unlock thousands in matching donor dollars for the victims and their families.

In each strategy chapter, I’ll include signposts of these “five key steps to financial activism” (see Figure 1.1) to note where we are on the journey. Let’s explore each step in more detail.

1. Question: “Why Is This Like This?”

Bring a lens of curiosity to existing financial structures and practices, and uncover how money plays a role “behind the scenes” of any social issue.

When it comes to powering our visions of more flourishing communities, Nwamaka Agbo, the creator of the RESTORATIVE ECONOMICS Framework, reminds us that only community ownership plus community governance can give us true community self-determination—for political, cultural, and economic power.26 In other words, we get to ask, “Who owns this?” and “Who makes decisions about this?” to better understand exactly who institutions, ideas, and innovations are designed to serve.

For example, recall the story I shared about the #FamiliesBelong-Together campaign to end the practice of family separation and abuses of detained migrants in private prisons. Activists dug deeper into the money story of how so many people were being detained in so many new privatized detention centers at so quick a pace. What they learned was that the biggest investors standing to profit were big banks used by everyday people.

So bankers and businesspeople, most of whom didn’t hail from immigrant communities, were both owning the systems and making decisions about what happened to countless migrant families—and cashing out on their incarceration. No wonder we were in such a mess.

You don’t have to be an investigative journalist, just a person with access to the internet and/or people willing to share their knowledge with you. By practicing curiosity about the money stories behind the stories, we’re better equipped to uncover real pathways for change.

2. Check-In: “How Do I Feel about This?”

Acknowledging and tending to your needs can’t be skipped over in the work of reclaiming wealth and collective well-being.

Any change worth making—especially when money is involved—can get uncomfortable. Reclaiming power and joining movements for progress can be the highest forms of liberation, joy, and connection, but there’s no use in pretending it’s all sunshine and rainbows.

When I started getting involved in the movement to end family separation and private prisons, I felt . . . a lot. I remember my heart quickening with anger every time a headline about missing children and rampant abuse flashed on the TV. In other moments I felt very little—desensitized by the imagery of suffering, navigating personal life things, and so on.

I felt confused about how this was legal. I felt motivated to understand more. I felt frustrated at the people who refused to acknowledge America had a problem and instead took critique personally. I felt tired thinking about mass incarceration in general and its direct impact on people I know and love. I also felt a little powerless: we’re talking big money, big political players, big systems—small brown girl in her early twenties.

There is no “fixing” hard feelings about hard things, there’s only the practice of tending to them with consistency and without judgment. I know, I know, just acknowledging what’s going on in your inner world may feel . . . what’s the word? Woo-woo? Egotistical? A waste of precious time? But the truth is, glossing over the work of feeling our feelings to just get straight to the tactical can be dangerous and cause unintended harm. When we’re “triggered,” or in a state of an activated fight-flight-or-freeze nervous system, we’re not going to have the capacity to make the most informed decisions. We might even take that overwhelm that’s been bubbling under the surface unfairly out on those around us. Not fun!

3. Map: “What’s Possible?”

Begin to visualize the relevant networks of people, institutions, and resources you’re connected to, and don’t be afraid to imagine new ways and places for money to flow.

Allowing our brains permission to think from a place of abundance rather than scarcity isn’t just liberating—it’s strategic. Any successful change, whether it’s buying a dream home for your family or transforming an entire financial system, requires multiple strategies working at once in different ways.

In my experience of what’s possible, financial activism can mesh cold emails, Canva, and cast members of Orange Is the New Black. Let’s rewind.

Have you heard the saying “It’s not about what you know, but who you know”? Fresh out of college, I was looking for meaningful, paid work and feeling dismayed that I had an inbox full of job rejection emails instead of a Rolodex full of “connections.” But wait—I just graduated college. That’s technically a whole institution full of potential connections that a lot of people don’t have the same privilege to access with just the click of a button.

So, I started looking through my alma mater Swarthmore College’s alumni network, reading about people’s work, and sending cold emails to those whose work I was interested in learning more about. I sent them genuine but brief notes detailing exactly what I found admirable about their work, a bit about myself, and what type of work I generally looked to support just in case they had ideas or advice. Without knowing it, I was leaning into this step of “mapping what’s possible” for myself.

One of the people I emailed, Morgan Simon, saw that more than my fancy bachelor’s degree I had built a personal website, where I shared some of my activism work and flexed my design skills (aka a free Canva account). Morgan knew I was passionate about the work she and her organization Candide Group were involved in as part of the #FamiliesBelongTogether coalition. She asked if I could provide some support for campaign actions, and eventually, join the Candide team full-time.

We created a website, called Real Money Moves (RealMoneyMoves.org ), where we encouraged celebrities to publicly leverage their platforms and take a stance against investing in private prisons and immigrant detention centers. Through Morgan’s years as an impact investor, author, and public speaker, she had a lot of connections. Those connections had a lot of connections. And before we knew it, we had an eclectic group of influencers volunteering to make educational content with us—from NFL player turned impact investor Derrick Morgan to actress Alysia Reiner from Netflix’s popular prison comedy-drama Orange Is the New Black—all speaking out against private prisons.

This sidebar effort was just a fraction of the campaign to raise awareness and divest billions of dollars out of the private prison industry, but it exemplifies the kinds of collaborations that are possible when you allow yourself to get creative. Lay out all your options on the table.

4. Ask Yourself: “What Can I Do Right Now?”

Just start somewhere, experimenting with one action, to build the confidence to keep going.

“There’s no wrong way to start,” shares food activist Ali Berlow. “But not starting—now that’s a mistake.”27 I find this simple reminder immensely helpful in my own life, whether it’s in the context of tidying my living space or an opportunity to influence investments.

In our efforts to end private prison financing, many people who joined had never before participated in a campaign calling out big banks. Some showed up during their lunch break to protests outside bank headquarters within walking distance of their workplace. Others made the effort to show up but turned around because the police presence around the protests made them wary, as I heard from an undocumented friend. Thousands of others took less than a minute to sign the online petition calling for an end to family separation. All attempts to contribute were helpful to the movement.

I’ve noticed that sometimes we hesitate to act, or even just learn more about something, when financial systems are involved, because we’re afraid of “messing things up.” I’ve been there. And though the fear isn’t always rational, it’s easy to see where it comes from—few of us are told that we have the ability or know-how to figure out new ways to influence money and financial systems for our communities.

It’s like going to the doctor with an unexplained pain in your leg. First, you get there and have “white coat syndrome,” the phenomenon where patients have a blood pressure spike because of the psychological stress of simply being in the doctor’s office and in pain. Then, if your doc checks it out and says, “Nah, there’s nothing wrong with your leg,” doesn’t give you any suggestions to address the pain, and tells you to keep your blood pressure in check, chances are you wouldn’t question their authority at that moment. You might just say thanks, sign out with the nice ladies at the front desk, and go home with your still-unexplained leg pain.

Fortunately, you’d have other options at this point. You can schedule an appointment with another doctor for a second opinion. You can try some DIY measures like heat or ice. You can experiment with some light stretching or foam rolling to see if your leg gets better or worse. You start small with what you’re comfortable with—not performing literal surgery on yourself.

In financial systems and social issues, when those in power tell us “nothing to see here” but we know something needs improving, we have the ability to start small and experiment with what we’re comfortable with. Whether it’s taking ten minutes to do research, five minutes to share a petition with your group chat, or one minute to hit a “donate” button, it’s a worthwhile place to start your journey. Momentum needs a starting point.

5. Ask Your Community: “What Can We Do Together?”

Find your people and co-organize, because the work of big change can’t be done alone.

One mama can change the lives of her children and have a ripple effect for generations. Imagine what millions of mothers working together can do.

That’s the type of magic that national grass-roots organization MomsRising (and its Latinx program, MamásConPoder) is all about. As a key coalition partner in the financial activist campaign to end big-bank financing of prisons, the organization leveraged its membership of moms in almost every state in the country—across class and culture—to host simultaneous actions and share petitions, putting undeniable pressure on the banks complicit in family separation.

They helped us host weekly strategy calls, which were open to anyone in the coalition, whether they were a communications associate at a nonprofit partner or the executive director of a legal advocacy group. Here, creative synergies between those who had media contacts, those who could reach potential donors, those who shared their stories, and those who organized shareholders mutually reinforced the might of our collective efforts.

Remember: each of us is connected to more money than what’s currently in our bank accounts, our wallets, or under our mattresses. While single actions can amount to worthwhile contributions, the real power of financial activism is found in groups. Find your people to co-inspire, reclaim wealth, and experience the sweetness of belonging with. You’ll hold one another lovingly accountable for the long work of building the flourishing lives we each deserve to live.