Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja and I’m your host as we explore the topic of how we can align our values, our beliefs, our desires for the world around us and what we do with our money on a daily basis. I have a hypothesis that we’re leaving some of our power on the table and I want to explore that on this show. What are some practical things we can do to live out our societal values with our daily money decisions?

And today’s episode is about a book I read during this past holiday break, it is called The Financial Activist Playbook by Jasmine Rashid and it was published in October of 2024 and wow. What a wonderful book! I really enjoyed this read and I hope you will too. Let me tell you a little about it.

This book is a modern take on our money and how we can think about it, talk about it, and use it in ways that are actually helpful and healing to our world.

The premise is that everyday people have the power to change things around here, and our money is one of the tools we have at our disposal. Sound familiar? If you listen to this show, and tend to agree with the Progressive Pockets worldview, I have a strong hunch that you’ll agree with a lot of what is in this book.

There are a few books on this topic that I’ve covered on this show before, the Social Justice Investor by Andrea Longton, Activate Your Money by Janine Firpo, Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva, Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas. 

This book is different in a couple of ways, for one thing it feels younger, it feels very Gen Z, in the best way. The language is light and yet very carefully considered, it is funny, the cultural references feel very Gen Z. There are reminders to practice self care as we engage in financial activism. When I say this book feels Gen Z in the best way, I mean that it sounds like the future. I believe and hope this is how we will talk about money in the future.

And the second thing that feels different about the book is how wide the book goes. Most of the books I’ve reviewed on the show have focused on one aspect of our money power- either the power of our investments, or the power of our donations, or how we think about shopping, etc, this book covers all of that. The lens is also wide in another way, and this is part of why I think this is the future of how we will talk about money. In this book, Jasmine Rashid discusses money from a trauma lens, from an individual as well as a community lens. So it feels like a more holistic way of looking at our money. I read the book from beginning to end and I did not find it overwhelming but you can absolutely just open the book randomly and read a chapter when you have a few minutes and it will still make sense. 

In terms of the actual content, what’s in the pages of this book. The bulk of the book is about the 8 strategies for everyday people to reclaim wealth and collective well-being.

1. Talking About Money: this chapter encourages us to be open in talking about money so that we can see financial exploitation in our system and create an economy that is more fair. There is one part of this chapter that really resonated for me as a refugee to this country. It was about the various ways that immigrants talk about coming to America with the proverbial nothing, and what that really means when we are more transparent about our migration stories. Even if you aren’t an immigrant, this chapter will give some tips on talking about money with less shame and in a more empowering way.
2. Banking on Ourselves: this chapter provides a clear and brief history of the power that banks really have and the author shares her own experience in opening a bank account that she was proud of, I think those were the words she used in that chapter.
3. Flexing Some Buying Power: so this chapter is about how we can think about conscious consumption, although she finds that particular term to be offputting. But she’s talking about how we can tackle or at least interrogate our own overconsumption and how we can support businesses who are interested in being a part of a healthy community ecosystem and how we might consider turning our dollars away from companies that are working against your values.
4. Giving (and Receiving) Money: Here, the author is rethinking traditional philanthropy and encouraging readers to consider community philanthropy where we give to each other rather than waiting for the foundations to save us.
5. Showing Up for One Another beyond Money: in this portion of the book the author is talking about all the other types of capital that you can use to show up for your community. Social capital, political capital, human capital including your skills, training, labor, and physical capital which could be your tangible assets like real estate or equipment or infrastructure that you can deploy to help your community.
6. Shifting Budgets: this chapter has two big ideas in it, one is advocating for conscious budgeting that reflects our values and priorities, I think this can be a very critical discussion for people who are newer to really thinking about their money and making decisions about how they budget and plan for themselves. If you are further down the path and have a pretty good sense of what’s important to you and that has led you to generally budget in a way that works for you, there’s another big idea that is called participatory budgeting.  This is a big idea about how we, every day people, nonpoliticians can influence how money flows within communities.And I am talking about taxpayer dollars, community budgets. All of us being involved in decisions about where that money goes. This is a fascinating topic, I had planned to get into it this coming Fall, but let me know if you’re chomping at the bit and I can move that up. I had the chance to really think about what topics to cover this year and there’s a lot for us to talk about!
7. Leveraging the Magic of Investing: this chapter is encouraging readers to invest in ways that benefit our communities rather than traditional, extractive financial systems. There’s a lot of what you’d expect in terms of talking about what ESG is and how to look up a company to find out more about it before you invest. And some interesting discussion of ways we can invest into our communities, especially groups who have traditionally been underinvested in.
8. Handling Our Business: this is an ambitious chapter that really could easily be a whole book in and of itself. It’s about how we think about our work, why we do the jobs that we do, how we might dream for more fulfillment. How we can show up at work as an intrapreneur, someone who is finding creative ways to advocate for change within an organization.

Those are the 8 strategies covered in the book. I really enjoyed it. It’s fresh, it’s modern, it’s very right now. It is easy to read. You don’t need to be a financial whiz at all or some kind of personal finance guru. If you’re brand new to reading activist literature, you’ll get a nice 101 freshman level introduction to a lot of concepts like what it means to say our current economy is extractive.

It’s not an especially radical book, although if you are interested in me reviewing a more radical book, I do have one in mind that I could cover here, just let me know. You can email me at progressive pockets at gmail dot com.

I would encourage you to buy this for your college graduate this year. I would encourage you to pick it up for your left leaning bookclub. It’s a wonderful book.

So to recap, today’s episode was a book review of The FInancial Activist Playbook by Jasmine Rashid. She is currently the director of Impact at Candide Group. Fun fact about her, she was part of the protests about kids in cages that lead to the huge divestment from private prisons that were being contracted by ICE and funded by so many of the big banks. I won’t give away the story but in the beginning of the book she talks about the Valentine’s Day protests that were love themed. Spoiler alert there were mariachi bands. LoL.

If you want to pick up this book, you can pick it up wherever you normally buy your books, I would also encourage you to ask your library to stock this book if they aren’t already. If you want to buy it online, and you’ve never tried BookShop, I want to recommend it to you. It’s only 4 years old but it has really taken off. It is an alternative to Amazon, you can buy from all different types of independent bookstores. The prices are very comparable to Amazon and you can support an independent bookstore.

In fact, if I can, I will put up a list of books that have been reviewed on Progressive Pockets if you want to see them all on one bookshelf and grab a few titles for yourself. I’m sure they have some sort of affiliate program where the show can earn a little bit of change when you pick up a title.

So let me see if I can get that up over the coming weeks.

If you have more time today, here’s another episode to check out, that’s episode 155 How Gen Z thinks about investing. It’s pretty different! They are willing to trade a lot of returns to invest in companies that share their values. That’s episode 155. I’ll link it in the show notes if you don’t want to search for it yourself.

If you haven’t already, please drop a 5 star review for the show. It takes almost no time and it helps other listeners decide whether or not they will give the show a listen.

If you are listening on Apple Podcasts, click on the title of this show, Progressive Pockets, not on an episode title, but the overall title of the show. Then scroll all the way down past the episodes and you will see where you can tap “write a review” and then you can leave the show 5 stars and say a couple of words about why. It can be as simple as “I love how concise and helpful the episodes are.”

If you listen on Spotify, click on follow because only followers of the show can rate it. Then, click on the three dots and click on rate the show. 

Thank you for doing that! I will tell you, prior to becoming someone that creates media and publishes it on the internet, I don’t think I took enough time to rate the shows and the content that I enjoy. I have been humbled by showing up and putting my best work out every week. Please provide your support with a 5 star rating today. Thank you!

Let’s end with a quote. This is the quote that actually kicks off this book. It comes to us from Alice Walker.

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”

Let’s talk again soon!