Money is power. One can yield that power by either contributing or withholding money. Use your spending and investing dollars to resist the "Unified Republican Government." Ten suggestions are below. How will you use your money to advance justice and equality?
1. Join a Credit Union: Close you personal accounts with the big predatory consumer credit banks. Instead put your private funds into a local credit union.
2. Join a Community Bank: Close your business accounts with a big self-interested corporate investment bank and put your company monies into a community bank.
3. Fund Legal Actions: There are non-profit social justice organizations that are ready, willing and able to wage legal battles against the Trump administration. Give them money to pay for their lawyers and court fees. They win cases. Places like the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
4. Forgo Holiday Gifts: Decide with your family and friends to give the money you would have spent on holiday gifts for each other to local social justice organizations in your community instead.
5. Live an InterFaith Life: Go to the church, mosque, synagogue or temple of another faith. Listen to their concerns. Hear their voices. Put money in their collection plate.
6. Support Local Artists: Artists amplify our voices. There are musicians, visual artists and performance artists out in our neighborhoods with important social messages. Attend their shows. Share their social media. Buy their art, music, books and films.
7. Buy Local: Avoid the big box stores and purchase goods from local businesses that employ your neighbors and contribute to your community's tax base.
8. Stand for Living Wages: Support big companies that provide living wages to their employees with union pay scales, medical benefits, bargaining rights and retirement plans.
9. Buy American: Pay a little more for goods made by American workers at American businesses. Read the labels. Pass on goods made by low-income, oppressed workers overseas.
10. Share Pocket Money: With many critical social services being threatened with de-funding, our brothers and sisters on the streets need help more than ever. Carry some single dollar bills and give them freely. Don't judge. Share.