Part II

Part 2

| 79 CHAPTER 7: I THINK I’LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITY As humans, we’re designed to be able to connect easily with ourselves and each other through our emotions and our feelings. We’re created with a sense of intuition allowing us to feel the direction our life should follow. When we listen to it, intuition helps us to make better decisions, but overtime, we learn to ignore it. That’s because we often must do things in life that don’t feel right inside. Society teaches us that the key to success is doing things we don’t want to do. And of course, when you’re poor and utterly reliant on your paycheck, you don’t feel you have much choice in the matter. Putting your head down and grinding away at a job you hate is a way of ignoring your intuition, and over time, you get better and better at it. To be able to be truly fulfilled in life, you need to pay attention to that inner voice. I decided to move to Los Angeles to spend time in nature. The idea of being close to the beach appealed to me. Everything else was closed due to the pandemic, and the outdoors had always helped me think better and made me feel alive. One day, shortly after I’d moved to LA, I visited the arts district downtown with a friend. I’d asked my friend if they wanted to visit Skid Row, which I knew was nearby, but they weren’t interested. While we were driving, however, we made a wrong turn and somehow ended up in

80 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. Skid Row anyway. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the area, Skid Row is an area of about fifty city blocks in downtown LA that’s ‘home’ to one of the country’s largest homeless populations. It’s received a lot of attention because it’s in the middle of an otherwise wealthy part of town. Driving through Skid Row was like being in a third-world country. It wasn’t just adults there, either. There were families with children too, all living in tents and makeshift shelters. We saw kids going through garbage cans looking for anything of value. There was a pervading feeling of hopelessness. It reminded me of the places I’d visited during my college days. Once in a rural Caribbean village, I noticed several dog houses made from corrugated steel. They were tiny, ramshackle structures stacked on top of each other on a hill next to the river that separated Haiti from the Dominican Republic. When I asked why there were so many dog houses, I was informed that they were inhabited by people, not animals. I couldn’t believe it. Looking across the water, I could see the homes on the Dominican Republic side. The houses there weren’t lavish, but they were nice-looking regardless. It was shocking to see that kind of wealth disparity in such close proximity. When we turned that corner into Skid Row, I was transported back to all those memories. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My shock wasn’t at the extreme poverty. What I couldn’t believe was that this level of poverty existed right next to some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. As I drove home, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I saw. Block after block of abject poverty and squalor, right next to multi-million- dollar condominiums. Back at home, I started watching a documentary on Skid Row. A few minutes into it, I realized I’d seen it before. But this time, as I watched, I felt it. The ‘homeless’ who were filmed in the documentary were the poorest people in America. They were all people just like you or me; they’d just had a string of bad luck that resulted in them becoming homeless. Most of us have been trained to think homeless people are this

CHAPTER 7: I THINK I’LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITY | 81 different group of people who became homeless on purpose. We think they must’ve done something bad to deserve that kind of life, or that they have mental health problems, or any number of other prejudicial reasons you can come up with. There’s a stigma that says they’re all on drugs or addicted to something. Most people don’t stop to think about what might have gotten them there in the first place. It’s easier to think they want to be homeless, rather than asking ourselves why we ignore their suffering and choose not to help them. These were the least fortunate members of our society, and we’ve all decided it’s okay to let them rot away. We’re pretending like they aren’t humans, I thought. When I drove through Skid Row that day, I realized I’d been ignoring my inner voice for far too long. Having lost my faith in religion at an early age, I never gave much thought to intuition and gut-feelings, as I associated those with faith. I’d always put my faith in my own intelligence, hard work, and determination to help me accomplish whatever goals I set for myself and to helping others. Believing that something natural lied within us that could lead us to our greater purpose seemed naïve and childish. It’s called an existential crisis when you start to question the meaning of your life. Anyone who’s taken a behavioral science class will be familiar with a theory called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s a theory that explains what motivates people by ascending order of need, from physical, to social, to psychological. When you’re poor, you’re focused on survival and meeting your basic, most fundamental needs. As your economic situation improves, you can satisfy other non-essential but very important needs such as safety and security, love and belonging, esteem and respect, and finally the need for self-actualization—which essentially means fulfilling your desire to become your best self. The downside to buying into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is that you end up believing that finding your higher purpose belongs at the end of life and is an outcome reserved solely for the well-off. Ironically, as my own needs evolved beyond the physical and emotional and became

82 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. more about seeking spiritual fulfillment, the stronger my sense of disillusionment grew. I can see now that this profound dissatisfaction was my body’s way of compelling me toward my highest purpose. My unhappiness was the consequence of not listening to my intuition. We get side-tracked from our higher purpose because we don’t realize how easy it is to connect with the collective unconscious, or God, or whatever it is you choose to call it. If we all listen to our intuition and work collaboratively together, we’re spiritually aligned, and we can accomplish anything. We don’t need to be told what our purpose is, and we don’t need someone else directing our actions when we listen to our own divine. When we make this sort of connection, we feel in synch with the universe, and everything unfolds before us naturally. If we allow it to happen, and we let that voice tell us what we truly want to achieve and what we care about, we’ll be able to accomplish it because it’s what the universe designed us for. It’ll just make sense. The answer to the poverty problem in our country hit me with a wave of clarity. I saw my mispriced idea. I’d never experienced anything like that in my life. I could fully see the math, messaging, partnerships, and policy. My wrong turn was no coincidence. I knew exactly how we could not only end poverty worldwide, but how we could make trillions of dollars doing it! Having spent virtually my entire life relying on logic and empirical data, this incredible sense of instant awareness was completely new for me. I was able to see how all the experiences of my life—the childhood poverty, the achievements in academics and sports, the international development and community outreach efforts, the corporate success, the finance, investment, and wealth lifestyle experiences—had all prepared me for what lay in front of me. I realized how I could use my collective gifts and experiences to serve a greater purpose, and everything I’d been feeling finally made sense. I started writing that night and couldn’t stop. When I ran out of steam, I went to sleep, woke up, and got right back to it in the morning.

CHAPTER 7: I THINK I’LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITY | 83 The ideas were pouring out, and I felt like if I didn’t write them down, they’d disappear. It was all there, fully formed in my mind. I just needed to get it out. I still had a day job, but I got my work done as quickly as possible so I could get back to writing and planning. In two weeks, I’d captured it all on paper. I’d written a complete analysis on how we could drastically improve our society through a minor reform that would save taxpayers enormous amounts of money and stimulate the economy. I figured all that was left to do was to share it with the right individuals. Thanks to my time as a Rhodes Scholar, I knew a fair amount of people working in government. I shared my essay with them and asked for feedback. I made edits here and there based on the feedback I received, but the core analysis stood up to all their questions. It all made sense. But that’s where it stopped. Everyone agreed the plan would end poverty and save taxpayers trillions of dollars, but so what? Having a great idea was one thing, but it was about more than a new business idea. It was about solving one of the greatest problems the world has ever faced. It wasn’t just a long shot in their minds—it was a fantasy. They didn’t see what I saw. I saw exactly who I needed to get onboard, and how we could get it done. Others only saw the obstacles; I could see far beyond them. I saw my life’s work in front of me and knew I was being called to do something bigger than myself. I saw the investment of a lifetime, and I decided to push in all the chips. I walked away from my career in finance and started working to end poverty. “You’re throwing your life away!” “How can you just turn your back on everything you’ve built for yourself?” “You’re not their savior!” “You need professional help.” “I’m worried about you!” “You used to be so normal.” “If you have to pick a battle, at least pick one you have a chance of

84 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. winning.” Those were but a few of the comments I heard from co-workers and friends when I told them my plans to drop out of the wealth race. It was amazing to see the polarizing effect my decision had on the people around me. Some took my plans as a personal affront or judgement on their own life choices, while others just shook their heads and turned their backs. Nearly every one of my colleagues in finance thought I’d completely lost my mind. So did practically all my Harvard and Oxford friends. Although Rhodes Scholars typically arrive at Oxford determined to fight the world’s fight, over time, we have the tendency to become somewhat self-centered. Prizes carrying that much prestige have a way of making people obsess about status and the acquisition of additional prizes and accomplishments rather than leaning further into service. The ego is powerful. But I didn’t care. I understood where their judgement was coming from. Instead of giving myself and my family an opportunity to build generational wealth, which was something most of those around me could relate to, I was turning everything on its head. I was no longer on a path to reach maximum financial success, so to a lot of former friends and colleagues, I was no longer useful. I was more surprised by the reactions of many friends who’d also escaped from poverty. I figured they would be on board with my plan, but most weren’t. In retrospect, I get it. When you’re poor, it only takes one misstep for everything to come crashing down. My goals had always been, in order, to get myself out of poverty, to get my family out of poverty, then to do good in the world. Fear of falling back into poverty had always been my motivator, and the accumulation of wealth had been a comforting security blanket. For kids like me who were climbing their way up from the bottom, we didn’t have safety nets our whole lives. Because of this, we learned to be unbelievably careful with everything we did. Never rock the boat. Never deviate from the path. And there I was, rocking the hell out of it.

CHAPTER 7: I THINK I’LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITY | 85 In their eyes, I was taking too much risk, and they’d worked too hard to get to where they were to be involved. These were the hardest losses. I saw how much we all were fighting to be accepted by people who would never truly ever accept us. From day one in life, we were told that we didn’t matter because we were poor or because we were part of some minority. It’s impossible not to take messages like that to heart. Instead of deciding to fight against a system that determined someone’s worth by the color of their skin and the size of their bank account, many of us tried our best to stop being poor, to stop being Black or Latino or whatever other minority group we’d previously identified with. Teaching people to hate themselves is a powerful trick. It worked on me for years. But I wasn’t going to let it stop me this time. I was on to something special. Neither the fear of failure or anything else was going to deter me from following this journey to its completion. A select number of humanitarian-minded souls stood by and listened to my plan, intrigued. “Help me to understand,” they urged. I’m fortunate to have a small but mighty collection of friends who care deeply enough about other human beings to not only encourage me to take the leap but to lend hours of support editing my essay, making introductions, poking holes in my talking points, and rolling up their sleeves to work right alongside me. It didn’t hurt that those were some of the smartest people on the planet—many of them with deep policy and legislative expertise. I was starting out on a journey to ensure every human being had access to enough wealth to meet their basic human needs: food, water, clothing, shelter, transportation—and information. It was the biggest leap of faith I’d ever taken. It was also, hands down, the best decision I ever made. I’d come up with a way to end poverty and save taxpayers trillions in the process. I call this proposal the Seed Money Act. It’s a plan that would provide an unconditional, permanent, regular grant (called seed money) to every American household in an amount that is equal to the federal poverty guidelines. The proposal outlines a fiscally responsible way to pay for the grants that’ll result in trillions in tax savings for our country.

86 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. With the help of many, I was able to turn this proposal into a draft bill. My goal was to get the bill sponsored and approved by Congress so it could become a legislative reality. (You will learn all about the Seed Money Act in Part 3.) I gave myself one year to get it done. A common saying goes that people grossly overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what’s possible in ten. In my case, the maxim was right. I figured that once enough really smart people in positions of power read how simple it was to end poverty and save taxpayers trillions along the way, it would take no more than a year before we got the legislation passed. But after a few months, it became obvious that finding the solution was the easy part, and I’d need to invest well over a year to get it done. I may not be very materialistic, but I have just as much ego as anyone else. And that ego made me scared as hell to walk away from all the social status I’d accumulated over life. When I decided to leave finance and try to end poverty, I lost a lot of friends. It turns out, when you live your life focused on accomplishments, you attract people who like you for those accomplishments. Once you no longer play that game, they no longer love you. I was saddened by how many people stopped answering my calls when I wasn’t reaching out to talk about making money or partying, but I wasn’t shocked. I took one last look at my life and asked, “What am I here for?” It was difficult to explain to others the passion that had awakened inside me. I’d experienced a deeply spiritual personal epiphany, and I’d connected so completely to my own truth that I couldn’t have ignored it, even if I’d wanted to. I could only accept it as the gift that it was and trust things would unfold the way they were meant to. The knowledge that I was following my own inner guide gave me the courage to let go of my old life and move forward without regret. I knew a lot of people wouldn’t like what I had to say. I worried about that for a while, but then I realized something very liberating; I’m not here on Earth to earn anyone else’s approval. Trust me, it’s a daily fight, but I’m determined to live a life of service to the world instead of serving

CHAPTER 7: I THINK I’LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITY | 87 my ego. The more you ‘rise’ in the world, the more everything becomes a competition. Who is the smartest? Who is the fastest? Who is the richest? Who has the prettiest partner? I knew that by walking away from my career, I’d be seen as a ‘loser’ to those still playing the game. “Would you rather have a five-million-dollar home or a one-million- dollar home and four-million-dollars that you could use to help those in need?” I asked a woman I’d been on a few dates with. She looked at me like I’d asked the dumbest question she’d ever heard. I felt an instant flutter of relief, assuming she also thought that a one-million-dollar home was plenty. “I like nice things,” she replied. I’ve spent enough time around wealthy people to know most of them, like the woman on that date, aren’t bad people. Poverty just isn’t real to them. It’s nearly impossible to understand an experience you’ve never seen, let alone lived. In general, the rich are like everyone else: they think mostly about their own lives. Poverty is a problem that rarely affects them—until it’s too late. We live in a world where we just don’t care all that much about other people. I don’t blame the girl on the date or anyone else, for that matter, for wanting to accumulate wealth and status. I went through it. I get it. We dance around it, but our entire social hierarchy is based on wealth. We say it’s “nice things” that we’re after, but underneath everything, it’s status we crave. There’s a reason companies care so much about branding. We don’t buy expensive things because of the quality of the product. We buy luxury goods because of the statement it makes. No one spends $1,500 on a $75 bottle of champagne at a club because they like nice things; they do it to feel superior. They reason, “This is expensive, which makes it better. And I have it, so that makes me better!” We’ve come up with all these different systems to convince people that having money makes you better than everybody else. Our society convinces us that the people on the bottom are stupid, lazy, dirty, etc. Using this logic, it’s easy to think people who have less than you aren’t

88 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. important and don’t matter. There’s a power hierarchy in play that says as long as I have even a little more money than someone else, I have some power. So, there are a lot of people in the world who don’t want to see poor people do better. Giving poor people money would shift that hierarchy and create a change in the power dynamic. It’s a threatening prospect for many, and it’s at the root of why some people are resistant to my proposal. One of the greatest tragedies of our time is that we’ve created a society where the rich and the middle class live separately from poor people. We use that classism mentality to justify why it’s okay that we’re living in a house and have everything we could possibly want, while right across the street, we can see people who are freezing to death while they sleep on the streets. We saw a similar mentality during the Irish potato famine in the mid-nineteenth century. Although the potato crops suffered, there was plenty of other food to eat. The problem wasn’t that there was no food, it was that, at the time, the British had control over Ireland, and they exported all the food that was available, leaving the Irish to starve to death. This same separation exists in the US today. The distance between rich and poor neighborhoods prevents those with money from seeing the effect many of their decisions have on poor people. When I worked at the hedge fund, I was around people worth more than most humans can imagine. The thing most of those individuals had in common was that they had a complete disregard for the environment and the rest of the world. It wasn’t because they were horrible people. They’d simply grown up in a world where all they thought about was their own wealth and comparing their wealth to that of their peers. If you’re a billionaire, you must separate yourself from people who don’t have as much money, because those less fortunate people are constantly asking you for what they don’t have. This narrows the pool of friends you can choose from. So, who do you hang out with? The answer is other people who have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. Ultra-rich people are no different from any other group of people in

CHAPTER 7: I THINK I’LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITY | 89 the sense that they’ve got their circle of friends, and they want to be the highest-ranking member in that circle. The difference is, when it comes to very wealthy people, the defining factor of why they’re all together is their wealth. And the way they determine their internal social hierarchy is based on who has the most money. Within these social circles, you find situations where one billionaire will be frustrated because another billionaire has more money. They’ll obsess about it. It was fascinating to see because it’s extremely stressful for them. Obsessing about who has more money isn’t something they enjoy or do on purpose. As somebody who grew up in poverty, I could see how these people were helping to create a more difficult world for those who were on the bottom, but they weren’t even aware they were doing it. It’s one of the reasons I’m confident about achieving my goal—because most rich people aren’t evil. They’re just oblivious. If you have extreme wealth and you want to gain more, you must tell yourself that other people’s needs are unimportant. You have to become blind to the rest of the world, and our social isolation of classes makes this disturbingly easy. So, when I told friends that I wanted to walk away from that bubble and dedicate my life to helping the poor, they looked at me with a blank stare, as if I’d said I wanted to go live on another planet. Because to them, poverty does indeed exist, but only in another world. Losing people in life is always painful. But the fact is, growth is traumatic. When you want to change, the people that liked the old you may not like the new you. So be it. I knew how unfulfilling that old life had been for me, and I was done with it. There were too many people with barely enough to survive for me to feel comfortable living a life chasing excess. I don’t blame others for seeking wealth because they didn’t create the society we live in. We were all born into this mess. But I was done following. It was time to lead.

| 91 CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM There really isn’t a middle class in America anymore. We have the working class, and we have the rich. I knew I’d have to convince both groups to abolish poverty. Thanks to my years of investing and working for elite institutions, I knew a lot of very rich people. Most ignored my calls. A few special ones answered. They listened to my proposal, and after about an hour or so of conversation, I could see I got them thinking. They’d come back a few days later with a list of questions, and we’d talk a bit more. After two or three discussions, I typically had them convinced that the proposal made sense, but they’d still have their doubts about my ability to get politicians onboard. The most interesting part was that it didn’t matter whether the person identified as a Republican or Democrat. It didn’t matter whether they cared mostly about ending poverty or saving taxpayers trillions of dollars. I had to cut through their preconceived notions—the same notions I had when I began this work—but those with open minds kept coming to the same conclusion: we could really do this. Next, I started reaching out to more working-class Americans.4 I couldn’t believe what happened—they understood the proposal within 4 The term “working class” is interesting to me. It’s really just a euphemism for poor people. According to Wikipedia, it’s a general term used by economists and pollsters to refer to people who don’t have college degrees, but it begs the question, who isn’t working? The answer is a very small number of very wealthy individuals.

92 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. ten minutes. I guess I’d been surrounded by so-called elites for so long, I’d started buying into the idea that education was somehow correlated with intelligence. While the working-class friends and family I spoke with may not have been able to reference a particular study or economist, they understood poverty. When you’re part of the working class, you’re always just an accident away from poverty. You know plenty of people who’ve had it happen to them, or maybe it’s something you’ve gone through yourself. Those people would walk away from the conversation saying, “Sure, this makes sense, but you’ll never get the rich to go along with it.” Finally, I thought about those I’d seen on Skid Row. They’d benefit most from the proposal. What would they think? I grew up poor, but we were never homeless. Anyone who’s grown up in poverty knows that there are levels to being poor. We were food stamp poor, not welfare poor. We had to stay with relatives from time to time, but we always had a place to stay. Homelessness was something I couldn’t relate to. In the same way that the rich never thought about people like me, I never thought about the perpetually unhoused. I pretended not to see them, just like everyone else. It was time for that to change. I let go of my fears and started going to encampments and shelters to speak with the poorest Americans. I asked them about their lives and their thoughts about my proposal. Once again, I saw how prejudiced my beliefs were. The conversations never lasted longer than one minute. I wasn’t telling them anything new. They understood how inefficient and dehumanizing our welfare systems are. They’d seen people killed in shelters. They waited for hours in the rain, hoping for there to be enough food left when their turn came. They’d tried and failed to get jobs because they had no address or couldn’t get access to a shower. They’d been arrested for sleeping outside, then told they couldn’t get work because they’d been arrested. I hated myself during these conversations. I’d thought about poverty my entire life and always considered myself to be an advocate for the

CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 93 disadvantaged. But the poorest people in my own country had been invisible to me. I realized I knew nothing about their struggles, their joy, their fight. I’d ignored the problems that were not mine. I only ever thought about people living on the street when they were in my neighborhood. I talked about “fixing” the homeless problem instead of discussing people in need of help. I spent countless hours speaking with people and hearing their stories. We shared meals, hugs, tears, ideas, and laughs. I finally saw them. And in doing so, I was able to let go of some of my prejudice against the wealthy. I, unfortunately, could relate to simply not seeing someone’s struggle because it was more convenient for me not to see. But if I can make that transformation, the world’s rich can as well. Getting this proposal made into law is only going to be the first step. For us to reach our true potential as a society, we must learn to see every human. I forgave myself for not seeing. Moving forward, I promised to be a light for others. I saw a vision for how to get the bill passed, but I knew it would be an uphill battle. After I’d talked to enough people to have a good sense of the proposal’s viability, I knew it was time to start raising awareness across the country. A lot of people don’t realize that it’s possible to end poverty and that we could do a better job distributing the money being spent in this country. Consider that we could’ve ended poverty in this country for the next thirty-five years using the money our government has spent on COVID stimulus funding alone, and that’s not taking into consideration the trillions of dollars in tax savings we would’ve seen, too. I began to plan a cross-country tour. I wanted to get people talking about the proposal, and to encourage debate because debate is healthy and important for democracy. I wanted people to understand how the Seed Money Act could benefit every individual in the country, as well as our society overall. I wanted people to ask their government representatives to support the proposal and use their votes to help eradicate poverty in our country.

94 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. The most important thing that you can do in a democracy is get involved. We have a right to tell our politicians that we don’t want to have poverty in this country, and we can use our vote and our voice to make them listen. I knew the stops on the tour would have to match the demographics of poverty in America. When most people think about poverty in this country, they think it’s centralized in the urban areas. In fact, there’s more poverty in the rural areas, and another lesser-known fact is that more than half of the poor people in the US are white Americans. I sat at my computer and pulled up a list of every zip code in the country. I began sorting them by income. Next, I opened another tab and broke down the poverty demographics using categories such as ethnicity, urban vs. rural, political affiliation, etc. From this, I put together a list of thirty-six of the poorest places in America. I made sure the final list matched the overall poverty demographics of America. I then found a crew of activist filmmakers willing to spend two months driving across America with me, going to the places we’re all told are too dangerous or too poor to visit. For any real social change to happen, I knew we’d have to start at the grassroots. I started reaching out to churches, schools, local governments, shelters, food pantries, individual activists, and everyday citizens in the poorest parts of the country. My intention was to build a coalition of all who are already fighting the fight against poverty on a daily basis. I didn’t care about their political views, skin color, or religion. If they cared about finding a way to help those who have the least, I wanted to meet them. Hamilton, Montana “What’s the economic situation here like?” I asked. “This is a Republican town,” was the only reply. I was standing inside a coffee shop. Hamilton is a part of the Bitterroot Valley, an area known as a hotbed for armed right-wing extremists. I didn’t find the gentleman responding to be rude or confusing. He

CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 95 was simply saying the quiet part out loud. America has a deeply rooted history of racism. He was politely letting me know that my skin color could get me into trouble in that part of the country. I was aware. There’s nothing all that special about American racism. I’ve seen versions of it all over the world in my international development work. Racism is a microcosm of imperialism. Whenever a society decides to become an empire and ruler over lots of people, they must come up with systems of oppression. It takes too much time and energy to keep people down with constant violence, so you need to control their minds. The first step is always to divide and conquer. Humans are tribalistic creatures, so it’s very easy to get them to dislike each other based on arbitrary differences. If you randomly divide a room into an orange team and a yellow team, people will swear by God that their team is, without question, the best at every single activity—just because that’s their team. With imperialism, you need to take that tribal energy and turn it into murderous warfare. You take a small group and elevate them to an elite status. Select any common features, real or not, and say the best people have these features. It can be height, nose shape, skin color, anything. From there, you group and rank all of society. To make it all stable, you put a small minority at the bottom. That bottom group is volatile because they have no one to look down upon and will feel the heavy burden of the system of oppression. They’ll become the society’s scapegoats. If they’re too large in numbers, they’ll revolt and topple the system. If you can split this group so a small minority of them is at the bottom, but the majority is slightly above the bottom, that majority will maintain the system out of fear that in a new system, they might be on the ultimate bottom. Although the system is designed to oppress nearly everyone, most won’t see it that way. “At least we’re not those disgusting creatures on the bottom!” In the colonial United States, the system of hierarchy was originally quite complex. Most of the rankings from the Old World were brought over, dividing people based on their country of origin (e.g., Irish people

96 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. were considered inferior to the British people), the caste they belonged to within their country of origin, their religion, and so on. There were varying levels of slavery and servitude. You couldn’t just look at someone or hear their accent to know where they belonged in society because there was so much diversity. That was a problem for the system of oppression. In a multi-cultural society where land was so abundant, it was difficult to keep large percentages of the population in servitude. If a slave or indentured servant ran away, they could find land elsewhere with relative ease and start farming for themselves. To solve this problem, the British came up with a great new idea: race. After Bacon’s rebellion, which took place in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the British instructed the Governor of the Virginia colony to implement a system of racial control. Anyone of African descent would be considered black and on the absolute bottom of society, while anyone of European descent would be considered white. Native Americans would sit between the two groups. Given the small number of those of African descent, the system was a good one for oppression. It stabilized the system as white indentured servants saw themselves lifted from the bottom and had a reason to endorse the hierarchy. They remained extremely poor and mistreated, but hey, at least they weren’t black. These poor Europeans were then armed and hired to ensure that anyone of African descent remained a slave. That was the early beginnings of the American militia, which later morphed into the police force, the Ku Klux Klan, and other groups of racial oppression. Knowing this history, I understood what the gentleman at the coffee shop meant. This region was full of armed militiamen who were angry that the centuries-old system of racial hierarchy and oppression no longer seemed to be working in their favor. It’s why they continue to rally and meet to discuss ways of bringing back the “good ole days.” People who are poor have been systematically exploited and manipulated because they’re divided on issues like race, religion, and

CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 97 political affiliation. It’s easy to understand how they might be swayed by fear-based rhetoric from political leaders promising to help them regain what they believe they’ve lost. They’re convinced to buy into the very systems and people that want to keep them at the bottom of our society. Hamilton is one of the poorest parts of Montana, with about one-fifth of the people living in poverty. There’s understandable anger and frustration. Unfortunately, there’s also a lack of education and opportunities. That makes the area ripe for radicalism. Most people in Hamilton, and Montana in general, aren’t racist extremists. But the poorer the area, the more likely you are to find those characteristics. Generations ago, their families were promised a guaranteed handout based on their skin color, and now it seems that promise will never be fulfilled. The system has betrayed them, and their response is to fight with every bit of strength to keep someone—anyone—beneath them. What I hope to help people understand is that there’s a better way. In a world of plenty, no one needs to be stomped on, starved, and forced to work. We can still have an oppressive social hierarchy if that’s what people want, but we can make life more bearable for those living on the bottom rung. We can ensure everyone, regardless of skin color, religion, intelligence, height, or whatever other differentiating characteristic you can come up with, has access to basic food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. In doing so, we can inject capital into places like Hamilton, Montana so people can begin to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” We cannot look down on people who are from poor communities if we want to end poverty. Regardless of their belief systems, their children deserve to eat just as much as anyone else’s does. Most humans just want to feel safe, feed their children, and know their family has a chance to live their lives with dignity. That’s true for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. When we tell the poor that they can’t have those things because the “niggers and immigrants” want to take it all away, they get scared and respond accordingly. We must stop

98 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. hating people who are manipulated in this way, and ask ourselves, why are we allowing people to sow the seeds of hate in the first place? Why are we comfortable leaving poor white Americans behind, only speaking to them once every four years when we’re competing for their vote? Until we address the underlying poverty in rural white America, the result will remain a bitter root. Watts, California The poverty in Watts is disturbing. Just like in Hamilton, Montana, it’s turned extreme and violent. “Do you know where you are?” an older gentleman asked me. I did. Having grown up in and around areas like that, I knew what he was asking me. Imperial Courts, Nickerson Gardens, and Jordan Downs are housing projects in Watts, and they make up the poorest district in Los Angeles. Children in those communities can’t walk freely down the street out of fear of gang violence. There’s trash all over the place, and a general sense of stress, fear, and anxiety in the air. “I’m here with the Watts Empowerment Center,” I replied. He nodded approvingly. Poor communities in Los Angeles have been blasted for their senseless violence and gang activity for decades. We’ve seen countless movies depicting the horrors of life in places like those. We describe the people and the communities as ‘hopeless.’ I spoke with community members who didn’t believe that narrative. They understood that if you told kids they were nothing and that there was no hope, they behaved accordingly. If you showed them love, you could make a difference. Radicalizing poor black children is no different than radicalizing poor white children. When people have nothing, it’s easy to convince them that another group of poor people are the problem. No jobs, plus lots of guns with a perceived enemy in close proximity is going to lead to violent outcomes.

CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 99 “My mission was to come back and save a few of the youth.” That was what Justin Mayo, founder of the Watts Empowerment Center, told me when I met with him. When asked about his goals for the Center, his response was immediate. “The first thing that comes out is all the negativity. You hear about the violence, but I’m here to empower. That’s why I call it the Empowerment Center. I want every kid that walks in that door to have a story.” Community members in Watts have banded together to make a difference. Among the Center’s many notable initiatives is their weekly farmer’s market. People line up for hours before the market opens each week in hopes of accessing some of the healthy food it offers. In an economy where food scarcity is no longer an issue, the fact that millions of Americans still struggle to access food speaks volumes about our society’s values. Growing up in a poor neighborhood in Indianapolis, I never went to a farmer’s market. Such things didn’t exist where I lived. We ate peas and carrots that came out of cans because it was cheaper than the fresh stuff sold in stores. The first time I ever went to one was in Ghana. I remember being amazed by the variety of colorful produce that cost so little to buy. When I finally saw a farmer’s market back in the US, I couldn’t believe how expensive everything was. It seemed backward that it would be more expensive to buy food at a farmer’s market than at a grocery store. It also makes you wonder why wholesome, healthy food is so expensive in this country, while foods that are processed, laden with sugar, salt, and chemicals are so cheap. The Center’s website highlights some disturbing statistics, and yet the community of Watts has fought to sign gang truces, established a weekly food pantry, launched a community business accelerator, and even raised funds to send a brilliant young man, whose mother is working three jobs to make ends meet, to college for free. They’ve gotten the attention of celebrities and been featured on the Kardashians, which raised the Center’s profile and helped with its

100 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. fundraising and outreach initiatives. We didn’t have access to that kind of resource growing up. Most of the poor communities in US cities we visited still have nothing close to what’s happening at the Watts Empowerment Center, and that’s the problem. Aristotle said that “poverty is the parent of crime and revolution.” We must stop pretending like anything other than jobs and financial inclusion will save our inner cities. Putting more people in cages won’t solve this crisis. When people are dirt poor, with no options, bad things happen. Putting poor working people in jail not only punishes the offender but negatively affects the offender’s family and community. When you understand the roots of the incarceration system, it’s easier to understand the prejudice suffered by poor people within the system. Rather than punishing already marginalized people, we need to reframe how we look at marginalized people within the justice system. The same pain I felt for the people of Hamilton, I felt for the people of Watts. I saw individuals trying to hold onto hope and pride in their communities and in themselves. I saw people waving flags to show how tough they were, how resilient. In both places, I saw the poor suffering and crying for help. Our nation has failed the people from both of those towns. We continue the pointless game of pitting the poor against one another, wasting trillions of dollars in the process. Our country becomes less stable, our streets unsafe, and our democracy is put at risk. Poverty is ugly. In a nation where those without money get tossed aside, ridiculed, humiliated, and stripped of their dignity, you can expect that group of people to become violent, contrarian, unruly, and eventually, radical revolutionaries. Instead of giving people hope, we’re giving them guns and liquor. We’re creating terrorism in our own backyards all because we won’t move on from the false notion that people are poor and uneducated because they’re somehow ‘lesser humans.’ In capitalism, people are poor

CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 101 because they don’t have capital. Give everyone a little money and watch these problems melt away. We don’t need complete equality; we just need to give people a sliver of hope. Otherwise, those we oppress the most will eventually burn the whole thing down. Pine Ridge Indian Reservation “You won’t be back,” she sighed. “Everyone wants to come here and film, but no one ever helps.” I was talking to a young woman who lived on the Reservation in South Dakota. The genocide that occurred in the Americas is the worst thing that’s ever happened in human history. In less than a century, nearly fifty million people were wiped off the face of the planet. Entire civilizations were intentionally destroyed with disease, war, and famine. For the Native Americans who survived the initial genocide, the following four hundred years wouldn’t go all that much better. Their lands were snatched away from them in violated treaty after violated treaty. Their people were slaughtered, raped, and subjected to unimaginable horrors such as the Trail of Tears5 and the Wounded Knee Massacre6. “It’s dangerous in Pine Ridge,” we were told by outsiders. The same false narrative arises again and again. We take a group of people and subject them to centuries of abuse. We systematically destroy their culture and community and rob them of any real opportunity. We set their world on fire, then ask as they wail and scream, “What’s wrong with them?” “We were nomadic people, and now we’re forced to live on reservations.” Having lived her entire life on the reservation, she’d finally had enough of the injustices and was preparing to move on. “We have thin soil and destructive hailstorms. So how do we survive?” In the past, the tribe would have moved further south during these winter months. Now, that isn’t an option. With a poverty rate of nearly fifty-four percent, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is one of the poorest places in North 5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears 6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre

102 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. America. With no jobs, poor soil, and no hope, depression is rampant on the reservation. Life expectancy in Pine Ridge is the lowest in all of North America, with a Lakota man expected to live fifteen to twenty years less than someone living a hundred miles away. The only way to survive is to live off government programs. “When you live here, you’re at the mercy of the government.” In areas of high destitution, government programs breed dependency. But people don’t need programs, they need money. The Seed Money Act could radically transform a place like Pine Ridge. It’s virtually impossible to start a business in an area where everyone is this poor. An injection of capital would nearly double the local gross domestic product. Once again, I saw a community that had been forgotten and left for dead. But they hadn’t given up on themselves. Everywhere I looked there were examples of people trying to improve their situations and raise up their community. They were building vocational schools to train young people, had started community gardens to finally bring fresh produce to the reservation, and were bringing back traditional language and history into their classrooms. All they needed was a little funding to move things along. I grew up in a place called Indiana, and as a kid I’d never met an indigenous person. Where I grew up, all the poorest people were black. And when I watched TV, I saw the same. We’ve wiped Native Americans out of the narrative altogether. When I walked around Pine Ridge and talked to people, their issues were all too familiar. We can racialize it all we want, but the truth remains that we have a poverty problem in America, not a race problem. If someone doesn’t like me because of my beliefs or my skin color, I can live with that. But when someone creates a system to force me to live a life of servitude simply because I was born with less, that’s unacceptable. We’re not going to be able to unwind the centuries of race-based hate in this country overnight. But we can eliminate the very source of that hateful energy: poverty. If we wipe out poverty across the country, we

CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 103 give every community a chance to begin building a brighter future. We need to shift the energy away from pulling down other communities and start directing it toward building up our own. We don’t all need to get along. We just have to get out of each other’s way. I plan to return to Pine Ridge, but not as some kind of savior. I don’t know the area, I don’t know the culture, and I don’t know the people. It’s the people of Pine Ridge that know how to solve their own problems. My job is to find a way to get them the resources to do it. I know they can. When I go back to Pine Ridge, I’ll do so to see what happens when, instead of bureaucratic government programs, we give them seed money and freedom. Rexburg, Idaho Few Americans are poorer than college students. Rexburg is a beautiful mountain town with clean air, luscious green landscapes, and a forty-three percent poverty rate. I split my time there between talking with students and local families that are often low-paid employees at the school. Initially, many of the students expressed the typical concerns about helping the poor. “My only concern is that people given this opportunity won’t use the money to get themselves out of poverty,” was the most common response. “Do you have any wealthy friends here?” I asked the group. “Sure. Of course.” “Are any of them wasteful with money?” I continued. “Absolutely.” “Are any of them starving to death?” “No.” “Are any of them homeless?” “No, not at all.” They started to see that no one deserves to be poor. People across all income levels make mistakes. That’s a part of being human. But when

104 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. you have nothing, the effects of your mistakes are magnified. Why are the wealthy allowed to make mistakes but the poor aren’t? I’ve seen people make terrible financial decisions from every economic class. But when someone is starving, I’ve yet to see someone get handed money that didn’t then immediately go purchase food. We demonize the poor for any crutch they may have that helps them cope with the incredible pressures of poverty. We pretend that it’s the alcohol that causes their poverty, and not the other way around. You see wealthy people with drug addictions. You see wealthy people lose their jobs. But you never see wealthy people living on the streets. Humans are flawed. Those flaws don’t mean that someone deserves to starve. “What would you do with the money?” I asked one family. “Probably make a better life for her,” the mother answered, pointing to her daughter. “There ain’t much here in terms of jobs, so that would really change things for us. A place would rather hire college kids than locals,” she added. “It’s hard to get a job around here.” It was nearly impossible for the students to empathize with this mother. Their worlds are too different. “When someone needs help, they should turn to their family first,” said one local professor. But what if that family has no money? We may understand that people need help, but we must also understand that when an entire community is poor, and they don’t have the freedom to just start farming empty land, they’ll need some help to get going. I shifted the conversation to what they could understand: themselves. “If you ignore everyone else, what would this money do for you?” I asked. “As a father and a husband going full-time to school, I don’t have a chance to work,” one student told me. Once they were able to work through some of these classist tropes, the students were able to shift their thinking. We have a hard time thinking about helping other groups in this country because we see them as undeserving and lesser. But when it comes to ourselves, we’re gentler and more forgiving of our circumstances.

CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 105 “It would be great to eat some better food other than top ramen or mac and cheese every other day,” admitted another student. “I’m already deep in debt, and I want to go to physical therapy school, which means more debt. This would help me avoid taking on so many loans.” Our tribalism stops us from realizing obvious truths. Americans are trying hard to improve their lives. We should give them a helping hand. Helping one another is a good thing. If a student in college has a little money in their pockets, they don’t suddenly drop out of class. Instead, they can attend lectures more consistently and are less likely to have to quit school to get a job. When a struggling family receives a little extra cash, they typically spend it on their children’s futures. “That money would be an opportunity for us to reduce the anxiety of either getting into debt or losing every bit of life savings we have. It would be a chance to grow.” Our fear and hatred of one another is pulling everyone down. Those students were initially ready to shoot down my seed money idea because they thought it was going to help a group they believed to be deserving of poverty, even though they themselves would be major beneficiaries of the grants. The conversations brought to mind an old Hebraic parable I once read about a man who wasn’t getting along with his neighbor. God told the man he must learn to be happy for his neighbor’s blessings. In the story, God offered to grant the man anything he wished for but said whatever the man received, his neighbor would receive twice as much. The man asked for several things and saw his neighbor blessed with twice as much each time, and rather than being grateful for his own blessings, the man was unhappy that his neighbor received more. So, the man asked God to take out one of his eyes. My job is to show people how they, as individuals, will benefit from a world without poverty because, unfortunately, we often feel hateful and fearful of our neighbors. So many of us cannot see that the thing we should despise is poverty, not our neighbors or some vulnerable minority sub-group in our society. I want people to understand how eliminating

106 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. poverty will lower our tax bills, reduce violent crime, protect our property from theft and vandalism, eliminate homelessness and the associated filth in our streets, reduce healthcare costs, and wipe out hunger. There’s something in it for everyone because each of us is better off when no one is desperately poor. Luckily, the students in Rexburg were more than willing to engage in a respectful discussion. They shared their views and were open to hearing mine. We all walked away having learned something new and proved that we’re not like the man in the parable. With constructive dialogue, we can find solutions to our nation’s problems. “I feel like, as a people, we’ve lost the opportunity to bring forward an idea that’s awesome, you know? To give everyone the opportunity to change their lives,” concluded the student-father. His open-mindedness and willingness to adapt based on his evolving perspective challenged this gloomy thought, and that gave me hope.

| 107 CHAPTER 9: THE WATERS AROUND YOU HAVE GROWN Pueblo, Colorado Pueblo has six jails and prisons in its fifty-four square mile area. Neighboring Florence, Colorado has four prisons, including the infamous ADX Supermax facility, which houses many of the country’s most dangerous and high-profile inmates. Incarceration in this part of the country was big business. “There’s just this poverty mindset in Pueblo,” said one local pastor as we walked through town together. He was explaining some of the troubles the town faced. “There’s a generational gang problem here. They think that’s the only thing to do here, and it’s not true.” The pastor himself had once been close to counting himself among the many inmates in Pueblo. “As a child, I was abused sexually, mentally, and physically. My parents divorced. There were things that happened that I didn’t know how to deal with. I started using drugs, alcohol—anything I could get my hands on.” His story of trauma is, unfortunately, all too common across this country. Young people go through devastating experiences and are left to cope with the consequences on their own. Frightened and alone, not

108 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. knowing where to turn for help, they resort to substances to numb the pain and seek safety and protection from gangs. “It was just a lot of pain,” he shared, fighting back his tears. Pueblo was originally a steel town that attracted immigrants because of the employment opportunities. The city was diverse, safe, and prosperous. When the steel mill closed, it devastated the local economy. Automation is now a buzzword, with many predicting that millions of jobs will disappear across the country, potentially providing a death blow to the middle-class. Politicians and economists talk about this as if it’s some future dystopia we must prevent. But for Americans in places like Pueblo, Colorado, Gary, Indiana, or Erie, Pennsylvania, automation struck decades ago. Initially, the existing factories got smaller as machines could take on more and more tasks. What once required an entire city now only needed a few hundred employees. Ultimately, the entire factory was shipped off to China or Mexico, but the number of jobs had been declining for years. These rapid changes are difficult for any society to cope with. However, when we allow people to fall to absolutely nothing, giving them no support as they try to learn a new skill, relocate, or shift to a service-based economy, terrible things happen. Pueblo is now often ranked as the most dangerous metro areas in Colorado. Instead of finding ways to revamp the economy, we’ve invested in prisons. Americans somehow believe putting poor people in some of the most appalling cages in the world will somehow make them safe. Those people are subjected to rape, assault, solitary confinement, infestations, disease, murder, and more. We spend billions of dollars to keep people in cages, subjecting them to trauma that would melt the strongest of minds—then let them out. We make it impossible for them to get jobs due to their prior convictions, and we’re surprised when they revert back to crime. We live in a carceral society founded on punishing marginalized groups of people, including the poor and racial minorities. Many of the

CHAPTER 9: THE WATERS AROUND YOU HAVE GROWN | 109 laws that’ve been invented in our society criminalize behaviors associated with those marginalized groups. The system that exists is biased against poor people. Consider what happens when someone breaks the law. They’re charged a fine or must pay money to resolve the matter. If they’re arrested and given the option of being released on bail, they must also pay a sum of money. If they pay their dues by serving time for an offense and are released from prison, they carry a criminal record, which negatively affects their ability to obtain future employment. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. No country has ever put a larger percentage of its population in cages. There are decades’ worth of research that consistently shows why prison isn’t an effective way to rehabilitate people. So how do we prevent people from ending up in prison? The obvious answer is to invest in people. Educate young people, teach them social and work skills, make them feel loved and help them belong. That’s what the pastor decided to do. “We’ve all gone through something. We’ve all had some kind of pain, some kind of hurt, some kind of habit that was just devastating. But you don’t have to live there. We give the tools to help change mindsets.” His community’s ministry has the slogan: “Hope grows here.” The pastor shared his story of hope with me. While homeless and sleeping on the streets, someone came up to the pastor and asked him if he’d like some help. “What do I have to do for it?” he asked, cold, homeless, and deep into his addiction. “Start building a relationship with Jesus.” He liked how that sounded. At that point, he didn’t have many relationships. And if all he had to do was pretend to have a relationship with someone and that meant getting off the streets, he could handle that. His life didn’t change all at once. He relapsed, he struggled, he cried. But slowly, he started to turn his life around until one day, he was asked to share his story of recovery at one of the local prisons.

110 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. “I started telling those guys what I’d gone through,” the pastor said. He’d been invited to participate in a program designed to help inmates avoid falling back into a life of crime. “My story was similar to the stories of many others in that prison. I couldn’t understand how I wasn’t in prison with them.” When you grow up in poor neighborhoods, luck is often the only difference between ending up dead, in jail, or somehow making it out. “When I left the prison that day, I just started balling. Crying like a baby,” he went on. “I realized why I’d gone through all the pain and suffering I’d been through. It was for that moment. It was so I could help other people see that there is hope.” I knew exactly what he meant. There’s a spiritual lightbulb that goes on when you finally see your life’s work in front of you. For me, that moment happened on Skid Row. I saw exactly how I’d be able to help the world end poverty, and I knew why I’d gone through all that I had in my life. Ifelt my divine calling. My life’s experiences had shaped me in a way that made me perfect for this role; it was no coincidence. “That’s what we want to give the people of Pueblo. We want them to know there’s hope, and his name is Jesus Christ,” the pastor said. Our pain doesn’t have to happen in vain. If we turn our suffering into strength for others, we have the power to heal. I’m not one to argue with people about the name or nature of God. When I met people like this pastor, I knew we were both following our intuitive guides. For some things in life, there’s no explaining it with words. You have to feel the thing to know it, but once you do, you’ll know. America is changing, and in no place is that more evident than in Maine. Statistically speaking, it’s the whitest state in the country. However, the US census data shows that this is rapidly changing. Immigrants don’t typically have much of a choice about where they

CHAPTER 9: THE WATERS AROUND YOU HAVE GROWN | 111 end up when they’re allowed into the US. They’re assigned to places and accept what they get. Eventually, as more immigrants end up in a particular area, more permanent communities start to form. “Why do you think a nation of immigrants now hates immigrants?” I asked a young valedictorian whose parents immigrated to America from Vietnam when she was five. “That’s a hard question,” she answered. Her father worked two jobs, one in delivery, a second making glass. Her mother worked in the nail salon industry. Although she lived in the whitest state, she attended one of the most diverse schools in the northeast, and it showed. She launched an anti- racism website to help people learn about generational wealth, systemic racism, voting, policy, and other ways to reframe the narrative around immigrants and their stories. “One of the best ways to learn is through talking to people,” she said. She shared the stories of her classmates on her website. She humanized the immigrant struggle, noting that, “It comes back to education and integrating people more.” Despite being a brilliant student and winning the Maine State Science Fair for her work on removing arsenic from drinking water using carbon nanotubes, she feels hate from fellow Americans. “There are people who don’t want me here, and people who don’t want other people like me here.” I wondered, if we don’t want her in our country, then who do we want here? She was on her way to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the fall. “I saw a sign on the train station that said, ‘Fuck Asians,’ and it was a really scary moment.” The hatred is about fear. As much as America likes to talk about being number one, we feel threatened and afraid of hard-working immigrants. We all want to have some kind of guarantee that we get to stay where we are on the economic ladder. We worry about if, as the world becomes more globalized, we’ll still be able to compete. Will ‘my group’ still be on top? If a new group takes over, will they treat us as badly as we treated

112 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. them? That change is inevitable. Maine went from being over ninty-five percent white in 2010 down to ninty percent in 2020. That trend will continue. White Americans have gone from eighty percent of the population in 1980 down to sixty percent today. The racial identity that the American system of economic oppression was built upon is dying. People are migrating, and people are having mixed-race children. That’s likely the best thing that could happen for poor white Americans. Race has kept them poor for hundreds of years, as they accepted much less than would be expected for individuals living in a wealthy nation, all because they wanted nothing more than to be ranked above people of color. They were kept poor because of this promise, and now, even the promise of white supremacy has been taken away. That can be scary. But it doesn’t have to be. People like the young lady from Maine show that the next generation has no desire to recreate the injustices of the past. Students from her high school speak fifty different maternal languages and come from more than thirty countries on five different continents. They have their issues, but they all live together peacefully. We fear diversity and change because most of us have grown up in a system based on the exploitation and abuse of those at the bottom. We say we hate the poor, but what we really fear is the possibility that we may one day become that bottom group ourselves. There’s no need to fear that anymore—because it has already happened. The middle-class in America has collapsed, and it’s up to us what kind of new system we build. “Why is there such segregation? Why is there such hatred from a country that’s supposed to celebrate diversity? I think it stems from this idea of wanting power,” she finally replied. Wealth is power in a capitalist society. We dance around the topic to placate the huddled masses, inappropriately fixating on race, religion, and national origin to distract us from the inexplicable injustices of poverty. The only group that benefits from a system without economic mobility,

CHAPTER 9: THE WATERS AROUND YOU HAVE GROWN | 113 is the tiny group that has fixed itself at the top. Race has been such a useful tool of oppression because it fooled white Americans into thinking they were a part of the elite. In reality, the elite view them as trash. “Where is my white privilege?” asked one poor Mainer. Where indeed, I thought. Contrary to popular belief, racism in America was designed to keep the white man down. The horrific effects of racism on people of color remain an intentional side-effect. Many of the pilgrims were “poor vagrants, criminals, and rebels against the state,” forced to migrate to the Americas and work for free. Poor children found living on the streets of England were regularly rounded up, forced into slavery, and shipped over to the colonies in America. The ruling classes referred to these poor white citizens as masterless men and waste persons, complaining of the crime and filth caused by these so-called worthless human beings. The Elizabethan Poor Laws made it illegal to be poor and unemployed, so any child could be captured from the slums and enslaved as an “apprentice” or “indentured servant.” They were beaten, raped, forced to work, and murdered without consequence. When those poor whites arrived in the Americas, their masters continued those ruthless traditions. Whenever they got the chance, the white slaves and their non-white counterparts would run away. The vast size of the Americas, combined with the extreme ethnic and linguistic diversity, made it impossible to tell who was a runaway slave and who wasn’t. Prosperous communities of former slaves of all ethnic and religious backgrounds emerged across the New World. It was a great thing for runaway slaves, but not so great for the “landowners” hoping to benefit from forced labor. After yet another rebellion where a coalition of ethnic groups fought to toss off the chains of colonial oppression, the ruling elite invented race to stabilize the system. Skin color of course existed before that, but there were no ideas of united races. An individual was Scottish, Irish, Dutch, Akan, Mohawk, Yoruba, etc. In the new system, however, those of African descent were placed at the very bottom of society to pacify

114 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. white slaves who made up the majority of the forced laborers. White slaves continued living in horrid conditions but had someone to look down upon. Those ruling classes went on to build incredible wealth while white laborers remained, and still remain, extremely poor. Rather than improving life for poor white laborers, all the ruling classes had to do to keep poor white people pacified and working hard was treat black people worse and worse. That sadistic “schadenfreude” is all poor white Americans have to show for their complicity in systemic racism. By shifting the narrative to race, wealthy whites successfully convinced poor whites that so long as the people at the top of society were exclusively white, then life was good. That, of course, wasn’t true. Poor white Americans toiled right next to slaves for hundreds of years. As industrial towns began to emerge, poor white laborers lived in the same dilapidated shacks as poor blacks. Whites were given preferential treatment but remained extremely poor relative to the wealth that existed in the United States. White Americans remain some of the poorest people in the rich world. Twenty million non-Hispanic white Americans live in poverty, making up more than half of the poor population in the country. Adult white Americans have an incarceration rate of six hundred seventy-eight per one hundred thousand. That means if white American men were their own country, they’d have the highest percentage of their population in cages compared to any other country in the world. A white man in America is four point five times more likely to be in jail than a man in the United Kingdom, and ten times more likely to be in jail than a man in Japan. Poor white Americans even get shot and killed by the police officers they love so much. Those officers then get no prison time and keep their pension because no one cares if you kill a poor white person. How could American white men, who absolutely love freedom, be okay with being incarcerated this much? Racism. Black and Hispanic Americans are incarcerated even more, therefore pulling the wool over the eyes of white

CHAPTER 9: THE WATERS AROUND YOU HAVE GROWN | 115 men about their gross lack of freedom. A white child in the United States is four times more likely to live in poverty than a child in Denmark. How could Americans be okay with this? Again, racism. They aren’t as poor as black and Hispanic Americans, so they’re happy with their poverty. It’s poor white Americans that’ve been had, took, hoodwinked, and bamboozled. Race was not, and is not, designed to oppress poor minorities. No, minorities are just collateral damage in the war by rich white people on poor white people. Poor white people are openly called deplorables, white trash, and hillbillies. They’re publicly ridiculed as “poor, illiterate, and strung out.” “Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. You’re just as poor as Negroes. You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you’re so poor you can’t send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march.” —REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. The real struggle is for money. So many white Americans truly believe we’re in a post-racial society because they can’t imagine how the lives they’re living can be called “privileged.” The white privilege they’ve been promised is a centuries-old lie. They’ll remain poor and oppressed until they wake up and realize who is keeping them down. White privilege is an economic toll on an increasingly poor white society. The identifying feature of a billionaire is wealth, not whiteness. Until working-class white Americans realize this, they’ll sheepishly continue oppressing themselves with racism. We can easily eliminate poverty in the United States as soon as we help poor white America take the shackles off their minds.

116 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. The poverty that exists in the United States, the richest country the world has ever seen, is devastating. We have large numbers of families living without access to clean water, indoor plumbing, or electricity. We have people living in the streets, or close to it, in just about every state. The poor are criminalized and incarcerated. The school systems are underfunded. They work two or three jobs and still don’t make enough money to afford the basics. Yet everywhere I went, I still saw brilliance. Someone would always take me on a tour of their community and point out all the opportunities. Where I saw a lack of healthy food options, they saw a new food truck business that focused on selling healthy, delicious meals. In environments with fifty percent poverty rates, I met successful entrepreneurs. With pride, they’d show me their new tire business or their booming tipi company. Then, after showing me what they’d already accomplished, they’d walk me through their plans for the ten other businesses they were ready to start but didn’t have the capital to launch. I met children who wanted to be doctors, teachers, police officers, and singers. When I became old enough, I left my community as fast as I could. On my tour across the country, I met a sampling of all the people who stayed. Some never left, some explored the world and came back. They were all starving for change, they were all overworked, but they were all alive with hope. They refused to let the people in their communities be tossed aside, so they woke up every single day and fought. And they mostly do it with a smile. The problems that exist in poor communities are problems we’ve already solved, from a technical perspective, as a species. The talent is there, the will to work is too, so all we need to add is the capital and resources. In business, we talk about the low-hanging fruit principle. The term is used to describe the most attainable goals and objectives. Ending

CHAPTER 9: THE WATERS AROUND YOU HAVE GROWN | 117 poverty is not some impossible ideal—it’s the very definition of low- hanging fruit. There will be challenges for sure. In the tech world, it’s now a regular occurrence to see a twenty-something CEO with no real-world experience receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. Investors aren’t afraid because they know that with the right advisors, team members, and general support, inexperienced leaders can still build billion-dollar businesses. If we can do that, we can take entrepreneurs in low-income communities and give them the guidance and assistance they need to build thriving companies in their neighborhoods, too.

| 119 CHAPTER 10: NOW THAT I’M OLDER, ALL CHILDISH THINGS END We often run away from home in search of a better life. I know I did. I thought the pain and suffering I experienced as a child was because of all the terrible decisions the people around me made. I now know how the media crafts false negative narratives around poor and minority communities, while creating equally unrealistic, flattering images of wealthy, white communities where everyone is happy, loving, and pure. I’ve seen both worlds, and I’m well aware that we as humans are deeply flawed no matter how much money is in our pockets. Still, poverty does something to people. When you have no certainty about your basic human needs, you enter a constant state of fear and stress. I saw that with everyone in my family, and we all had the same response: shut off your emotions. When you’re swimming in hurt, it’s better to feel nothing at all, so we train ourselves to expect nothing from anyone. We tell ourselves that nothing matters, and no one cares. We teach children at an early age to toughen up, look out for yourself, and trust no one. On the outside, we’d only project coldness and anger, never fear, sadness, and empathy. We did our crying on the inside. I needed to leave that environment to be able to grasp what’s been happening to those of us unfortunate enough to grow up poor, generation after generation. I needed to heal before I could look upon those I saw as being my tormentors with compassion and love.

120 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. As I toured the country preaching about the Seed Money Act, explaining the importance of the unconditionality of the grants, I felt the second major revelation of my life. I thought about my family and all the people I’d decided weren’t worth being around anymore. After a number of painful experiences, I told myself those people didn’t deserve my love. Yet, there I was, trying to argue with the rest of the world that every single person, regardless of what they may have done in the past, deserves another chance. I didn’t like that cognitive dissonance. How could everyone be deserving of the basic human needs of food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, but not be deserving of love? I sat, angry and confused. There were certain people I was just never going to forgive. My mother and I worked through a lot of our issues years ago, and I’m grateful for it. Building a loving relationship with her has been essential for both of our healing. But my father, I told myself I’d never forgive him for being the reason we grew up poor. My parents have suffered through things I can’t fathom. And when I go back to their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, the hurt of even thinking about it is too much to bear. As children, we don’t see our parents as what they are: a reflection of the world they were brought into. When I took the time as an adult to learn about my mother and see the world through her eyes, it hurt to think of how I wanted nothing more than to run away from the home she built for us and never come back. I blamed her for how hard things were, without asking how she got into that situation in the first place. The fact that she forgave me for my childish lack of understanding and ungratefulness is, to this day, my definition of love. I know the hurt that I’ve caused her, and she’s always forgiven me without a second thought. While on the tour I sat in my hotel room thinking about my family, my father in particular. “How many times should I forgive people?” I asked aloud. I didn’t hear anything. I’m not sure what I expected. I laughed to myself, then thought back

CHAPTER 10: NOW THAT I’M OLDER, ALL CHILDISH THINGS END | 121 to those WWJD bracelets from the 90s. What Would Jesus Do? I’d read the Bible several times, along with numerous other religious texts. I never vibed with religion, but there was something special about the teachings of Jesus that resonated with me. Treat each other with love, care for the poor, trust your ability to connect with the divine. I reached over into the nightstand and grabbed my Bible. I flipped to the New Testament and found where Peter asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” “I tell you, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy-seven times.”7 Effectively, there’s no limit to how many times we should forgive one another. I thought about that love from my mother and tried to apply it to my father. My mother gave her entire life to children who never truly appreciated what she had to endure to be able to give us what little we could have. We complained about what we didn’t have and about the affection she didn’t give—if she could give that kind of love, maybe I could too. I decided to begin the real work of forgiving my father eight, nine, or ten more times if necessary so we could begin to build a relationship with one another. I’ve left him out of this book so we can have a chance to heal our relationship in private. I’ve also left out the details of my relationships with my siblings and other close family members because we must work through these hurts ourselves before sharing them with the outside world. However, I write about them now because it’s essential I share the revelation above, that there’s no such thing as conditional love, and that there’s no limit to how many times we all deserve to be forgiven. I can only hope that the numerous people I’ve hurt throughout my life can find it in their hearts to forgive me as well. What does it mean to never forgive someone? A world without forgiveness implies we hold onto anger and trauma forever. That anger hardens our memories so we never let go of the pain, usually burying it 7 Matthew 18: 21-22

122 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. deep in our own bodies and souls. Forgiveness is therefore most important so the hurt person can let the negative energy pass through them without holding onto it any longer. It also then opens the door for us to re-engage with the person on the other side of the conflict, paving the way for them to someday acknowledge their mistakes, apologize, and learn from their past errors. Like with any challenging task, they may need you to allow them several chances to try again before they get it right, but we must provide time and space for relationships to heal if we ever hope to have community, family, and love. Love is the act of giving without any expectation of return. In a society where we measure our own worth by dollar amounts, that’s a difficult concept to grasp. We think in terms of transactions. What will you give me if I give you this? The Seed Money Act and everything I’m doing with my life today is an attempt to turn that on its head and ask, “What can I afford to give you, with no expectation of return?” When it comes to the Seed Money Act, that return will assuredly be trillions of dollars. When it comes to family, I’m not so sure. But I’ve promised myself that I’ll give whatever extra I have to any friends, family, or strangers that need it. In that way, I hope to reconcile my past mistakes of throwing people away with my current clarity around the importance of giving everyone a baseline chance. Hurt people hurt people. Relationships need boundaries and each person must trust their intuition to know when they need to back away from a situation and when they have the strength and courage to show up for a wounded soul (oftentimes, the most dangerous people to come near). We must protect ourselves from the damage other traumatized people can inflict upon us without abandoning those who are most in need of our love. We can step back from a physically and/or emotionally dangerous situation without also choosing to permanently discard that person from our societies, families, or lives. Traumatized people don’t disappear from the world when we toss them aside or put them in cages. That energy will remain until some community accepts the challenge to show them how to love, accept love,

CHAPTER 10: NOW THAT I’M OLDER, ALL CHILDISH THINGS END | 123 and heal. As a child, I didn’t have the strength to love those who hurt me, or who couldn’t reciprocate my love because the pain was too much. As an adult, I’m learning to channel the source of strength that allows me to forgive and love with boundaries but no conditions. I’ve made countless mistakes in life and ignored more suffering than I care to admit. I don’t consider myself to be an especially good person but a deeply flawed human being trying my best to choose good over and over again. We often act like helping others is some saintly achievement. It’s not. We’re social animals, and we’re meant to help one another. It’s in our DNA to find joy in the happiness of others and feel hurt when we see someone in pain. We’re designed to care about one another, but we’re taught to turn our feelings off. We need to open our hearts again and start caring about our fellow humans. I’m not a perfect person, and neither is anyone else. If we let perfection be our standard, we can never bear the pain of acknowledging our own faults and begin the slow process of self-improvement. Progress is striving for perfection, not being born as such. A better world doesn’t start with better policy. It starts with us being better people. Once we all have the basic human necessities covered, then we can spend the time and energy it take to look inwards, fixing our own shortcomings and healing our own traumas. When each of us can show up as a little bit better of an individual, then collectively we’re that much better as a whole. We were all born into a world of plenty, yet we’ve been duped into believing it’s one of scarcity and that we must fight one another to survive. This planet has graciously offered up to all of us more than enough resources to thrive alongside all the other beings on Earth. Poverty is not the result of laziness, ignorance, or bad fortune. Poverty is a result of greed. Once we all see that, the solution to ending poverty becomes simple. It takes an incredible amount of money and energy to keep the resources to yourself. As a wealthy country, we fill ourselves with hate and contempt for the poor, pushing once rare narcissistic tendencies towards

124 | END POVERTY. MAKE TRILLIONS. the cultural norm so we can block out the inevitable pain felt while stepping over human beings sleeping on the streets. Our indifference to the suffering of others for the sake of “stuff” is driving us towards self- destruction. As Drake says, we must “learn to love people and use things, and not the other way around.”8 I’m fortunate to be able to wake up each day and follow my heart. I have a passion for improving society, and I get to do just that. I want every single human on the planet to know what it feels like to live with purpose and dignity. No one was born to be a slave. By denying them access to food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, we’re condemning the poor to a life of servitude. The opposite of poverty isn’t wealth. It’s freedom. It’s time to recognize every human’s right to individual choice and freedom. We come up with ways to avoid the topic, but we know it’s wrong. We know it’s immoral. And now is the time to abolish slavery once and for all. “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. 8 “Connect,” 2013

CHAPTER 10: NOW THAT I’M OLDER, ALL CHILDISH THINGS END | 125 “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” “But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.” —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. It’s time to cash that check. End Poverty. Make Trillions.

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