[019] "It's Not Just Money."
NEIGHBOURS v2: On the local journalism of resource-sharing between aunties – and the reflections that fall from the sky “when the lake gets still."
Hello, Tired Ones,
Another week, another sign of life, another reason that showing up’s still worth it.
In my work as a writer and designer for culture change, I come across important stories about progress that people are leading on their own terms.
These are stories that help me to remember: before there was bureaucratic care, or self-care, there was simply, well, care.
So come on in, sit down. For the next few minutes at least, I’ve got you.
February’s care workers: Neighbourhood storytellers
“I'm so at peace right now, and I've been writing like a beast right now/ I've been in my zone and, living in the present moment…”
Sourcing notes: Photo by Anna Keenan Photography, words by this week’s poet, JV, aka Jordon Veira.
—
A fact I missed last week: It’s Black History Month. It’s a commemoration that I’m increasingly seeing Black leaders recognize as an anachronism. My Unitarian church hosted four Black congregants to share what the celebration means to them. The consensus seemed clear: it’s better than it was, but it’s complicated – because they need everyone working harder, and yesterday, to honour Black contributions every month.
Elsewhere, I’ve been seeing the younger generations look at it as a time to celebrate Black Futures. Like the anthology film series 21 Black Futures, which presents 21 ‘monodramas’ by Black playwrights, directors and actors from across Canada – premiering this Friday at 12pm.
In the spirit of these calls, I hope to continue offering the examples I’m seeing from the fact of Black survival – especially of the reciprocity that I know my communities and I must do much more to uphold our end of.
Some ambience, for pairing
"Evergreen" a song by Yebba, as performed by DJ Afroditee, aka Shamaia Veira. Recorded live at a live showcase of the Ontario-wide artist collective IBLV DREAMERS. Livestreamed on Oct. 30, 2020.
The Toronto singer and DJ performs a stunning cover as her IBLV DREAMERS collective members look on – a group of 23 Black and Indigenous artists that came together around her late brother’s best friend, Jermaine Henry. Before her brother Jordon’s sudden death in June, 2019, the three of them collaborated as part of a social enterprise called The Heard, which Jordon and Jermaine launched to promote Black and POC artists in Toronto while simultaneously knocking down institutional barriers for young people. Listen to the whole showcase.
Sourcing notes: Jordon Veira’s legacy shines bright. By Keysha Watson for Urbanology. August 29, 2020.
A healthy idea, to chew on
Black Communities Have Known about Mutual Aid All Along, by Vicky Mochama for The Walrus. September 1, 2020.
On the local journalism of aunties who share money – and the “cooperative economics [that] invests trust in people through time and conversation and sharing”:
Mutual aid is not new. It’s a long-standing practice of Black communities. “Mutual aid is just something that we’ve always done,” says Caroline Shenaz Hossein, a professor in York University’s social science department. “Crowdfunding, the sharing economy—I mean, these are all these nicknames that white people come up with to make it look like it’s new, and it’s never new.”
In the late aughts, Hossein’s research took her to the Caribbean, where she met the “banker ladies”: women who ran and participated in money pools. Money pools are deeply familiar to many people from Black diasporas. Your moms and aunties get together, they cackle loudly for a couple of hours, and later, your mother says not to worry, you will be going to university. There’s a magical quality, money appearing as if from nowhere.
Depending on where you’re from and who invited you in, the pools have different names: sol (Haiti), susu (Ghana), box hand (Guyana), jama (Kenya), hagbad (Somalia). There are cultural nuances in how you get into one, and the amounts may range, but the principle is almost universally the same—you get out what you put in. A typical arrangement might look like this: ten women decide to each contribute $30 a month to a pool, and they each get their turn receiving money from the pool—a $300 cash injection when they do. What enslaved people in Haiti and elsewhere knew is not too distant from the wisdom of Somali mothers and Grenadian aunties: if everyone gives, everyone gets.
The money, as useful as money can be, is almost beside the point. Mutual aid is a reciprocal experience; once welcomed, you’re now in a community of giving, with all the joys and burdens that entails. For Ginelle Skerritt, the executive director of the Warden Woods Community Centre, in Toronto, joining her mother and aunts in their susu as a young person meant more than having some extra money for school. “I felt like I was a woman; I felt like I was doing things that big people do,” she says. […]
Contemporary money pools are part of this long legacy of collaborative financial planning and support. “It’s really a savings vehicle,” says Skerritt of the susu network she runs. She asks the members to share through email what they’re saving for so they can help one another meet their goals; a donation option allows members to contribute a portion of the money they put into the pool to charity. “There’s also been talk about using it to launch ideas around buying property together or investing in real estate together.”
Regardless of what they decide, she says, the goal is the talking, which builds trust and helps dispel trepidation about managing finances. Cooperative economics invests trust in people through time and conversation and sharing instead of through cash and credit. “The Underground Railroad was a cooperative movement,” says Hossein. “That was a network of people coming together through mutual aid.” Its informality was built-in: it was too dangerous to talk about, let alone formalize. Who would—or even could—go to a bank to say, “I’d like to save this money so that I can free some slaves in the morning”?
Who, in this anti-Black world, do you trust?
Hossein says that fear of discovery persists in the money pools that operate today. In the Caribbean, she had no issues when researching box hands, susus, and partners. But, in Canada, it’s a different story. Some people find that talking mutual aid is met with suspicion: How can people have money if they are poor? And, if they have so much money, why are they still poor? For others, explaining one’s culture becomes an argument. Better, then, not to talk too much about it. The banker ladies here, she says, “they hide what they do. . . . They keep these things under wraps.” […]
In Canada, the liberal Catholic Antigonish movement brought together farmers and fishermen, around kitchen tables in the Atlantic provinces, to help them push back against the expansion of corporate fishing. In Quebec, caisses populaires (a form of credit union begun by farmers) are celebrating nearly 120 years of existence.
And yet, despite these well-known examples, there are few banking systems in Canada that recognize the specific ethnic economic activity of mutual aid. My mother’s jama, which gives money when Kenyans in Canada have to pay funeral and travel costs back home, had to undertake a labyrinthine process to establish a bank account. First, most banks said no. Then, a bank manager decided that they could qualify as a community group. But, in order to “become” a community group, they had to draft documents—a constitution with bylaws, a board of directors, meeting minutes. The Black culture of survival requires paperwork to be understood. How do you contain decades of community survival in a document that a bank understands?
Some don’t. My mother and my aunties are the lucky ones. Hossein has spoken to Somali women who allege they’ve had their hagbad money taken during police raids of their neighbourhoods. “Because there’s no understanding of these women’s mutual aid. There’s not even an imagination that these women could be pooling honest money, from driving a bus or cleaning someone’s house, to help one another.”
The suggestion of illegality has haunted Black mutual aid going back to fugitive former slaves on the Underground Railroad. The anxiety of being discovered, of hiding what you’ve earned and given, and of not being understood means few communities want to talk about it, especially communities that are criminalized. It’s not just money; it’s a practice of trust. […]
I know this process like I know a good cup of tea from Kenya’s Kisii Highlands. I am steeped in mutual aid, endlessly warmed by community and reciprocity… What they have—what we have—is a habit formed by time, urgency, community, history, and a need to survive together. If something happens to you, my mom says, you learn that you don’t have a preexisting support system here. “You don’t have anybody. These are the people in the community who are going to help you out.”
Read the whole thing. Including:
Mochama’s reporting on today’s pandemic-inspired mutual aid efforts in Black communities, and
her whirlwind tour of the movement’s deep and diverse history.
A good practice, to save for later
It’s Not Just The Money. It’s A Practice of Trust.—A Community Of Giving (With All The Joys And Burdens That Entails).
A problem: In Mochama’s words, “Who, in this anti-Black world, do you trust?”
An experimental solution: Jordon Veira, DJ Afroditee’s brother, was a legendary spoken word artist and equity educator in Toronto’s arts community, despite being only 26 years old when he passed away. The Heard’s IG account still gives testament to the power of the arts community he helped created – not just the money they circulated, but the trust and resource sharing that they fostered.
Sourcing notes: Jordon Veira’s legacy shines bright. By Keysha Watson for Urbanology. August 29, 2020.
You can see that same spirit in the concert hosted by the IBLV DREAMERS collective, which Shamaia spoke to during a November 20th conversation on IG debriefing the event. To the question, “What makes you a Dreamer?” she says:
I have to, because they gotta know how. [With sounds of kids in the background.] Just them being around to watch me, and observe, is such inspiration to do everything that I’m doing.
A practical question: How do I… actually mobilize my people to start sharing resources?
A practical answer: If Shamaia’s example is any indication, I would say vulnerability. On July 1st, 2019, only a week after her brother took his last breath from his coma, she jumped on YouTube to give an (incredibly poised) update, which shared the comfort she was holding from Jordon, and asked for money. Not only did they need help covering the bereavement costs, but also so she could organize a giant public concert and celebration befitting of his life and spirit. (As it turns out, the music was joyful, and everyone wore white.)
She also shared her plans for continuing Jordon’s legacy – which included an album he finished recording only two days before he ended up in hospital – and which was released just over a year later on August 7, 2020. Says Shamaia:
If you are somebody who wants to be involved and support us in any way, please email us at jvbrave@gmail.com. He created a Brave platform where he was going into schools teaching about racism and oppression, and – you know, what Jordon is about: inspiring the youth. He left me with a whole curriculum… So we’re going to continue it, and use the money from his book sales, and fund his initiative. It’s called Black Boy Brave, Black Girl Brave. And millions of people are still going to be affected positively from the efforts and the work of who Jordon is…
You know, he says, “It’s okay to love when you’re in pain. It’s okay to smile after you cry.” So, he is with us all. I want you to be encouraged, and enjoy the fruits of his labour. We’re going to enjoy it. Music coming out soon.
“It’s not just the money. It’s a practice of trust.”
[Editor’s note: Speaking of Jordon’s music…]
A poem, to cleanse the palate
“Dream” a song by JV, aka Jordon Veira, from his posthumous album The Good Part (2020).
The second verse begins:
I'm so at peace right now,
and I've been writing like a beast right now
I've been in my zone and, living in the present moment
It's seven in the mo'nin', I wake up in that moment
Cause a — really want it
On the tension to both stay and leave the city that’s “still Native land… waiting for justice” – and the reflections that fall from the sky “when the lake gets still”:
Welcome to Toronno, where the rent is high
Plenty Dominicano, Haitian, Italiano,
Jamaican
But it's still Native land, as far as I know
Still waiting for justice, guess that goes without sayin'We've been in this winter cold
Try'na make a little money
So we can leave this place,
But ain't it funny?
Gives as much as it takes
It's why I'm pumpin' the brakes
I'm giving back to myself
I've been minding my health
Yo, I don't think I'ma stay
I've been searching for home
And when I finally leave
I won't be gone for too long
Cause I love my city
We get dope and litty
From afar it's prettyAyy, you just gotta back up
Take a breath and get some perspective (Oh my)
When the lake gets still, it gets reflective
Man it's just really impressive
Man, man, it's just really impressiveChorus:
Could it be a dream?
The stars have fallen down
I think I see the key
Contentment must aboundWe at peace
I've got love in me
I feel it all around
On a search for peace
And love is what I found
And love is what I found
And love is what I found
Something sweet, to top it off
And now, a whole bunch of happy babies and kiddos—rushing the 6-foot-6 man with the camera.
A dare, for the road
I dare you to visit a peaceful place near your this week, and to leave your phone at home. If you live in Toronto, this (pre-pandemic) list might give some inspiration.
That's all for this week.
Remember: Drink when you're thirsty, nap when you can.
Kind regards,
Chris Connolly
Manager, Personalized Care
(Acting Director, Standardized Care)
Humane Resources Division
The Dept. of Emotional Labour