Today, I do not bring you all an article that has direct roots in the LGBTQ community and struggle, but instead, something that every single one of us has and will continue to experience throughout the course of our lifetimes–the development of a capitalistic, often in the place of communal, society. These beliefs have arisen rather strongly for me in the past several months while being active in the Occupy and Occupy Education movements, and relying on the words I heard recently in a speech I attended by Dolores Huerta, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, and women’s rights activist, “All social justice movements are interdependent, and must support each other in order to accomplish that much more.” In this way, the fight for class equity and equality, and the fight against hierarchical power structures is directly related to the fight against heterosexist ideals and policies in place today. In addition to this, the LGBTQ community often runs rampant with feelings of solitude, isolation, disconnection, depression, and fear, because of the structures that have been established in past centuries. This article is a summoning to give, and to recognize others, along with their pain, in order to  create a more loving, interdependent society.

“Prostitution is to sex what buying and selling is to giving and receiving.”

-Mark Boyle, the “Moneyless Man”

Within the recent centuries, we have begun a quick and messy process of painting our hearts green, forming our most intimate relationships with our wallets and our credit cards, and, in turn, tossing aside the value of human connectedness for a chance to do it all over again. Materials fill in the empty shadows that love once filled; SUVs take the space of children dancing in the street; a desire for a big house replaces the desire for a close family; mindless babble placed into our mouths by the workplaces we hate but depend on takes the place of songs in our throat. Money, the one liberator, the safety net, the main goal as a civilization, without us even noticing, has finally become a different type of net- one that constricts our being, raids the once existing community we had formed (or at least tried to, when our prejudices didn’t get in the way), and kidnaps the potential for all spiritual growth.

The world, and even more so the United States, depends heavily these days on these capitalistic ploys. Those who cannot afford proper health insurance must pray that they and their families to not become sick or injured, with the fear of fatal implications. Those who cannot afford to pay rent or for food must fear a lack of shelter or starvation. And now, as we have seen in the student uprisings in Chile, Puerto Rico, Quebec, all across the CSU and UC system, and across the nation and the world, corporate interests are now adopting the educational system, with their priorities in mind. There is a complete disconnect from our food, the origin of our clothing, our products made in some sweat shop in some distant land (maybe?), and, as we press our minds blindly on the “get more mentality” that money provides, we forget to care about who gets hurt in the process. We forget that complete independence does not exist, and that dependence on each other and an appreciation of it is what makes us human and what allows us to grow as spiritual beings. We may think, however, that we are too far gone, too comfortable sitting in the pot of gold to remember that the pot could easily be used to feed the masses, that it will be impossible to remove ourselves from what we have created.

But we must.

The only way this can be done, it seems, would be the adoption of a gift economy in which people support one another by providing for one another’s needs without question. A gift economy does not have a basis in “What can I get?”, but rather “What can I give?” It allows for intimate relationships between close-knit communities, where no one can get abused for their labor because in an ideal gift-economic society, the dirty labor is divvied up, and labor becomes a point from which to grow communally instead of which to gain from individualistically. The architects will build because they enjoy building and because the people will need shelter. The doctors will perform medicine because they enjoy performing medicine and because the people will need medical care. The teachers will teach because they enjoy teaching and because there are students in the world who enjoy learning. We will appreciate everything that we own and will not waste it because it will be a product of our labor. Thus we build intimacy.

Unfortunately, where we are right now will not allow this society to flourish. Instead, we hold onto our hierarchically formed ideals and principles, hoping to one day take another step up on the social ladder. Money is where we are planted right now, and will continue to be our constraint for decades to come. This, however, should not deter you. We must begin our own gift economy, and structure it around the society we already have in place. We must give when we can, even when it is just a few berries, even if it is a simple doodle. We must do this for everyone—for the teachers, the artists, the nomads, the children, the oppressed as well as their oppressors, those on the fringes of society, those who seem to own our society. We will care for each other much more strongly than we have ever before, and in this our liberation will be found.

In one of Ghana’s many languages, the word for “poor” best translates to “without friends, family, or community.” We cannot allow ourselves to become poor in the search of riches.