The majority of us want to experience wealth as a tool for collective well-being rather than a weapon of extraction. Yet few of us are given language, space, or strategy to actualize that desire.
The Financial Activist Playbook (Berrett-Koehler Publishers) — written by JEI Fellow Jasmine Rashid — emerged as both a book and a national activation strategy to help everyday people see themselves as “financial activists” and reclaim capital at the personal, interpersonal, and systemic levels.
Over 17 months, across 12 cities and 35+ events, the tour convened activists, wealth holders, funders, organizers, and institutional leaders to collaboratively advance community wealth; through shared accessible share language, practical tools, inspiring storytelling, and cross-class relationship building.
The Collaborators
Jasmine Rashid (JEI Cohort 5) — Author, organizer, financial activist
JEI fellows and advisors featured in the book: Nwamaka Agbo, Ariel Brooks, Stephone Coward, Deborah Frieze, Kristin Hull, Addy Lord, Michelle Maryns, Huong Nguyen-Yap, Deb Nelson, Aisha Nyandoro, Esther Park, Akaya Windwood
Book tour hosts and collaborators across Oakland (Lina Shalabi, Stephanie Green, Liza Siegler, Allison Kelly, Dallas (Donovan Ervin), Denver (Cindy Willard), New York (Christine Curella), Chicago (Kheira Issaoui-Mansouri), Portland (David Kenney, Dara Westling, Maddy Clark, Jamese Kwele, Anyeley Hallová), and New England (Justin Alfond, Louisa Schibli, Mika Matsuno, Susanna Penfield, Julia Dundorf, Janice St. Onge) co-designed gatherings rooted in local context.
Jasmine Rashid
Their Story
Jasmine grew up in New York hyperaware of the quiet architecture of economic segregation — who had access to resources and opportunities, who didn’t, and the invisible role financial systems played in shaping both. Her academic and professional work deepened her understanding of racial capitalism, divestment strategies, and impact investing — and gave her access to rooms where consequential decisions about money and justice were being made.
But she felt a disconnect.
The language of finance was inaccessible to everyday people. Concepts of activism and collective participation could feel intimidating. Where was the bridge?
In 2022, the Just Economy Institute’s fifth cohort became the container where her instinct about financial activist popular education sharpened.
“I wasn’t a finance expert or an academic — I was just a girl in her mid-twenties trying to navigate extractive capitalism and build something better with my friends. Who was I to write a book about financial activism?” she remembers.
Her JEI cohort reflected back something different: that her positionality — grounded in lived experience, organizing, and cross-class dialogue — was precisely what made the project viable. And that she didn’t have to do it alone.
When Jasmine presented her creative capital project at Paicines Ranch, fellows helped pressure-test ideas, suggest interviewees, and share examples of financial activism. From those early signals of support, she spent hundreds of hours interviewing organizers, investors, and practitioners — synthesizing examples across the book’s eight strategies:
- Talking about money
- Banking on ourselves
- Flexing buying power
- Giving and receiving
- Showing up for one another
- Shifting budgets
- Investing
- Handling business
“Rather than ‘build it and they will come,’ I took the approach of ‘build it with others from the very start,’” she shared. “My trusting, supportive relationships were absolutely critical to the book’s coming into existence, let alone reaching thousands of readers worldwide.”
Rather than a traditional book promotion tour, Jasmine knew she wanted to use the book to activate the financial activist ecosystem. In each city, she began with a simple question: Who are my trusted partners here, and what would be most useful for this community context?
The JEI network was the first she called. Fellows and ecosystem partners helped convene the three groups she most wanted to see in deeper collaboration:
- movement activists
- wealth holders
- (everyday people navigating financial systems
Events were intentionally co-designed as “temporary worlds — portals into the Just Economies we deserve.” Formats included Financial Activism 101 workshops, offers-and-needs markets, money story sharing, and Just Economy Bingo, where participants exchanged commitments and local resources.
In Portland, for example, the Oregon Impact Roundtable (led by JEI fellows David Kenney and Dara Westling) hosted Jasmine for two live TV appearances, a free public book talk at Powell’s Bookstore (in conversation with JEI Fellow Anyeley Hallová), and a gathering at Meyer Memorial Trust featuring local financial activists working across mutual aid, participatory budgeting, and grantmaking. The event blended education, dialogue, and play — creating space for new relationships to form.
Across cities, organizers prioritized sliding-scale access, free books, independent bookstores, BIPOC-owned catering, and values-aligned vendors — ensuring that economic practice matched the message.
Participants were invited to commit to one concrete action to shift the flow of money before each event ended. Commitments ranged from supporting local cooperative businesses to initiating intergenerational conversations about investments.
Jasmine watched as people working toward similar visions of economic justice — sometimes in the same city — met for the first time.
Over 17 months, the campaign:
- Produced and co-hosted 35+ cross-sector events
- Secured national media coverage (NPR, Forbes, Teen Vogue, LinkedIn News)
- Expanded public discourse on wealth, climate, and collective liberation
- Strengthened relationships across the JEI ecosystem and beyond
Perhaps most importantly, it demonstrated that narrative is infrastructure. When everyday people are invited into conversations often reserved for institutions — and when gatherings are designed for the whole human, including access needs, culture, and emotional safety — power begins to redistribute.
The book became a shared language within a growing ecosystem of financial activists committed to reclaiming wealth and collective well-being. Like JEI itself, the strategy was never about a singular expert. It’s about building, in collaboration and experimentation, the world we want to inhabit.