WHY FINANCIAL EMPOWERMENT IS ACTIVISM
June 16th is a day of devastation, dreams, decisions and destiny.
June 16th is the day South Africa commemorates the Soweto Uprising – a series of demonstrations and protests led by black school children in South Africa that began on the morning of 16 June 1976.
June 16th is the day school children in Soweto took a stand against the devastation, injustice and inequity caused by limited education. They knew that African children’s education was designed to be inferior to the other races in South Africa, and that the conditions under which they were being educated and the consequences thereof were unlikely to change unless they took action.
June 16th is the day youths died fighting the injustice of education deprivation being used as the most powerful tool of enslavement. It is estimated that 20,000 school children took part in the protests. They were met with fierce police brutality. The number of children killed by police is usually given as 176, but estimates of up to 700 have been made.
June 16th is the day 12 year old Hector Pieterson was killed by police.
This iconic photograph taken by Sam Nzima galvanised the world against Apartheid.
Photograph: Sam Nzima
June 16th is the day we can choose to fight the injustice of illiteracy, our own and others.
An educated person cannot be enslaved.
The South African Nationalist government understood the power of education. “Bantu Education” was aimed at training the black children of South Africa for the manual labour and menial jobs that the government deemed suitable for those of their race. Bantu education was explicitly intended to inculcate the idea that black people were to accept being subservient to white South Africans and accept economic deprivation.
❝ The most powerful shackle
to limit a person's access to opportunity
is to keep them financially illiterate. ❞
Ann Wilson
June 16th is the day we are reminded that we must choose freedom and take action to bring it about.
► Freedom of choice is exactly that, a choice.
► Freedom will never force itself on us.
► We must choose freedom consciously and walk towards it.
Yet we can only make the choice and take the steps towards it if we know it is available to us and we have the capacity and capability to take the steps.
The capacity for choice requires education.
June 16th is a day we can use to reflect on the path we chose based on the choices and opportunities we had and didn’t have and the actions we took regarding those choices.
June 16th is a day we can use to review our future and see where we are headed if we keep on the path we have created.
June 16th is a day we can choose to rewrite our destiny. If when reflecting and reviewing you drop into deep joy and gratitude for discovering yourself free and seeped in liberty, I am overjoyed for you.
If, however, you discover the path you are on is not a path of liberty, of justice, of dignity, of financial wellness and empowerment, that it is not a path of freedom… you have a choice to make.
When you realise you are on a path of injustice and inequity, taking you further into enslavement, you have two choices.
- Choice 1 is to stay on the path of familiar suffering. This is called self-abuse.
- Choice 2 is to take one step off the path and choose freedom. This is called liberation.
As soon as you’ve taken that one step you have created the opportunity for a new destiny.
To bring that new destiny to life you need to keep taking one step at a time toward it.
Believing in a new empowered destiny is activism.
Taking that courageous step towards it is a revolutionary act.
Continuing to take the steps towards freedom is empowerment.
❝ If you are not financially empowered
you will be overpowered ❞
Activism is about dignity, justice, respect and a being’s right to live a fully expressed life, their life, their truth, without having to modify, cower, perform, please or appease, in order to be safe.
I believe we each have a flame of activism within us, different flavours and focuses, but activism nonetheless.
My activism is financial empowerment through education.
I had to start with my own financial liberation.
I had to sort out my own money stuff, write a new financial destiny for myself and make it happen by getting financially educated and putting it into action.
Why?
Because without shekels the good samaritan would have been just another wishful thinker.
This is the law of empowerment… this is the path of effective activism –
Having achieved 16 years financially free I believe I have something to offer those who want to step off their path of familiar suffering and choose freedom.
With huge love, gratitude and respect for all the courageous people who chose to stand for liberty and life and in doing so gave me access to the choices I now have.
With huge love, gratitude and respect to every person who is becoming conscious of their own path of familiar suffering and who is grappling with what that realisation means and mustering the courage to step off that path and instead choose dignity and freedom for themselves and others.
Ann
