{"id":3484617,"date":"2021-01-07T11:37:04","date_gmt":"2021-01-07T11:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3484617"},"modified":"2021-01-07T11:37:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T11:37:04","slug":"racism-in-finance-has-sparked-a-grassroots-response-meet-the-boston-ujima-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2021-01-07\/racism-in-finance-has-sparked-a-grassroots-response-meet-the-boston-ujima-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Racism in finance has sparked a grassroots response. Meet the Boston Ujima Project."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Investors purchase stocks or bonds with the expectation of future financial rewards.<\/p>\n<p>Yet systemic racism and inequity in financial markets have blocked many working-class communities of color from building wealth of their own.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ujimaboston.com\/invest\">Boston Ujima Fund<\/a>\u00a0aims to change all that, by building a movement that reinvests into the neighborhoods and dreams of communities, families, and people who have experienced generations of this sort of financial discrimination.<\/p>\n<h3><b>Social and cultural ROI<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>For Joyce Clark, a research program coordinator living in Boston, her initial inquiries at her bank about investing in stocks were \u201cuncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight away,\u201d she said, \u201cthey were putting up barriers without knowing who I am or what I have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a newcomer to investing, she was full of questions, but she said her bank\u2019s representative only cared about how much money she could bring to the table.<\/p>\n<p>Ujima, in contrast, was more concerned with what sort of social change Clark wanted to see as a result from her investment.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cUnlike the banks I visited, they didn\u2019t ask for money,\u201d Clark said. \u201cIt\u2019s not often you get\u00a0 a chance to be a part of change, and it\u2019s very humbling to see my money really make a difference.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Denisha McDonald, a real estate social-impact consultant, said that while her investments might get a higher financial return in traditional financial markets, Ujima is more rewarding, because her return on investment\u00a0(also known as her ROI) happens on multiple levels.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI not only see an ROI financially, but I also see the ROI socially and culturally,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"lazyloaded\" title=\"Boston Ujima Project is Open for Membership! (Ecosystem)\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/226755271?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"850\" height=\"478\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-rocket-lazyload=\"fitvidscompatible\" data-ll-status=\"loaded\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3><b>Investing \u2014 in reparations<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>Both Clark and McDonald invest in the Kujichagulia pool, one of three such investment pools Ujima maintains.<\/p>\n<p>Nia Evans, executive director of the Boston Ujima Fund, refers to Kujichagulia as a low-barrier, wealth-building vehicle because the minimum deposit is $50.00. The pool is open to working-class people of color who live in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Kujichagulia pool will return the most, and that\u2019s intentional. It\u2019s our way of redefining risk,\u201d Evans said, describing the fund as a community-led reparations initiative to empower those who have been routinely denied access to economic opportunities, job markets, and other wealth-building initiatives.<\/p>\n<p>Evans says Kujichagulia investors also have their risks limited \u2014 an intentional strategy to protect a group of investors who have less financial resilience.<\/p>\n<p>[slide-anything id=&#8217;3472166&#8242;]<\/p>\n<p>In addition to Kujichagulia, Ujima also provides three other investment pools \u2014 the Umoja Fund, the Nia pool, and the Imani gift pool.<\/p>\n<p>The Umoja Fund is designed for a more diverse population of investors, including businesses and stakeholders located in Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York. Accredited investors may also purchase a Umoja note. The minimum investment is $1,000 and the maximum is $250,000.<\/p>\n<p>The Nia pool requires a minimum contribution of $5,000 and is primarily slated for large institutions, philanthropic foundations, and wealthy individuals.<\/p>\n<p>The Imani gift pool is a reserve used to cover investment losses, starting with Kujichagulia investors, who, earlier this year,\u00a0got their first return of 3 percent.<\/p>\n<p>The returns on Kujichagulia, Umoja, and Nia investments are, respectively, 3 percent, 2 percent, and 1.5 percent<\/p>\n<h3><b>Creating alternative economies<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>Economic racism is a real issue that denies people the opportunity to support themselves and their families, start businesses, or build financial legacies \u2014 such as homeownership \u2014 that pass from one generation to the next.<\/p>\n<p>According to \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonfed.org\/publications\/one-time-pubs\/color-of-wealth.aspx\">The Color of Wealth in Boston<\/a>,\u201d a joint publication by Duke University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the wealth gap in the United States is widening, and affects \u201cmillions of families nationwide\u201d who lack assets that would otherwise provide \u201cbetter opportunities for future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The statistics cited in the report are daunting.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>White households in the United States have a median wealth of $247,500, while Dominicans and Black households \u00a0have a median wealth \u201cof close to zero.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Almost 80 percent of white people own a home, compared to only one-third of all Black people, less than one-fifth of Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, and only half of Caribbean Blacks.<\/li>\n<li>56 percent of white households have retirement accounts, compared to just one-fifth of U.S and Caribbean Blacks, and 8 percent of Dominicans, have them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To address these inequities, Ujima does not rely on or appeal to the institutions that have historically stood between Blacks, and other people of color, and progress.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, according to Evans, the Fund organizes and rallies working-class communities of color living in Boston to \u201cbe their own change,\u201d and has raised an impressive $3.2 million toward its 2021 goal of $5 million.<\/p>\n<h3><b>Networking collective community economics<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>In 2015, Boston Ujima Fund co-founder Aaron Tanaka conceived of an accessible, inclusive ecosystem for working-class communities of color living in Boston. He partnered with Evans and a host of other co-founders, and the Boston Ujima Fund was formally launched in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond investing, other Ujima-related projects include improving institutional accountability in Boston; using arts and cultural events to organize people to support the Ujima network; offering alternative currencies, such as customer reward cards for frequenting businesses that support working-class consumers of color in Boston; and ensuring that businesses operate equitably and fairly.<\/p>\n<p>The project bases its ideologies on the seven Kwanzaa principles, which are inspired by African cultural practices that build and reinforce community.<\/p>\n<p>The principles of Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Nia (purpose), Imani (faith), Kuumba (creativity), Ujamma (cooperative economics), and Ujima (collective work and responsibility) were derived from the Swahili language, spoken in East African countries, such as Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan.<\/p>\n<p>As a place-based fund, Ujima is reminiscent of Pan Africanist Marcus Garvey\u2019s Black Star Line, a steamship corporation established in 1919 to help average Blacks and everyday investors to build a future on their own.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA race that is solely dependent upon another for its economic existence sooner or later dies,\u201d Garvey said.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the success of the Boston Ujima Fund is inspiring a movement around the United States.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe get a lot of people from different communities asking how they could do a Ujima where they are,\u201d Evans said. \u201cSo we\u2019re actually mentoring groups in Atlanta, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Chattanooga, Tennessee.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She goes on to note that \u201cUjima works in Boston because of its unique set of laws, organizing processes, and other variables. Those may be different, and therefore create a different outcome in other places.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>This <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shareable.net\/boston-ujima-project-racism-in-finance-has-sparked-a-grassroots-response\/\">article<\/a> was reposted with permission of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shareable.net\/\">Shareable.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Economic racism is a real issue that denies people the opportunity to support themselves and their families, start businesses, or build financial legacies \u2014 such as homeownership \u2014 that pass from one generation to the next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3484623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[213522,79717,213528],"tags":[116235,240245],"class_list":["post-3484617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration","category-economy","category-economy-featured","tag-buildingresilientcommunities","tag-economic-racism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3484617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3484623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3484617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3484617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3484617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}