Finance meets activism: Author Jasmine Rashid on strategies and her new book

Click here to buy "The Financial Activist Playbook: 8 Strategies for Everyday People to Reclaim Wealth and Collective Well-Being" by Jasmine Rashid.

Paula: (00:06 - 00:14)

This is Paula Sibulo with Sibulo's Scoop, and I am here with author and financial activist Jasmine Rashid. Thank you so much for being here. How are you doing?

Jasmine: (00:14 - 00:17)

Thanks so much, Paula. It's great to be here. I'm doing really well, excited for the conversation.

Paula: (00:17 - 00:56)

Yeah. So, last month, you came out with your newest work, "The Financial Activist Playbook." And I think a lot of people when they hear finance in a title, they might stray away from that. And that was me, not gonna lie, at first. But it truly is an easy read. You don't have to be an expert in finance or activism, for that matter, to understand the book. I know that you have a background in writing. You were the editor-in-chief of a magazine and an editor for your newspaper. And I was wondering, was writing a book, or this book for that matter, a plan of yours that you've had for a long time, or was this kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision?

Jasmine: (00:56 - 01:27)

Ooh, great question. So I think for many of us who kind of identify as writers, some of us we're kind of told that we're good at writing and stuff when we're younger. But the idea of a book, I think, is like a whole other ball game. Right? And so I have always loved books. It's kind of as a little bit of an introverted only child, it's what kept me company when I was young. Both nonfiction and fiction of ways to see the world, so I think from a young age I had the seed planted that one day. I would like to be an author.

Jasmine: (01:27- 02:28)

That said it was like a secret dream that I never really shared with anyone because it felt so intimidating. But the book origin actually came, so I had been doing quite a bit of writing, including ghostwriting and copy for social media and kind of smaller form pieces. And I actually ended up putting out a blog post, just really as a one-time thing, on the Sunday after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officers, and I put out this blog post just because I kind of felt called to do it on medium, which is, you know, really public platform, where anyone can share a blog about the ways in which everyday people could begin to align their money with the movement for Black lives because I was so inspired by all the Instagram posts and all the different, you know, podcasts and articles coming out about steps that everyday people could take, especially folks who were feeling disempowered in that moment.

Jasmine: (02:28 - 03:06)

And so my contribution to that moment was just to sit down for a few hours and put out this blog post. What I did not expect to happen, I really wrote it for kind of, you know, friends and mind folks who just, again, like, aren't familiar with finance, aren't even necessarily in activism or organizing, but really want to meet the moment. I put out that blog post and then started getting really a wide variety of organizations from the Oakland Rotary Club to Apple being like, "Can you come do a workshop? We want to better understand how we can implement financial activism in our work."

Jasmine: (03:06 - 03:51)

And so the the blog post turned to workshops, turned to speaking, turned to me being like, I got it. If I just put it all in a playbook. I can give people this tool so that they can then really identify what's useful for them. It can be a playbook in that it is kind of a choose-your-own-adventure, right? That was the origin of this particular book project. It was definitely not planned, but it feels like, you know, it was the right direction to go and I'm glad to see how the kind of product of a book can really also extend itself to audiobooks and to kind of short-form things, and having it be kind of the one central place where people can return to, time and again.

Paula: (03:51 - 04:11)

And regarding the content of the book, I think it's also very timely that you wrote this because you mentioned that, for the first time in modern financial history, women, not men, are set to be the primary wealth holders in this generation. And I just want you to tell me more about, you know, why that is? What's sparking this trend in particular for women?

Jasmine: (04:11 - 04:27)

Yeah. So it's actually a lot of factors. They're calling it the great wealth transfer. In which, like you mentioned, the majority of the world's wealth were for the first time would be in the majority in the hands of women. One of those reasons is women live longer than men.

Paula: (04:27 - 04:28)

Oh nice!

Jasmine: (04:28 - 04:50)

So that's actually just kind of a, you know, macro, the macroeconomic trend in that women are inheriting money that has been passed on, that may be in the past, you know, generations of their family was only solely held by the patriarchs of their family. So that's one reason. Another reason, obviously, is just the kind of increase of women in the workforce, and as primary breadwinners, in a lot of cases.

Jasmine: (04:50 - 05:23)

So it's a combination of, you know, age of inheritance, of increased participative participation in our economic systems, and that's the kind of main flow. And I think the more interesting piece is how do we take this opportunity where numerically, we know a lot more money is going to be in the hands of women to make sure we're not just recreating the same systems of patriarchal capitalism in ways that just have different kind of leaders at the top.

Jasmine: (05:23 - 05:40)

And so, how do we make sure that with this great wealth transfer, we're also able to value women's work in ways that have not been precedented in history when it comes to things like caregiving or managing homes or the kind of work that we know makes the world go around. But isn't labor that's necessarily compensated?

Paula: (05:40 - 06:00)

Right. And this wealth transfer isn't just affecting women. It's affecting the younger generation. And you mentioned that younger people tend to be more open about talking about money. Why do you think the younger generation is braver than an older generation, just talking about their finances?

Jasmine: (06:00 - 06:34)

Yeah. I love that you used the word "braver." I think another word is also just "fed up." Right? Again, there's a lot of different factors that go into how every generation is defined by their macroeconomic happenings, as well as kind of the defining social features that we think about younger folks who may have, like myself, grown up watching, you know, Occupy Wall Street may have grown up seeing the ways in which the housing crisis affected the material reality of their lives, their neighbor's lives, our family's lives.

Jasmine: (06:34 - 07:25)

And I think that as many folks start to go to try and access higher education, we've been sold in an idea of this is the path to economic mobility. And that is then paired with this crushing student debt, right? So there's so many different factors. I think another really big one. And this is also just the mass connectivity that younger folks have, Millennials and Gen Zs, I think overall, have been pulled to have negative feelings towards capitalism as a concept. I think in part, they don't have the same historical, kind of, heartbreak as maybe some older generations did when it comes to the Red Scare in these big historical concepts that we can now look at and say that doesn't actually fit with the context of our lives, right?

Jasmine: (07:25 - 07:50)

And so I think the ability to be more connected on international level helps us also care more about things like, where are our clothes coming from? Who is laboring behind this? What are they being paid? What's the supply chain? Where do the clothes go when we throw them out? The really tangible things in our lives, folks are able to more easily see how they connect to economic and financial systems and who profits.

Paula: (07:50 - 08:11)

Yeah. And I see that generation right here at SF State. There have been many protests and rallies for the University to divest in war and to reinvest in students. And I want to know, as a financial activist expert, what do you think are the best strategies to kind of get the best results for movements like these?

Jasmine: (08:11 - 08:38)

Yeah. First, just saying. So proud of all the students who do that work. Because it is not easy. I don't envy current students in this moment because I think there is a lot happening right at so many different levels. We're recording this right before a major presidential election is coming up. And so, you know, one of the, I guess, biggest financial activist strategies that I really try to ground people in is pretty basic.

Jasmine: (08:38 - 09:12)

It's, again, talking about money and concepts of finance with that level of transparency, but also acknowledging the trauma around it. So often in social movements, and this is really coming from my background in studying social movements and doing some organizing, is even the most well-intentioned and empathetic, passionate organizers and activists are at risk of burnout not only because of the conditions around them but the ways in which we may internalize trauma of our larger financial systems.

Jasmine: (09:12 - 10:06)

What that leads to is us potentially treating not only ourselves but one another with less than full dignity. Because we feel the frustration, we feel the mounting pressures. And that can lead us in many ways to be harsh when, fundamentally, our goal is unity. It's peace. Right? And so I think the financial tactics all have to be stacked on top of that base. They all have to have the understanding that fundamentally, we need to be creating movements in which talking about money is something that is not only accepted but encouraged. And that is really, you know, we don't shy away from starting with the basics. I've had so many people involved in campaigns around divestment, for example, who then kind of quietly will be like, "So what does that actually mean?"

Jasmine: (10:06 - 10:20)

Great. We should be having these conversations out loud, right? I think not being afraid to start with the fundamentals, start with the internal and the feelings, is the necessary base to build all of the larger financial organizing around.

Paula: (10:20 - 10:40)

And I think that ties in beautifully with the concept that you mentioned in your book, which is consumer awareness of being intentional about where money's going and, you know, wanting our money to add to collective well-being. And with that in mind, I know that your book is sold on many different platforms, but where do you suggest people to buy your book who are interested?

Jasmine: (10:40 - 11:14)

Yeah. So I've had a really fun, let's call it an experiment, with my publisher of saying, hey, instead of pointing people to Amazon who doesn't need my money, what if we pointed folks to places like bookshop.org? Which for me is kind of the easy one to point to when I'm talking to a more national audience because bookshop.org is intentionally structured, it really came up as an alternative to Amazon, where people can still have the convenience of purchasing titles online but in a way that supports independent bookstores.

Jasmine: (11:14 - 11:44)

So every sale that bookshop.org makes, you can also toggle through and select; maybe there's a local black-owned or woman-owned bookstore in your community that can then receive the proceeds, essentially so that the sale is being funneled through them. And so I love to point people to bookshop.org. The book is continuing to come just kind of pop up at bookshops throughout the US, which makes me really happy to get pictures of people saying, oh, it's here in Portland, it's here in L.A., it's here in small town in Ohio, right?

Jasmine: (11:44 - 12:14)

And I think that what a lot of people don't know about books and what I had to learn was that the way to get a book into your bookstore is often just to ask the bookstore and say, hey, I want this title, and then the bookstore will order it for them, and that brings it to be visible for more people. And I think that there's this, you know, maybe conception of, again, because we have been really accustomed, I think, in recent years, to ordering online and through Amazon.

Jasmine: (12:14 - 12:43)

We forget that places like bookshops are about relationships. They're about bookstores responding to the needs of their local community. And so if a community or customer says this is a title that I want, whether it's my book or someone else's book, the bookstore then says, "Great. That's a win-win for us because now we have a new title that we get to bring in, and we get to take the business from you," as opposed to you going to an outside platform like Amazon, which really doesn't pay much to the author in the first place.

Paula: (12:43 - 12:48)

Right. Well, I hope people can check it out. Thank you, Jasmine, for being here. It's really been great.

Jasmine: (12:48 - 12:50)

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Paula: (12:50 - 13:05)

My pleasure. And for the viewers watching who want to start their journey in helping everyday people reclaim wealth and collective well-being, check out Jasmine's newest work, "The Financial Activist Playbook." Thanks for joining me in San Francisco. Paula Sibulo, Sibulo's Scoop.