The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar “Remaking the Economy: Liberating Finance to Build a More Just World.” View the full webinar here.

Onyx Ramírez: This idea of risk—it’s so crucial that we can flip it to say, rather than the risk for this investor or this financial institution, what is the risk to the earth? What is the risk to the community? What is the risk to the people if this is not invested in at this point in time?

And when you [Jaime Gloshay] were speaking, I was also thinking about my own ideas about myself in relation to wealth management and how these really harmful stereotypes can be pervasive in community around what we feel we deserve.

So, in addition to this systemic change, there also needs to be a lot of narrative work and narrative change, internal healing that can be done to say, “I deserve to steward these resources and to have a say over my community.”

And, at large, using finance and money to liberate can be really tricky, because typically that is not the purpose of capital, has not been for liberation. It’s been used to extract from communities without the power, and never mind getting into reparations, which is a whole other thing, but traditional finance has discriminated against Black and Indigenous communities through very harmful practices like redlining, credit, collateral—all these different things under the guise of risk.

And even in farming, there are definitions around who can qualify as a proper farm, because perhaps they’re not meeting those minimum requirements, those minimum numbers of production, when historically, that is not how Black and Indigenous farmers go about their relationship to land, is not maximizing every square inch and mono-cropping and these really, really harmful practices.  

And so, risk, typically, is then combined with very high interest rates to maximize that profit, which is going to lead to a disaster.

Like [Fernando Abarca] was saying, rather than emphasizing maximizing returns, how do we emphasize a low but sustainable return over a really long period of time that can be adapted to the needs of the community?
It’s so crucial. And giving up traditional power is not easy, especially considering that these financial resources were extracted from community bodies, people, mind, spirits, and the land.

And so, in addition to restructuring these things, there’s healing that needs to be done, but it is really crucial that we reframe risk to decenter the investor. Get them out of there. We’re not thinking about them right now. We’re thinking about shifting power toward a larger goal for the earth, because a focus on financial wealth has not been productive.