Like many working mothers, my mom’s office doubled as a daycare center. Much of my childhood was spent in my mom’s office, filing folders, stamping brochures, folding policies, and hiding underneath the table in the breakroom and playing fort with my younger brother. We “worked” with the constant sound of my mom’s voice in the background,…
“If you work hard, people will notice and you will be recognized.” Parts of that tale are true — at least for me as a young person with class privilege and access to wealth. Every week, I churn in a few dozen hours, and twice a month, a paycheck is deposited into my checking account….
This April 29th, I’ll be in Washington D.C. marching alongside frontline communities — those who are being most directly impacted by climate change — for climate, jobs, and justice as part of the People’s Climate Movement. I’m also marching as someone whose family has profited directly off the fossil fuel economy, and has a personal…
When you open the door the sound pulls you in like an undertow, humming electric and mechanical. Light seeps in through dented and dirty windows high in the metal ceiling. It smells like sweat and burnt plastic; to anyone else, a strange combination, but to me, this was a part of home. Walking through the…
By Ross Chapman Campaigning for tax justice is a no-brainer when you see the math — which I did recently (and serendipitously in time for tax season and oncoming protests). The effective tax rates for the rich and poor in this country don’t track the real wealth disparities across our country’s economic chasm, or even…
By Samantha Waxman Many of the ways that I’ve been thinking and feeling about taxes, wealth, and the recent election crystallized during the recent healthcare debate—the fiasco in which Paul Ryan and Trump tried to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. Ryan’s efforts to destroy the nation’s healthcare system have…
“As a young person with inherited wealth, I am proud to march on National Tax Day because wealthy people like myself benefit unjustly from our inequitable tax system, which is based on the exploitation of the working class. I just turned in my taxes and despite having both inherited wealth and a middle-class income, I…
We hold the liberation of Black and Indigenous people as central to the liberation of all people. We know that attempted genocide and chattel slavery created the initial foundation for massive wealth disparity in the U.S. and that the continued exploitation and criminalization of those communities upholds the racial wealth divide. We believe that well-resourced Black and Native Left organizing is a critical part of how we all get more free.
We believe social justice movements need to be led by communities most directly impacted by injustice. As young people with access to wealth, we choose to undermine the pattern of funders dictating the work and instead choose to follow the leadership of transformative social justice movements and communities, led by people who are: poor, working-class, Black, Indigenous, of color, women, disabled, queer and trans.
We work towards eradicating classism and towards wholeness. We believe that all classes and communities are interconnected and interdependent and that classism has been used to wedge and divide us. We know that much is lost communally in the name of wealth accumulation and that people with wealth have a lot to gain from returning wealth to the collective and transforming our economy. We know that the current economic system is untenable, and we work to build a solidarity economy.
We believe that people ages 18–35, with wealth and class privilege, are at a pivotal stage in life to make a lifelong commitment to social movements. Youth movements and organizing are, and have been bold and visionary. We are building on the legacy of those who came before us, and we are working for a better world for those who will come after. Young people with access to wealth and class privilege need to be organized as protagonists—actively engaging in and seeking out ways that leverage and redistribute our access to power and resources within our control, and redirect resources and power within the networks and institutions we are connected to. We are committed to resisting ageist norms of people acquiring power and holding on to it and constantly doing leadership development to bring about new leadership.
We believe personal and structural change are deeply connected, and every person has the ability to heal and grow. We are committed to working towards transforming ourselves, our organizations, our communities, and society as a whole through our work. We bring our full selves, our experiences, our stake, and our strategic thinking to build cross-class relationships in working for a just and livable world.
We believe in collective and individual growth, groundedness and interdependence. We know that tensions will arise, and we will approach these with curiosity on behalf of our personal and collective wants. We will work to see tensions as generative rather than destructive and finite. We welcome principled disagreement and will strive to keep conflict generative in service of our broader goals and mission.
We believe in the power of collaboration across class, race, and movements. We know that our vision depends on our relationships with communities, organizations and people across our movement ecosystem, with whom we share similarities and differences. Through our organizing work we also seek ways to invite our families, communities, and other people with access to wealth to this work.
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