Tactic : Voting with our dollars in more ways

Tactics for Using Money Wisely to Boycott the Empire

This page outlines strategies and examples of how we can leverage our spending power and resources to support our community while reducing reliance on monopolies and the empire. These tactics are based on mutual aid, economic self-determination, and practical solutions to everyday challenges.

Circulating Money Within the Community

Spending money within our community ensures it circulates multiple times, amplifying its impact. Minority communities have successfully practiced this, strengthening their economic resilience. By supporting local businesses:

• We empower individuals.
• We reduce dependency on external systems.
• We build wealth within our networks.
• Encourage communication in the community

Creating Jobs Within the Community

A community-based job board or connection network can help bypass hiring systems that may disadvantage those who publicly express their views. With many skilled tradespeople and professionals in our community, we can create jobs for:

• Contractors, tradies, and handypeople.
• Freelancers in various fields.
• Community-focused projects that align with our principles.

Examples of Purposeful Jobs

• Logistics for transporting affordable goods (see section 3).
• Repair services to avoid reliance on monopolies.
• Urban farming and gardening initiatives.
• Hiring trades people/helpers within the community

Distributing Affordable Goods

Certain areas (like Liverpool) have significantly cheaper produce than urban centers. Many of us already make the trip to the city consistently, We can take advantage of this to:

• Organize bulk purchases and logistics within the community.
• Save money while reducing contributions to monopolies.
• Support community-based distribution networks, which benefit everyone.
• Create jobs in the community by paying for logistics services. As the combined price is still lower than the main monopolies

Alternative Lending and Banking Services

We have enough people to start small, community-based financial services to:

• Reduce reliance on banks with strong ties to the empire.
• Offer fair lending options and microloans. That take into concern the communities issues with finance.
• Pool resources for larger projects that benefit the community.

Shared Land Owning for Community Purposes

Housing co-ops, self sufficient communities and many other groups have found ways to share land, mass ownership could be utilised for projects that need it. Providing a community garden, a space to shelter desperate people, a place to provide work, a place to store and distribute food, whatever needs it etc.

Urban Farming and Gardening

Many of the people in our community come from strong traditions of gardening, utilise our beautiful community gardens to:

• Create a space to share images to inspire others, also encourages cross language communication.
• Potentially inspire people to come together to help in labour intense tasks.
• Share seeds, including heirloom varieties, to spread ancestral knowledge and effort.
• Spread the love of native plants and help decolonize the land you are on.
• Experiment with crops and strategies to identify areas for improvement, we will not magically immediately become self sufficient, but if we got an idea of what all of us produce in total we may be able to find techniques that could help get us there.
• Grow fresh produce and reduce dependency on external sources.
• Share DIY/cheap technological solutions to urban gardening, e.g. Arduino to automate hyrdoponics.

While full self-sufficiency is a long-term goal, inspiring each other will happen immediately and will help us see what we need to reach such a goal.

Repair and Skills Sharing

We can save money and create opportunities by:

• Helping community members repair their items instead of buying new ones.
• Sharing skills through workshops and informal training/repair sessions.
• Linking people with skilled repairers in the community for those who prefer professional help.

Tool Lending Libraries

Establish community tool-sharing programs to:

• Reduce the high cost of purchasing rarely used tools.
• Foster collaboration and resource-sharing among community members.
• This also encourages communication in the community.

Financial Adjustments

Making smarter financial choices can weaken the empire’s influence. Examples include:

• Big adjustments: Switching superannuation funds or banks to ethical alternatives. Plenty of resources online for this.
• Small adjustments: Paying with cash instead of cards to reduce fees and taxes that benefit monopolies. If you use card, avoiding tapping for the bigger fees that go to empire.

Better Boycott Systems

Implement a point-based system to evaluate boycottable businesses. Criteria could include:

• Connections to monopolies or harmful practices.
• Subsidiary relationships.
• Locations of corporate offices (e.g., presence in regions like Israel).
• Where do their ingredients come from, do they use big israeli tech or boycotted brands.
• Who do they do business with?

Currently our boycott system is very static, businesses not boycotted but doing business with israel feel no fear, if a points based system were implemented we could give every business a score and businesses just below the threshold will be scared to do any more business with israel, we can also change the public threshold as a response to israel's actions (and people can choose their own threshold on their own). Giving us the perception of an action.

Dynamic thresholds can keep businesses accountable and pressure them to improve their practices.

Shared Transportation

Many of us drive or commute from similar areas. By sharing transportation, we can:

• Save resources and reduce environmental impact.
• Build community connections and foster collaboration.
• Even those using public transportation can communicate to plan to travel together and feel welcome to connect with each other.

Mutual Aid Networks

Expand mutual aid networks to support:

• Small donations to help those in need.
• Food distribution and clothing drives.
• Community-wide resource sharing.

Foreign Exchange:

Many communities use ridiculous foreign exchange rates to their advantage to help their communities worldwide, this could be utilised in a way to help the global fight against colonialism, we could even set up a way to circulate it in the community first so we support our local community with it before moving it out of the country.

Charity and Donation Trustworthyness and Distribution:

In places that are still able to buy food but it's very expensive, use people with connections in the affected areas to get a better idea of where there is little aid and donations and have targeted donation campaigns there and find individuals that can be trusted to spread it out

Success Stories

Create a space to share success stories of these programs to:

• Inspire others to join and contribute.
• Highlight the positive impact of collective action.
• Demonstrate how these tactics have benefited our community.

Volunteer Project Hub

Inpspired by tech for Palestine https://techforpalestine.org/ and reddit's r/Palestine discord working with Volunteers 4 Palestine. Online collaboration can be global, but we could also use these organising ideas for local activism.

Organize a hub where community members can:

• Request help and share ideas for projects that advance common goals.
• Collaborate on initiatives that build self-reliance and resilience.
• Connect volunteers with skills and interests aligned with that project’s needs.