To my beloved community,
In the aftermath of this election, I am reaching out from my fiercely loving heart and unyielding commitment to what we have been building together for many years. In the tenderness of our grief over what might have been under different leadership, we stand at a crossroads: we can deepen divisions or choose the awareness and compassion necessary for building something better. We believe the best solutions come from the communities most impacted by injustice; we must choose to act on that conviction.
I’ve always told you the truth with love in my heart. I want to do that now. There are too many factors that contributed to the election outcome to name them all here; but one I believe our community might find the hardest to comprehend is the immense power of poverty. And it’s not a simple story because, like all social justice issues, poverty is multifaceted and deeply intersectional.
Trump’s win, in a free and fair election, was overwhelming to wake up to. Most of my morning was spent being present to emotional swings, one of which was to shock. But as I sat with it, I realized that a part of me is not surprised at all about the election outcome. In fact, not only am I unsurprised, but I began to realize that I have a visceral understanding of the choice many Americans made yesterday.
To be clear, this was not the choice I made. But part of me gets it, and it’s the part of me that remembers being very poor. Most impact investors do not have direct experience with poverty, so I’d like to share my firsthand perspective.
Reckoning with Poverty
Throughout all of my childhood and well into young adulthood, my day-to-day life was shaped by poverty. When we didn’t have a home, we slept in a rusty Oldsmobile and on friends’ floors. I know what it is to feel lucky to finally have a tiny, old home that leaks when it rains, gives you mold headaches, and is infested with cockroaches. As a young adult, I remember panicking at the store, neither able to afford the groceries in front of me nor the bus fare to get home.
Not being able to house and feed yourself and your family creates a level of desperation that warps your thinking. It only gets worse when you also can’t see any way out of your situation. You make impossible choices for short-term self-preservation, often at the expense of your own and others’ long-term well-being. And — what I hope to convey in this letter — when you see even the smallest chance to escape your dire economic situation, you take it. Trump offered poor Americans that longshot.
Poor people spend 33 times more of their income on lottery tickets than do wealthy people. When you can’t afford groceries and your children are hungry, spending a dollar on a scratcher in the longshot hope of winning enough money to feed your family for a month or a year can be incredibly appealing. Do you see the similarity?
The United States, including where I live in California, is full of poor people who were promised a land of opportunity and prosperity that has not materialized for a generation. I can understand how, if you are barely keeping your head above water financially, hearing about diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and watching more women and minorities take prominent positions of power could feel like the promise of opportunity and prosperity has been revoked.
Mixing economic precarity with a broken promise of abundance is a toxic combination — one that breeds resentment. And a resentful population is ideal ground for stoking divisions. Trump’s racist messaging pulled pages out of a 400 years-long United States story of stoking racial divisions to maintain class power. This love letter is not the space to recount that history, but if you aren’t already familiar, I encourage you to learn about Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, the Wilmington Coup D’État of 1898, and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.
People aren’t inherently racist, sexist, or xenophobic, but the fear and desperation that accompany poverty makes you look at the world differently. Others have what you need and you are looking for any way out — any possible advantage that might change your circumstances. Social norms have taught us that being a White man, or aligning yourself with White men, gives you an advantage, but for many Americans — including many working-class White men — that advantage has not materialized.
And it’s not just poverty itself. The fear of poverty among the middle-class and economically insecure is nearly as powerful. It is terrifying to be a poor person in this country where poverty can mean not having a home, physical safety, or enough food. To make matters worse, being poor is often viewed as a moral failing which comes with intense shame. I remember how humiliating it was to sit in poorly-lit government offices to be interrogated by social workers about the intimate details of our lives in order to qualify for food stamps.
With that in mind, while it is painful to look at directly, I must stare this truth in the face: poor White men and economically insecure voters delivered this election to Trump, and that decision has a kind of internal coherence. When I look at their circumstances through a poor person’s eyes, it makes sense to me. They chose to elect a White man who said he would destroy massively unfair political and social systems and promised to send the nation back to a time when the race and sex of White men gave them an advantage they believe they desperately need.
What Does This Have to Do With Impact Investors?
The large-scale change we need on the issues impact investors have historically cared most about — climate, gender, and racial justice — are all inextricably tied to economic justice.
Poverty threatens a person’s immediate survival. It makes us too preoccupied, ashamed, and short-term-focused to be concerned with solving any problem beyond our next meal. [As I was writing this, it occurred to me that this is not very different at all from investors’ focus on maximizing short-term returns at the expense of long-term well-being. Both impulses come from the same fear of scarcity, although investors rarely have to worry about day-to-day survival.]
This week, a significant fraction of Americans communicated this very clearly: all other issues take a back seat unless and until we solve for economic precarity.
Interestingly, solving economic precarity is a place where many Trump voters and impact investors agree. You can see this in the election results as well. Several states that handed Trump a win also voted for increases in the minimum wage, paid sick leave, and other worker protections. They and we agree that our current social, political, and economic systems have not adequately addressed the massive wealth inequality and the economic precarity too many Americans continue to experience. We all believe the United States is too rich a country to have so many poor people.
If we all agree the economic and political systems are broken and we’re similarly looking for solutions, why did they elect a (reputed) billionaire backed by billionaires? It’s in part because in extractive capitalism, poverty is disparaged as a shameful moral failing and wealth is celebrated as a marker of virtue that eclipses all other indications of character. We can’t fairly place all the blame on poor voters when as a nation we have not faced the real sources of wealth and poverty or the ways our prevailing systems are rigged to increase poverty and concentrate wealth.
I have an even harder pill for us to swallow here, so we’ll do it together: for decades, Democrats have put forward presidential candidates who would at minimum uphold and at maximum make incremental adjustments to those broken systems. Yes, I am talking about Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Harris, all of whom I voted for. Under their platforms, change did not come quickly enough (or at all) and we’ve simply run out of time for making edits. Instead, Trump offered to tear down the systems and raze the institutions. For people living in the desperation of poverty — or the fear of it — voting in the demolition crew had a strong appeal.
But as impact investors, we are builders.
Our country — and the rest of the world — is in for a painful stretch of destruction. The demolition will likely gut American social systems, legal protections, and physical infrastructure; it will likely compound violence and degradation in many other countries. If history is any indication, the impacts will be particularly hard on those of us in marginalized groups perceived as having prospered in the recent past. This will be an incredibly difficult time; I cannot overstate this. We must protect one another and our shared hope for the future during this time.
During demolition, it will be important to remember that we are builders. We must continue to dream, plan, and work for the just, equitable, and inclusive future we have always wanted, so that when the tide turns we are poised to move swiftly and effectively. Sadly, I cannot tell you when that time will come.
What I can tell you is that those of us who build from love for humanity and all our relations on this precious planet are going to find ourselves with surprising allies among the majority of Americans who voted to tear it all down. As I noted earlier, you can already see budding alignment in the mismatched electoral results, and even the newest community organizer knows not to alienate their allies. This means it is imperative that we do not dehumanize or vilify the people who voted for Trump out of economic desperation or the fear of it. They are our future allies, and we must ultimately work with them to build a more equitable future for all of us, together.
No one really wants to hear this right now. We are furious and exhausted. But I must say it because this is a love letter and love shares the hard truths that need to be told.
I have some good news for you too. We do not need to wait for the destruction to end to do our part. Impact investors work inside the financial system, one of the few systems likely to face minimal destruction by the billionaires and their supporters in the incoming administration, because finance serves them well. Impact investors can continue to build paths toward a just transition and mitigate the current harms caused by businesses and financial institutions. We know that taking care of people, communities, and our planet is actually good for business. We may not be able to see the political paths to a just and sustainable world right now, but we know the economic paths and we have everything we need to walk them.
What Now?
Feel all of your feelings. I am your sister and I am insisting that you do this for your own well-being and for the well-being of our community.
If you need a rational justification, know that suppressing feelings takes tremendous psychological and physical energy that none of us cannot afford to waste in this moment. Anger is a valid reaction, but be mindful not to leap to anger as a bypass for underlying grief and fear. Acknowledge and make room for the feelings that arise, knowing your community is here experiencing and holding them with you. Allow them to metabolize within you and become nourishment for the long road ahead of us.
Hug the people you love and hold them close.
Do not alienate our future allies. They are also experiencing grief, fear, and anger. And they are also hoping for a better future.
Look out for and expand this beloved community. Protect each other — especially the most vulnerable among and around us — now and in the destruction of our norms and systems to come.
Rest. We have been fighting long and hard to avoid this outcome. Now that what we feared is imminent, rest knowing we will need all of your energy to build what’s next.
Sit with the uncertainty. You don’t have to have all the answers right now. In fact, you don’t need to have any answers right now. If you absolutely must give shape to your thoughts at this moment, try to form good questions and listen for possible solutions with a prepared and open mind.
When you’re ready, start to dream and plan for the kinds of systems love would build if we had to start over, because we will be starting over.
Remember you are a builder. Let’s build together.
Love,
Rachel