Why We Need Horizontal Financial Solidarity
Why Top-Down Philanthropy is Flawed
I worked at Planned Parenthood for two and a half years and I learned a lot about the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) during that time. I went from a wide-eyed, naive, and optimistic human who believed in the mission of Planned Parenthood and in “charitable giving” to being a much more radicalized version of that human who believed more in direct giving, reparations, and collective liberation. I was totally shocked the first time I went to a quarterly financial meeting and heard all about the millions Planned Parenthood had in stocks, escrow, and bank accounts. I was totally floored when they talked about money brought in by fundraising that went right back out to galas and the like. Spending money to make money to spend money to make money, lather rinse repeat. I was later disgusted to learn that our CEO made 375K a year while our lowest paid employees made just $15 an hour. Absolutely, Planned Parenthood exists to do some good and some of their money does good. Keeping health centers open and paying staff are good things. However, the average off-set for a patient who cannot afford their abortion is just 30%. And if you can’t pay the balance, you may not get the medical care you need or you may be billed and later sent to collections when they have enough money to subsidize health services to people.
I tried, along with another radical co-worker, desperately to start conversations about radicalizing Planned Parenthood while they were going through a sort of rebranding. My direct supervisor took parts of her monthly Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion meetings with other directors to our team meetings to get our input. My coworker and I tried to bring up flattening the wage scale and hiring from within and promoting Black women and creating a career path or student loan forgiveness program. We were often shut down and it became so cantankerous that our supervisor stopped discussing DEI with us.
Doing It Ourselves
Planned Parenthood, however, paid well. Well enough that for the first time, I found myself with enough money to pay my bills and have money leftover. I realized over the 2.5 years that I worked there that I was not going to change the system from within. Like many other young, radical idealists, I thought I could shift them to the left by bringing these ideas to the table. I could not. But what I could do, what we can all be doing, was funnel that residual income into reparations, direct giving, and mutual aid. I began following Black leaders who uplifted BIPOC MaGEs for direct reparations. I donated money to collectives and orgs as well as individuals. I contributed to my community financially because, for the first time, I could.
Where Does Care Reside?
Any organization, collective, or business has a set demographic that they serve. Homeless shelters purport to serve unsheltered people. Doctors purport to serve sick people. Accountants purport to serve people with money. But at the same time, it takes money to run an organization, hospital, or charity. That money comes from somewhere and sometimes that can skew our priorities because then the end game becomes serving those people and not the people you are supposed to serve. How can we ensure that the chasm between the people we care about and the people who care about us doesn’t create inequality that fuels individualism and capitalism?
A Return on Investment
About a year after I began distributing wealth, I went through a messy breakup that left me looking for a way to leave my current living situation. I had no savings and no way to secure alternate housing. I started doing the math and figured I could probably save up enough money to get out of that situation within a year. Luckily, my friends and comrades were unwilling to let me stay in that situation for another year. They posted my needs and a little bit about my situation and some people I knew, and lots of people I didn't, donated money to help me get out. They donated furniture to help me rebuild a life for me and my kids. They donated time to help me get my belongings out of the house I was living in with my ex. They offered invaluable emotional labor as I processed all the hardest parts of that situation. The community had my back as I had had theirs, in terms of the financial giving and in terms of the community support I had been offering. When posting about my need to get out of that situation, people spoke of the projects I had helped organize, the giving I had done, and the investments I had made into our community. It was a beautiful sharing back and the most meaningful return on investment I could imagine.
Who “Has” You?
If we are to build the future we want, we need to decide today, RIGHT NOW, where we are going to invest. Is it in our stockholders? Is it in individualism? Are you going to continue to invest in capitalism? Or do you want to invest in fractal healing--the theory that large-scale healing of our culture begins with healing the self and ripples outwards from there? Fractal healing is the seed that we plant that grows a garden of whole, emotionally well taken care of individuals that then plant seeds to heal others. We all desire a society free from strife and misery and that has shucked off the chains of white supremacy and capitalism and in order to do that, we must begin to heal ourselves and radiate outwards.
We Got Us
“We got us” is a phrase you often hear anarchists say and nothing could be more true. We live in a society that prizes individualism over collectivism and would tell you that if i had not spent my time, energy, and finances supporting others, I may have had savings and could have gotten out of that situation with no help from others. Ultimately, it was collective care that got me--gets all of us--through the hard times.
Collective Care
But what is a real society if not a collective of people all giving and uplifting and sharing and pooling their resources all the time to continuously do better by each other? Why do we even have a society if it isn’t to give and build better for each other? I can tell you that my story is infinitely more beautiful to me personally than a story of “well then I dipped into my giant savings account and moved out and bought everything new.” When I make dinner, I think of the woman who had run and closed a restaurant during covid and gave me a huge dish-ware set. When I sit on my couch, I think of the friend whose business blossomed during covid and she was able to purchase a new couch for her family. I have art hanging on my walls from people who didn’t have anything to offer financially but wanted to contribute to making my house a home again.
Trusting in One Another
It is certainly one thing to want to feel secure and make sure your needs are taken care of. Most of us want that, especially in this desperation fueled society that enforces a scarcity mentality. We need to take a hard look and thorough examination, however, at how we are defining “security.” Secure from what? Secure from who? What are the threats to those feelings of security and how can they be addressed without damaging others? The amount of savings you feel you need to have for personal use is inversely proportional to the amount of trust you have in your community care. We want to imagine a world in which we all get to feel secure because we rely on one another and can trust each other to get us through the hardest times.
Ubuntu
“I am not my sister’s keeper. I am my sister.” I am not an individual, out here trying to make it on my own, greedily gobbling up resources in an infinite loop of anxiety that someday something bad might happen that I am unprepared for. I am a part of a much larger, more beautifully complex system of community care. I am responsible for and indebted to the well-being of every member of my community.
Collective Liberation is Your Best Safety Net
We are trying to cultivate a culture of recycling funds. It’s only when we know that we’re in a culture of recycling funds that we can also choose to recycle it ourselves. If we don’t think we’re in a culture like that, then of course, we will have to save money as a response. But we can create that culture by BEING it. The idea that we have to save for ourselves to save ourselves is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone is invested in this idea that only we can save ourselves, but if we divest from that ideology and re-invest in community care, we create a new reality. If we collectively believed otherwise, that we are all in it together, and encouraged that belief with our actions, we would be building a culture that is much more secure than any personal savings makes possible.
-Fiadh Leigh