Living with a constant sense of precarity is a defining feature of racial capitalism. We collectively face billions in medical bills, credit card debt, payday loans, predatory student loans, and carceral debt. According to United for a Fair Economy, the majority of Latine households would run out of savings after just 3 months. What’s more, a Black woman has just 1 cent and a Latine woman has less than 1 cent for every dollar of wealth in a white man’s pocket. Your race, gender, and the city or town you were born in deeply shape your future income. Today, half of renters nationwide pay over 30% of their income on rent, leaving little else for necessities, let alone emergencies. Yet, we’re made to feel like our financial burdens are our fault. Those in power know that if we are overwhelmed by shame about our individual circumstances, we are less likely to come together to resist this exploitative economy that is harming all of us.

This is no coincidence: wealthy white people designed the US economy to provide themselves with land, power and money at the expense of everyone else. The conditions of scarcity that Black, brown, Indigenous and immigrant communities face on a daily basis are the direct result of centuries of enslavement, genocidal land theft, affirmative action for white people, and racist policymaking – from Jim Crow to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act. With a Democratic party that largely upholds the status quo, combined with the daily stress of living under capitalism, it can be hard to imagine a different reality. Pervasive narratives tell us that the billionaires who exploit us will save us through their generosity and “genius.” But we know systemic problems require collective solutions that shift power back to our communities. As we organize to reverse the legacy of racist economic policies and relieve day-to-day precarity, we must also experiment with creating an entirely new economic system.

At the local level, we can create conditions of abundance that help people not only survive, but thrive. Showing up for one another’s basic needs – housing, groceries, childcare, a safety net – is essential. At the same time, we urgently need local models for how to undermine and escape capitalism’s cycle of debt and scarcity. That is, we are not just working for a world where everyone can pay their bills. We are dreaming much bigger, for a world where our children and our great-great-grandchildren experience something better. Capitalism isn’t just destroying our spirit, it’s also killing off entire species and destroying our planet. It’s time for capitalism to go extinct. 

How do we build an economy that promotes care for each other and all forms of life? There are countless examples. Communities across the country are developing worker-owned cooperatives and the solidarity economy, organizing for reparations and land back to repair centuries of harm, and passing policies to put cash in people’s pockets – with no questions asked. Workers are fighting wage theft, ensuring immigrant workers are safe from deportation, and working with grassroots groups to make sure union bargaining demands benefit entire communities.