Financial Solidarity

What does solidarity look like?

#FinancialSolidarity #MutualaidSTL

We are facing a global pandemic and impending recession. The news is overwhelming and our systems are failing in response. It is hard to know where to turn for help and to help others but the best thing is to turn to one another. A group of activists and organizers are bringing folks together to start a Financial Solidarity Network in St Louis.

Rather than giving to an organization, financial solidarity is direct giving to those in need. It’s based on the idea that folks know what they need best and showing up for them. We are practicing financial solidarity rather than temporary charity.

Even if financial solidarity may sound new to you, you’ve done it before, either by lending some money to a friend in need, your congregation pooling money for people in your community, going to a rent party or holding a bake-sale. We know how to do this, how to support those and what we each need in turn.

Financial solidarity also recognizes that we in St Louis don’t all have access to the same amount of wealth. Practicing financial solidarity is a way to thwart systemic racism, heteropatriarchy, xenophobia, transphobia, and classism by transferring money and power. Financial solidarity shifts the power dynamic from the donor or agency deciding who is ‘worthy’ to a practice of trust and mutual support. Please, join us and the community we’re building.

WE ARE ALREADY DOING THIS NOW. JOIN US.