Hi! My name is Jasmine Rashid and I'm a financial activist based in Oakland, CA. In June 2020, I created a free resource to help people navigate the strategies of economic resistance and power-building called "The Financial Activist Playbook for Supporting Black Lives." The playbook — which empowers people to leverage their own money, and money that they have the power to influence — was received as a valuable resource for both those in and out of the economic justice movement.

In listening to the calls from community members and aligned partners, I’m excited to take this playbook to the next level: writing and publishing  "The Financial Activist Playbook for Racial Justice" as an extended, actionable book.

The creation of the playbook will address the current lack of access to easy to understand, easy to use financial strategies — like the questions to ask to start leveraging endowments, retirement, and pension funds to sustainably invest in Black and Brown communities; how to build economic people power through structures like worker-owned cooperatives; how to vote with your dollars and create “People’s Budgets” — in the fight for equity. Candidly, I’ve noticed an unspoken understanding in the field that “financial literacy” is something we do for low and middle-income, BIPOC, and younger folks like myself, while education on themes like philanthropy and impact investing tend to be geared toward wealthier, older, whiter audiences. Yet at the end of the day, we know the former group is driving social change, and we do a huge disservice when we continue this information asymmetry about financial activist strategies.