Let’s Start With You Deserve A Future
You don’t have to like, love, or even understand capitalism to get to survive it.
But please, please, survive it. I mean survive it like all the single moms and working families and folks at joyless gigs to pay student loans and hustling artists and everyone working a black market job and everyone in the service industry and freelancers and roommates and collective houses and coops and and and. It might not be luxe, but chances are* only 8.15 in 1000 you will die tomorrow: so, a short post-punk pep talk that I give people in classes, entitled: Saving Money Is Energetically Saying You Will Have A Future So Let’s Start With You Deserve A Future.
Even if you have “punk damage” and didn’t think you’d make it past 30 (I didn’t think I would!), even when there are 1000 oppressions or pressures or responsibilities on you: You. Deserve. A. Future. And so, you can choose to put energy towards that future.
I hope lots of folks reading this are part of the many, many, many movements and organizations working to shift, end, and build alternative structures to capitalism – a failing system.
Simultaneously, here we are in that failing system and everyone – activist, artist, marginalized, privileged and otherwise – has got needs and dreams, which take money to realize. Having dreams and wanting to make your dreams happen: nothing wrong with that.
Stymied by a maze of complex barriers? That’s one of the functions of systemic oppression: make it convoluted, people will give up. The barriers in your way are very real, but there are holes in the walls. That’s where the light gets in. You, friends, are to examine the cracks.
Here are five things you can do that support survival and are anti-capitalist:
- Pay off credit card debt. Because giving banks money supports…banks. Similarly, choose to work with credit unions, local banks, and union banks.
- Buy less and make more at home. Buy used things instead of new things. Working-class pro tip: used are often better quality and less expensive than new.
- Invest time, money and/or support into alternative structures like coops, collective land projects, and transformative justice/community mediation.
- Build up emergency savings, or your personal “float.” Start with $100, then get to $500. Then, $1000/one months rent+expenses. It’s amazing how much less stress you have when you get ahead of paychecks.
- Keep passing that community $20 (or $5 or $50 – whatever you got) around: buy the indie press book, donate to the youcaring, pay on the sliding scale.
What are ways you can act today that support future you?