Nico Amador, 2012
Let’s face it – talking about money is uncomfortable for most of us. In my experience, the fear of stigma or shame associated with a class position is something that is shared by people who have wealth and people who don’t.
I’ll admit that this is something that I too am still learning how to navigate as an activist from a middle class background. While “middle class” may be a murky classification in U.S. culture, where class definitions are not always transparent or well-defined, I’m using that term in reference to having grown up in a family where both my parents were public school teachers with stable jobs but were the first people in their family to go to college; they both put themselves through school without additional support or inherited wealth.
For much of my career, I didn’t make much money but I had all the benefits of growing up with financial stability, formal education, and a high quality of life – including things like having health care, the ability to travel and take vacations, and options to continue advancing in my chosen lines of work. That doesn’t feel like a particularly difficult confession, but as I’m sure others experience, in the course of building community across class differences, it’s not always clear how to create open dialogue about these differences or how they might impact our way of relating to each other. With each friend, lover, or comrade, it can feel as though there’s much at stake, as though there’s a balance that might be disrupted if we’re too honest, if our class differences become too distinct. As we’re building relationships across class differences, middle class and owning class people may not want our class indicators outed. Either we think they’d make others feel alienated or we fear the judgments attached to them. We don’t want to be misread. Poor and working class people might also have reasons for holding back what they share about their own backgrounds, especially in situations where they may expect bias or stigmatization from others with more class privilege.
But what happens when we avoid getting real with each other?
When I was about nineteen I was just coming into my political consciousness and my life as an organizer. A big piece of that process was learning to claim my identity as a person of color and finding connection with other young Latinx folks. I wanted to belong, and as someone who was queer, mixed-race, and not very fluent in Spanish, I was already worried that I didn’t. Most of my college friends were first generation students from poor and working class immigrant families, mostly from Los Angeles and the farming communities in Central California. I could tell that my suburban, middle class upbringing set me even further apart from being able to relate to my friends and a cultural experience I wanted desperately to get closer to. Somewhat unconsciously, I started to downplay things about myself that would have made my class background more apparent. I didn’t lie but I did keep quiet about certain aspects of my upbringing. In an environment that was so focused on the politics of racial and economic justice, I wanted to be seen as firmly on the side of “the people.” I didn’t yet believe I could be honest about my class privilege and still be seen that way. I was sure it would compromise the acceptance I’d found among peers who’d become very dear to me.
Those differences were there anyway, of course. I’m certain that most of my friends sensed it and that at times the obvious was made more awkward by my lack of acknowledgement. Once a friend of mine drove me from Santa Barbara, where we were both going to school, to my parents’ house in San Diego and was wide-eyed and a little put-off when she saw where I lived. Had I been less guarded in previous conversations, my guess is that her reaction would have been different. In this case, she delivered just the kind of rejection I’d been trying to protect myself from. Sometime shortly after that trip she looked at me and said, just because you have a Diego Rivera painting on the wall doesn’t make you Mexican.
It sounds harsh but looking back, I can see more clearly that her resentment wasn’t just about me. She was in her own process of trying to understand her identity as a Chicana, grappling with being a college student and how that had started to change her relationships with family members and the people she grew up with. Still, the mistake was mine and I felt deeply ashamed for breaking her trust and for being seen in the reality of my class experience; for having been caught and called out. At the time, neither of us quite knew how to handle it.
By default, we agreed to handle it by not talking about it again. We stayed friends but I continued to be self-conscious and hide in ways that created distance. That same friend, years later, admitted to me that while she cared about me, she felt like she didn’t really know me. She said she’d never seen me be vulnerable and she wondered why I never reached out for help when I needed it. I’d let my lack of skill in navigating class dynamics compromise my ability to build a truly reciprocal relationship, to let someone in enough so that she could have my back and trust me with hers, no matter how different our problems were. And isn’t that what solidarity is all about?
The work of enacting a vision for justice and shifting the pillars that hold oppression in place is work that requires people to be in the long haul together, to build the kind of relationships that can withstand the pressures and despair involved in the day in, day out work. The mistake I made was to think that in order to have those relationships, I had to come from a certain kind of experience, or at least let others believe that I had.
My relationship to my own identity and my role as an activist changed when I realized that what others need most from me is not to hide or apologize for who I am, but to use whatever skills, qualities, and resources I have at my disposal. Much of what I bring to the table as an organizer – time management, planning, how to budget, the flexibility to volunteer my time or work for little pay – are partially a product of my middle class upbringing. Just as useful are the things I’ve learned from working with people of class backgrounds other than my own: the value of conflict and directness, an understanding of strong relationships as their own kind of currency, and the need for bold, uninhibited visioning.
But in order to make the most of what we each have to offer, we have to be self-aware and honest enough to let ourselves show. We’ve got to have some ways to talk about what’s shaped who we are and where we are in relationship to one another.
From 2008-2015, I served as a Co-Director with Training for Change, an organization that helps grassroots communities build their capacity to stand up for social, economic, and environmental justice. Having worked with hundreds of activists, I’ve observed just how much class can impact organizational practices and culture. Yet, class dynamics are rarely discussed in a way that increases self-awareness or the fluency to be able to interact across class differences effectively. Even activists with a high level of sensitivity to race, gender, and sexuality are often still clueless when it comes to noticing how class influences their interpersonal relationships and organizational structures. I’m interested in how organizations can create cultures that support transparency about class, and active conversations about how to allocate resources in a way that makes participation of all their members accessible and sustainable.
Cost-Sharing: One Way to Get People Talking
At Training for Change, our roles as trainers often required us to start at home, to experiment with our own practices so that we could offer options rooted in our own learning, not just theory. We were lucky to have had working class founders and working class trainers who built class-consciousness into the work from the beginning. While I was there, I noticed that their influence helped keep the organization from becoming too entrenched in middle class ways of operating – which are often the norm in non-profit settings.
The work culture tended to value relationships over procedure, was highly adaptive instead of being procedural, and the collective of trainers made a deliberate practice of working through issues with each other, rather than avoiding them. This helped create one of the strongest organizational containers I’ve ever had working in a non-profit, and I credit these qualities to our strong working class roots. More organizations could look to the wisdom of their raised-poor and working class members when considering how to create an internal culture that is innovative, resilient, and understands how to balance tasks with time for personal connection, conflict resolution, and play.
Beyond the level of organizational culture, there were a number of other ways we thought about class and accessibility within our work. Some basics: we used a sliding scale for our workshops instead of a flat rate for our programs; we raised money to provide a large number of scholarships; and we invested a good deal of time into recruiting support from members of the community so that we had people who could offer things like free housing and airport pick-ups for participants. However, the most unique practice that we incorporated into our work was a cost-sharing process that we used during our annual trainer retreat.
Training for Change has historically run on a shoe-string budget and for a long time, we didn’t have money to pay the travel expenses for our trainer collective to come together in person each year. Even so, the retreats always felt like a necessity. Without them, it would have been challenging to build community and nurture skill development and growth within the collective. Rather than sacrifice these retreats due to scarcity of funds, we elected to use cost-sharing as an option for paying the expenses ourselves.
Cost-sharing is a tool that was developed in Movement for a New Society (MNS), a lesser-known but very influential network of activists who, in the 1970s and 80s, worked to bring about fundamental social change through principles of nonviolence. Their work included experiments in collective living, training, and direct action campaigns.
In a newsletter from 1986, MNS member Joan Nikelsky described cost sharing as a revolutionary and empowering process because everyone participates in thinking about their own and others’ financial situations…we experiment with ‘redistributing wealth’ on a small scale. MNS also acknowledged that money was a volatile discussion topic for any group but that the cost-sharing process was one way of creating safety and ‘unfreezing secrecy’ about money. MNS used cost-sharing methods to fund various activities within their work, sometimes on a very small scale, other times with as many as 75 people.
Here’s how it was typically done with our group of six to eight trainers: we started by calculating the expenses associated with travel for the retreat for each person, which included things like flight or train tickets, as well as child care costs, etc. When we had the total, we wrote that up so everyone could see it. If the total cost of the retreat was something like $4,000, then our job as a group was to come up with $4,000 to cover everyone’s expenses amongst ourselves.
Before asking anyone to make a pledge toward that amount, we partnered up to get support to think through our financial considerations. This was a critical part of the process. In these conversations we were asked to examine and be transparent about aspects of our class position and any other specifics related to our income and expenses at that moment. This could include things such as current debt, ways that we were financially supporting our partners or other family members, medical expenses, inheritance or other sources of income, and the amount of non-paid work we were doing for the organization or other projects. The support given in pairs helped us move through any guilt, shame, or defensiveness about contributing or receiving money. We took it slowly and made room for any emotions that might surface.
Once there’d been ample time for these check-ins, we’d often make time for a go-around as a whole group, where each person was given space to share as much as they wanted about their class and monetary considerations at that moment. This supported transparency among the entire group, and it also increased the level of accountability to one another. Hearing each person in the go-around helped us make decisions about how much we could each contribute, with knowledge of what others might need from us.
I’ve often felt less attached to my own money when it’s clear how the contribution I make supports someone else, and when I’ve had the opportunity to understand the context for their financial situation, as opposed to just seeing numbers. For instance, a few years ago one of our group members shared with everyone that she was in danger of losing her house because she’d been putting a good deal of her time and money toward helping a radical poster collective stay open. While she was of a similar class position and had the same earning capacity as I did, I found it much easier to be generous with supporting her participation by making a larger contribution, knowing that she had been risking her own stability to support another cause. The same has been true when I’ve had awareness of our group members going through major life transitions with work, parenting, and caring for elderly family members.
Once we were done sharing in the larger group, we usually went back into pairs to decide on an amount that each of us felt we could contribute toward the total. There was no pressure or expectation for anyone to contribute a particular amount. A person whose plane ticket cost $400 could pledge nothing toward the total if it was beyond their means to give at that time, while a person who spent nothing to get to the retreat might contribute hundreds of dollars if they had the resources to do so. The pledges were made anonymously on pieces of paper while one person collected them to add up the total. If we fell short of the $4,000 needed in the first round, we went a second or third round and used additional support in pairs as people discussed whether or not they could give more than their initial pledge.
I found that these extra rounds could be useful opportunities to reconsider the ways in which our class training or values might influence our sense of how much we could give. I was taught by my family to plan, save, and budget carefully. I’ve noticed in myself that when I’ve participated in these cost-sharing processes, my first instinct about how much I could or wanted to give was not always a true reflection of how much money I actually had available. I might consider some of the money I have in savings as money that I “can’t spend” whereas many of the working class people I’ve been close to are more likely to share whatever money they have available in the moment.
For me, the exercise of participating in the cost-share multiple times and sometimes in multiple rounds during one retreat had the impact of loosening up how I think about giving in general and what I can or can’t spend. It’s been useful for me as a middle class person to identify when I actually can give more generously. Likewise, I saw members of our group push back when someone with limited financial means seemed to want to give beyond what was really practical for them. The challenges that got offered in both directions were helpful in curbing tendencies to hoard wealth or giving beyond one’s means.
Eventually, we arrived at a result that felt equitable to each person in the group and that covered the total. At the end, one person was put in charge of collecting checks from anyone who pledged and redistributing the funds to reimburse expenses.
We chose to keep the actual amount that each person gave anonymous, though another group using a cost-share process could choose to do that part with full transparency if the feeling was that it would support accountability. One reason we did it anonymously was that we wanted to acknowledge that participating in the cost-share and volunteering to talk about class and money with other colleagues is a risk for everyone. Offering privacy about the amount each person chose affirmed a sense of trust and ensured that our participation wouldn’t ultimately be judged by how much we ended up giving.
Certainly, one goal of the cost-share exercise was to raise the money needed to cover the expenses of the retreat and to experiment with distributing our personal resources equitably. However, another important goal of the activity was to create space for conversation about class and money within the collective. The challenge of having to make real choices related to money raised the stakes of the conversation and didn’t allow people to hide out in abstractions; we had to face real questions about what it meant to interact responsibly from our class positions. To that end, the cost-share was as much about the process as it was the outcome. We don’t assume that everyone will have the same level of self-awareness but, even so, we think there was value in giving each person an opportunity to be in that learning process and gain new insights about their relationship to sharing the resources they have.
Limitations and Encouragements
The process for cost-sharing, as I’ve described it here, is just one possible template for initiating more conversation about class, unlearning some of our beliefs about money and scarcity, and raising needed funds. However, like any other template for a group process, it can and should be adapted and applied in a way that makes sense for the group using it. In the spirit of encouraging others to try it, I’ll offer a few reflections to qualify my own enthusiasm for the cost-share process and suggest some considerations for others who may want to use it.
First, it’s important to say that the trainers who used this cost-share process together in Training for Change were people who had the opportunity to establish trust and relationship with each other over a number of years. Each trainer must have already demonstrated a political awareness of self, group identity, and systems of oppression in order to be part of the collective. Therefore, engaging in the cost-share process together required less groundwork to create safety and shared analysis than another group might need in order to have success with the process.
However, this doesn’t mean that a group that is less experienced with each other or with less political alignment couldn’t use the cost-share process successfully. It just means that a group may want to use trust-building exercises in advance and/or do some other studies on class before delving into something as vulnerable as the cost-share. Facilitators of the process should also take their time with setting guidelines, contracting for the group’s permission, and allowing space for individuals to voice resistance and negotiate what they may need in order to participate.
The second thing I’ll point out is that the total amount a group is trying to raise through the cost-share process must be scaled with some accuracy to the amount of money that is within the means of the people involved in the process. Our small group of trainers was usually safe in assuming that we could come up with $2,000-$4,000 between us, but if we predicted that our shared expenses were going to be higher than that, we might need to supplement the pool of money another way. In a case like that, I’d suggest setting a realistic goal for the cost-share and having a fundraising activity that the group could do together in order to raise the difference.
Finally, everyone involved in the process should feel as though they can participate without the repercussion of being shamed by others in the group. Cost-sharing should happen in an environment where most people can achieve a balance between holding each other accountable and showing patience toward one another. It is not the best tool for helping a group gain new insight on an existing conflict, and if race and class dynamics are already contentious in the group, cost-sharing may not be the right activity to introduce.
That said, in a group culture that is healthy, curious, and willing to explore their relationship to class, cost-sharing can help cultivate a setting in which people are more likely to talk openly about their class backgrounds and financial positions in conversations outside of the process itself.
At Training for Change we noticed that the cost-share process supported us to name class more often than we might otherwise, even when we weren’t talking about money directly. It’s wasn’t uncommon in our conversations with each other that I heard people preface their statements with things like, “This might be my middle class need for control showing up here but…” or “That moment brought up some intimidation I feel about not having had a college education…” or “I’m proud that the story I told in that group helped make space for working class people to feel acknowledged…” We all became more skillful in noticing how class might be impacting our interactions, and learning how to name dynamics more openly.
In a dominant culture that loves money but hates to talk about it, a commitment to being transparent about our own financial positions within our organizations, collectives, and communities is a transformative act. Trying it out may be as simple as initiating conversations about your own class experience or as complex as getting the groups you work with to adopt new practices for sharing resources. The important thing is honesty and a willingness to use what you know and what you have to create real partnerships for change.
Nikelsky, Joan. “Cost-Sharing the Gathering.” The Dandelion: A Newsletter of the Movement for a New Society. Summer, 1986.
Nico Amador is a writer, educator, and community organizer from San Diego, currently living in rural Vermont. His prior work has included efforts to fight mass incarceration, win a living wage and end a public transportation system policy that discriminated against trans and non-binary public transit users in Philadelphia. As a trainer and facilitator, he led hundreds of workshops to promote skills and analysis among people using grassroots strategies to create social change in the U.S. and abroad.