We live in a society where our economies are extractive. Our economies are extractive of the Earth (water, air, soil, etc. I think you all are probably pretty aware of this) and of people (the majority of profit goes towards very few individuals, and the working class barely makes enough to survive, let alone thrive). As I understand it, racial monopoly capitalism* has extracted a lot of the profit it can by devastating worker rights, externalizing costs to the environment, etc., so it has turned to extracting profit through investment (aka making money off of money, which again, has consequences for the Earth and people).
When we talk about 'social impact investing' it's important to note that most of the time this means negative screens on your investments. In other words, 'social impact' might mean corporations that do not manufacture guns, fossil fuels, etc. However, most of the time these investment screens are not very rigorous. E.g., they don't screen out prisons or even a lot of oil & gas (because some of them have 'good' labor practices). Some firms use positive screens, but these are very rarely grounded in the materially and culturally necessary investments we so desperately need. For example, I was an a social impact investing conference last year where the 'gender justice' screen for a firm meant including companies that had at least one woman on the board of the corporation. This is not gender justice; that is, a lot of the time, pretty horrific gender discrimination. My experience in this world has led me to believe that social impact investing is the next phase of capitalism reproducing itself, and this time its cunningly allowing liberals/progressives to continue throwing down for our extractive economy, and feel good about themselves in the process.
Let me be clear: it's not that doing slightly less harm (impact investing) is bad, it just becomes dangerous if we are socialized to mistake it as actually doing good. And the degree to which it distracts us from putting energy into economic/financial reforms that we need to actually build the world we want.
Okay, so what to do?!
1. There are some negative investment screens that are better than others. If you are set on making money in our economies (alternative: save money in your local credit union), I'd recommend checking out places like
Rise. They are based in SF, are experimenting with more participatory/democratic processes for investors, and have a great intersectional feminist lens, specifically regarding measuring systemic racism. I'm currently collaborating with them to create a screen for industrial ag**. Also, if you want to look beyond RISE, I'd recommend
these folks who have really great theory and practice around re-orienting investment for repair & redistribution.
2. Invest in
what is creating a world that is non-extractive, based in cooperative & collective prosperity. I'm talking about cooperatives that are democratizing capital, food systems that can feed people while regenerating our soil, and energy grids that are community owned and affordable. Check out the
Southern Reparations Loan Fund as an example. If you've got bigger bucks, we've started the
Buen Vivir Fund at my work, which has been co-created with grassroots groups in the Global South so that risk is moved to the investor and terms are controlled by those actually doing the work to create liveable economies that are just for all.
3. Okay, I gotta mention giving money away, because..ya know..it's an email from me 😬 But seriously, with the
Amazon burning, the youth leaving schools to sit on the street until we do something, and pretty much
every report sharing dire news about the planet,
what are we saving our money for? of course we should have safety and security, and every bit we throw down now is taking an action to make your future more liveable. I give to grassroots movements because those are the only spaces where I see consistent & real demands for policies and solutions that will get us towards a 1.5 degree future (aka habitable Earth for most of humanity).
*Whoa! Super wonky word! If you want to unpack this, I'd love to talk about how we've defined it at
LeftRoots