"We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs."— Gloria Steinem

My therapist told me that the emotion I was most challenged and uncomfortable with is the feeling of powerlessness. So when I began to understand myself through this lens, I could see how I've built a life around trying to reckon with that feeling - from my career choice, money is power after all, to my militantly structured daily routines.

Maybe other people don't feel this struggle as acutely as I do. Maybe some people have always had a sense that they had power or access to power in the world. Maybe other people are afraid of their power. Afraid to acknowledge it and wield it because when you don't allow yourself to admit that you have power, you can be exempt from using it to help others.

But as the world that we chose to see fades away, and we start to see the world as it really is, one undeniable truth is that each of us must recognize our power and use it. We have a responsibility to stop supporting and start challenging the systems that keep people oppressed.

In this article, I'm going to explore ways you can use your economic power to positively impact marginalized communities.

Let's dive in.

Your money is your vote for who gets power

Voting is great. We should all still keep voting. But, we can also vote with how we spend our money. Money is power. This an undeniable truth of the world we currently inhabit. Corporations that have too much money can turn that into monopolistic power because they have the means to influence the government to create laws that continue to protect their interests and harm individuals, not to mention planet Earth.

If you think inequality is fucked up, stop supporting organizations that perpetuate inequality to increase their profits. Stop supporting organizations that promote hate. Stop giving money to companies that use marginalized people to sell shit, but never speak up on issues that impact them. Stop supporting companies that refuse to pay people a living wage.

This is not a hard thing to do for most of us; it's just inconvenient. Stop mindlessly shopping at big box stores. If you keep your money at a credit union, choosing not to spend your money helps because it means your money can be lent to and used by its community members.

Support black-owned, brown-owned, women-owned, LGBTQ+-owned businesses. Stop giving Jeff Fucking Bezos or some other CEO so much of your money and so much of your power. If you can spend it in your community or a community you want to impact, please spend it there.

If changing your consumption habits feels overwhelming, don't try to go all or nothing. Just start with one category of spending. Remember that not getting it 100% right isn't a reason not to try. A global economy is less transparent, so it is hard to allocate every single dollar you spend as ethically as you’d like. Choose categories where you spend a lot of money so you can make amplify your impact. Start where you are. Improve. Revise. Rinse. Repeat.

If you are an employer, pay your employees a living wage, at the very least.

If you are an employer and owner of a for profit company, you are a capitalist. By definition, you profit from the exploitation of the planet, the people on the planet, or both. If you think you are not profiting from exploitation, you need to open your eyes and let the light of truth in. I'm not discouraging you from playing the game or condemning you for being a capitalist. I am playing the game. I get up early every morning and get ready to play the game and I intend to play it fucking well. But don't act blind to the game you're playing. The game is inherently unequal. If you run a business, if you play a role in controlling people's livelihoods, you can do a little good within a broken system. You can invite marginalized people into your company. You can give them a seat at the table.

Pay your employees at least a living wage. There is an implicit contract between business owners and society. Business owners are able to leverage tax benefits through corporate structures and generate profits for themselves and their shareholders. In exchange for those benefits, for the betterment of society, business owners must pay it's workers a living wage. If you cannot afford to pay your employees a living wage, why? Fix your business so it can run sustainably and isn’t subsidized by keeping wages low.

Hire black and brown people. Hire people from marginalized groups and pay them what you would pay a non-marginalized person with the same experience. If you're radical, consider giving employees an ownership stake in your company, consider setting up a collective or B-corp. This is literally how you can create a new structure that is less oppressive.

What can you do beyond paying employees a living wage or considering a different type of ownership structure? Help your employees develop skills, help them access education - even if it's just-in-time learning through online courses or providing an education stipend. Help them broaden their network. These are the ways you can invest in workers.

Write bigger checks or give away some of your wealth

Of course we must donate to organizations that support economic justice or help address systemic inequality. That's a given. However, if you have more than enough resources through inherited wealth, you can choose to redistribute some of it by giving some of it away.

An organization like Resource Generation encourages young people who have wealth and class privilege generously support grass-roots organizations that "they believe will do the long-term, nitty-gritty work to meaningfully change the circumstances that lead to wealth inequality."

Allies, what we do matters. How we spend our money matters. It's time for all of us to stop fucking around and start getting serious about being decent human beings. If you have the privilege of doing so, use your wallet. This is just one way to help.

Real work will need to be done. We will need to critically examine how we have been living our lives. Doing this work is like training for a fight. It's going to be hard and at times quite uncomfortable. We're going to be punched in the face with the truth and with how we've benefited from other people's oppression. We're going to have to unlearn bad habits, ways of thinking, ways of being. We have to bite down and face it. What's our alternative? This is our responsibility. The world is what we make it.