Practical actions to consider:
Before we get into the list, please remember that purity culture is generally something to avoid, especially on the left. Look the list over and find something that sparks some interest in you, and learn more and decide if you want to get involved or take action. Perfectionism is a value of white supremacy we reject, and encourage you to do so as well. You don’t need to do anything on this list to be an awesome comrade. These are just ideas. OK, on to the list:
your JOB
Unionize your workplace!
If you’re considering leaving - chances are others are as well. You can get together and simply ask to make things better as a start. Even that can have an effect. Simply not using the word “union” can help more centrists be willing to listen and act in solidarity
Or you can get more hardcore. Reach out to a local union you like or the IWW for more info on getting started.
What is preventing you from earning a living wage at work? What about earning a thriving wage?
Training and gate-kept degrees and certificates can prevent you from advancing. How can your community help?
Consider applying for jobs even if you don’t plan on leaving your current one. There should never be “loyalty” to a capitalist enterprise, no matter how “nice“ the boss/owner appears. Get help with your resume! Practice interview! Ask people to be references!
Rent
Forming a tenant’s union to fight back against a landlord can dramatically affect living conditions and even rent itself.
If you or people you know are in the position of having to choose between paying rent or paying for food … ALWAYS choose rent. See the Food resources in the next section below!
Reach out to your local Mutual Aid community!
If you are in a position to: buy land, buildings, ADU’s or tiny houses and let others live there and build wealth without rent or a mortgage.
Charge no-profit rent. If you’re able to buy a house and rent out a room in it, the mortgage is most likely a fixed rate. If you got a fixed rate mortgage, you can charge nearly the same rent for as long as you own that property; no major rent hikes! Once it’s paid off, you could dramatically lower or even cancel the rent altogether. So why doesn’t this happen? It actually does all the time – in families. Especially richer white families.
Food
Food pantries, SNAP benefits, local free fridge programs, Food Not Bombs, Sikh Langar days, and just plain old friends and community can be there to help you eat.
Replant food scraps. For example: green onions grow from the white bottom bits you might normally compost - just put them in a jar of water in some sun and they will grow more. It really can be that simple!
Grow a garden! Throw a seed bomb!
Reach out to your local Mutual Aid community!
There’s a reason so many radical movements from the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast Program to Food Not Bombs to the free fridges all over Portland all center building radical movements with food distribution. It’s easy to see the results and no theory or philosophy is needed.
June Xie’s “budget eats” YouTube series walks you through how to prepare and improvise your way through cooking an entire week's worth of meals for two people in a tiny apartment in NYC on $25 during the pandemic. UPDATE: June was recently fired for her union organizing at Hearst-owned subsidiary Delish, the company she made those videos for.
Bills
Share internet with a neighbor and split the bill (perhaps using a mesh net)
Most cell phone “family plans” are not bound by blood relations - share a plan with your found family!
Many bills (electric, gas, cable/internet, even a monthly transit pass) have programs for “low income” households that can cut your bill in half or better if you qualify and can jump through hoops of filling out forms and submitting documents to them.
Reach out to your local Mutual Aid community!
Ask a comrade (unless you’re the handy one already) to take a look at a leaky faucet or shower head. Installing a water-saving shower head to save on water every month is surprisingly simple and you can take it with you when you leave your current apartment. Just practicing to take quicker showers when you want to can have an effect.
Same with your electric bill: ask a comrade to look at your setup to see if you can save on electricity. This isn’t about bullshit “carbon footprint” individualistic thinking when systemic change is what’s needed, this is just about lowering your bill now to save some money. Sometimes just a different kind of power strip that turns off so things aren’t drawing power all day all night can make a difference pretty darn fast.
If you have the coin, consider getting off the grid partially or completely. Not in a bougie way, but in a Margaret Killjoy way.
Wherever you see costs in your life you can’t make any lower … consider the barriers companies and governments put in place to stop that, and how you can work with your community to challenge them.
Banking
If you have extra money – do you want the highest return on investment possible? At what cost to the community or environment? If you’re willing to earn less in interest, are you able to loan it to people you know? Do you have a longer timeline? Could you invest in getting a project like solar or a lending library going for your neighbors as well as you? Or invest in a plot of land for people to camp on without getting swept? What other investments are you potentially interested in that don’t involve financial commodities?
Be your own bank - loan some portion of your savings to people in the community you feel are worth the risk to loan to!
Have you heard of a giving circle?
Reach out to your local Mutual Aid community!
Consider using a Credit Union instead of a corporate bank.
INVESTING
A salient quote from a course on Anti-Capitalist investing: “Anti-Capitalist Investing is not validation of capitalism; it is a validation of your right to survive in a system you are in revolt against.”
For those who do have money and want to know how to invest it: Try an index fund from an investor-owned company like Vanguard.
Managed funds over time are outperformed by index funds. Just consistently keep putting money in, even when times are bad.
Yes, you can theoretically make money off uncertainty, but the deck is stacked heavily against you. Picking and choosing on the stock market is gambling: too risky.
There’s a simple critique of rich people, particularly in America, that “make money on the stock market, not by working.” This is true, but it’s an oversimplification with a dangerous misdirect to investing and day-trading. Rich people by and large DO NOT make their money off speculative day trading. Rich people get rich from labor exploitation (from slavery to Amazon). They make passive income that’s taxed way less than working-class wages. The rich inherit wealth that often goes untaxed (this can be in the form of cash or property). It’s too much to go into here, but just in the last 40 years the rich lobbied to deregulate and privatize entire sectors of the economy. They destroyed pensions and created flimsy 401ks to make them richer at the expense of everyone else. The savings and loan scandals made them rich. Bailouts made them rich. Lobbying to change tax and usury and tort laws made them rich. Refusing to raise the minimum wage makes them rich. Landlording makes them rich. Surveillance capitalism makes them rich. Mortgage-backed security derivatives made them rich … all these at the expense and on the backs of poor and working-class people. Over 60% of current white family wealth can be traced to things so shocking the right wing needs to get whipped up about not teaching it in school or even their own kids start questioning where the wealth came from. Their grandparents and great grandparents got rich by bootlegging, by exploiting slave labor, by the homestead acts of the 1860’s, by taking the land of every indigenous nation by force, by taking the land and businesses of Japanese Americans forced into concentration camps in the 1940’s, by taking the land and businesses of black Tulsans after the bombings and massacres, by using child labor, by breaking coal miners strikes with private militias and machine guns. Slavery and monopolies made them rich.