July 2008, Tyrone Boucher

Money Stories: an excerpt from “Privilege and Solidarity: Challenging Capitalism, Challenging Philanthropy” a Zine by Tyrone Boucher.
When I was growing up, I never thought of my family as rich. Even when I became involved in donor organizing work, I resisted identifying my background as owning class – I knew I had class privilege, but I thought of myself as “upper-middle class” for a long time. After doing some probing about my family’s wealth and doing plenty of reading about class in the U.S., I finally realized that this perception of my family’s class status had more to do with dominant ideology around wealth and my own resistance to identifying as “really” rich than with actual reality.

The more I’ve learned about wealth and class privilege, the more I see my incorrect interpretation of my own class status as symptomatic of a bigger problem. An important first step in taking responsibility for class privilege is to begin looking at our personal stories as part of a larger system. Or actually, multiple intersecting systems that work together: systems of institutionalized oppression like racism and patriarchy, the economic system of capitalism, and systems of ideology that keep all the other systems in place.
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July 2008, Tyrone Boucher

Money Stories: an excerpt from “Privilege and Solidarity: Challenging Capitalism, Challenging Philanthropy” a Zine by Tyrone Boucher.

"Storytelling often represents the most ideological moments; when we tell stories we tell them as if there was only one way of telling them, as the 'of course' way of understanding what is happening in the world. These are moments when we are 'least aware that [we] are using a particular framework, and that if [we] used another framework the things we are talking about would have different meaning.'"
-Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without Racists (1)

When I was growing up, I never thought of my family as rich. Even when I became involved in donor organizing work, I resisted identifying my background as owning class – I knew I had class privilege, but I thought of myself as "upper-middle class" for a long time. After doing some probing about my family's wealth and doing plenty of reading about class in the U.S., I finally realized that this perception of my family's class status had more to do with dominant ideology around wealth and my own resistance to identifying as "really" rich than with actual reality.

The more I've learned about wealth and class privilege, the more I see my incorrect interpretation of my own class status as symptomatic of a bigger problem. An important first step in taking responsibility for class privilege is to begin looking at our personal stories as part of a larger system. Or actually, multiple intersecting systems that work together: systems of institutionalized oppression like racism and patriarchy, the economic system of capitalism, and systems of ideology that keep all the other systems in place.

I've had anti-capitalist politics since before I became involved in donor organizing and began to look closely at my own class position. The work, energy, and conversation happening in U.S. activist movements around the time of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle radicalized me about the globalization of neoliberal, corporate, US-led, imperial capitalism. Later I got involved in labor organizing and started thinking more about the history of capitalism in the U.S., and all the ways our economic system has supported and perpetrated various forms of oppression. When I finally did start to examine my personal privilege, I began trying to figure out where I, as a person with inherited wealth, fit into my anti-capitalist analysis.

In the process of thinking about this, I called my dad to ask him some specific questions about our class status as a family and his interpretation of it. I'm trying to create an ongoing dialogue between my dad and me about class and privilege, and part of it focuses on learning more about how, as a first-generation owning-class individual (he grew up upwardly-mobile working class), my dad came to accumulate wealth and power. He's always had a very simplistic story about how he "made it," basically centering on a combination of luck and hard work. Around the time I was born, he started a company that produced some kind of software publishing product; the company ended up taking off and the stock value skyrocketed; hence, new owning-class status for my family.

I respect my dad a lot; he's thoughtful and kind, and doesn't at all fit stereotypes of greedy corporate CEOs. The point isn't to dis my dad and call him out as being oppressive, but to look at our position as wealthy people within a greater structure of capitalism and oppression. If we don't step back and challenge the broader framework that we're situated in, it's easy to play a complicit role in oppressive systems; that's how privilege works. Sociologist Allan Johnson describes this at the "path of least resistance." He writes: "Good people with good intentions make systems happen in ways that produce all kinds of injustice and suffering for people in culturally devalued and excluded groups…If we participate in systems the trouble [of oppression] comes out of, and if those systems exist only though our participation, than this is enough to involve us in the trouble itself." (2)

My dad's story of wealth accumulation – the way he tells it – is straightforward, honest, and true to his experience. It also could have been ripped verbatim from the pages of the Resource Generation book Classified (check out the bibliography in the back of this zine); specifically the chapter on money stories, which describes some of the myths and archetypes that go into creating ruling-class ideology. Karen Pittelman, the author of Classified, writes,

"...the majority of the money stories begin to take on a strange similarity to each other. They focus on one person, often a man, and they center on how his hard work, intelligence, ingenuity, willingness to take risks and temerity lead to eventual financial good fortune. While the details of each story vary, the same plotlines – even the same phrases – occur again and again: "pulled himself up by the bootstraps," "wise investor," "rags to riches," "worked day and night," "never took a handout," and "self-made man."" (3)

My dad's story is a lot like this. It can be hard to talk about the oppression that is linked to wealth accumulation for him personally, because of course he doesn't see himself as an oppressor. He's a liberal. He sees his wealth as having been acquired basically in a vacuum, without negatively affecting others in any way. He spent his work life in offices and board meetings, not cracking the whip in a factory or overseeing the plantation. He isn't making policy decisions and he doesn't support the Bush administration. He isn't an active participant in outsourcing jobs overseas, privatizing public services, breaking up unions, deregulating trade laws, exploiting immigrants, or most of the other obvious methods by which power is concentrated in the hands of a few.

But his ability to accumulate wealth was influenced by more than just his hard work and blind luck – although both of these played a part. As an entrepreneurial white man, he was well positioned to benefit from capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. He was able to make business connections, leverage influence, wield power in the worlds of business and technology, and be taken seriously to an extent that wouldn't likely be available to a man of color or to any woman, thirty years ago or today.

In the book You Call This a Democracy?, Paul Kivel gives a good analysis of how wealthy people in the U.S. benefit from and support oppressive systems, even when we don't directly make the decisions that create and enforce them. He draws a distinction between the owning class (which he defines as the wealthiest 20% of the population) and the "power elite" – a much smaller group within the owning class who are leaders in business, politics, philanthropy, and culture, and who are directly involved in high levels of society-shaping decision making. Though most rich people aren't members of the power elite, we benefit in various ways from their decisions. Even if we have leftist politics and a scathing critique of neoliberalism, colonialism, global corporate takeover, militarism, and the rest of the U.S. power elite's evil agenda, if we are in a position to benefit from the systems that support this agenda (like capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy) we are implicated in it. It's very easy for wealthy people to maintain an individualistic perspective on our lives when the realities of most people in the world are invisible to us. So we end up with stories like those that Classified describes – ideological narratives that keep the focus off the owning class and shield us from blame or responsibility for oppression.

It's important to note the way these stories play out not just in our own lives as people with wealth, but in the greater society. As members of a dominant class, wealthy people hold systemic power – which allows us to frame everything from our perspective. This framing takes place not just on a personal level, but in all upper-class-controlled institutions (media, government, philanthropy, etc.). Classist ideology teams up with other forms of oppressive ideology and creeps into nearly all of the institutions that exert power over our lives. Reagan's racist characterization of poor Black women as "welfare queens" created the climate for deeply harmful welfare "reform." Invisibility of poor people (except as criminals) in media and popular culture erases the realities of the majority of U.S. citizens and encourages a blame-the-victim mentality that helps corporations and the government get away with deeply oppressive policies and practices. Philanthropic rhetoric that deems rich people to be the ones best equipped to fund social services allows for increasing erosion of the federal safety net. The myth that racism is over takes the responsibility off the government and private institutions (corporations, universities, foundations) to respond to the movement for reparations.

I think it's crucial to draw connections – between media storytelling and the stories we tell in our families; between the racism of politicians and legislators and the insidious, institutionalized racism that affects us without our even realizing it; between the paternalism of philanthropy and the privilege that we as individuals unconsciously enact; between the oppression by obvious perpetrators like police, military, and sweatshop-owning, union-busting multinational corporations and the oppression underlying our personal family fortunes.

Anti-capitalist social justice movements continually inspire me to challenge myself as a rich person and to challenge other rich people, because they situate us as players in systems that deeply harm the majority of people on the planet. It's crucial to me to incorporate a radical critique of capitalism into both my understanding of my own wealth and privilege and into the donor organizing work I do. The "progressive philanthropy" world tends to take a stance that resists truly challenging capitalism and oppression in order to accommodate more moderate wealthy donors. Much of the landscape of social change philanthropy seems designed to make rich people feel better about ourselves and to channel some funds to progressive (or even radical) organizing without actually challenging the roots of inequality.

You don't have to look hard to find clear explanations of how capitalism is inextricably linked to multiple oppressions: racism, through (for example) slavery, imperialist acquisition of land and raw materials, and dividing white and POC workers to keep them from organizing; sexism, through exploiting the labor of women (who are already culturally devalued) and relying on women's unpaid and unrecognized labor; ableism, through laws allowing companies to hire people with disabilities at less than minimum wages; and so on.

We should talk about these things when we talk about having class privilege, because as the beneficiaries of capitalism we are implicated whether we like it or not. For white folks with class privilege, the history that gets erased when we tell our simplistic "pulled-himself-up-by-his-bootstraps" money stories is the (continuing) history of explicit and institutionalized racism in the U.S. Some of us can trace our inherited wealth to slavery or other systems in which white people directly profited off of the stolen labor or land of people of color. Even for those of us with "new" money, previous generations of our families are more than likely to have benefited from racist policies and institutions that helped white people and discriminated against people of color (Homestead Act, G.I. Bill, land grants, New Deal, loans, jobs, contracts, unions…). Throughout U.S. history, people of color have been explicitly prohibited by racist government policy from building assets; and since the most important indicator of wealth is how much money your parents had, cultural myths about a "level playing field" start to look pretty empty.

For class-privileged people to be allies in social justice movements, we have to take responsibility for the bigger picture behind our own wealth. Our personal decisions about money and the stories we tell (to ourselves and others) have reflections and repercussions connected to our place in the larger class system. Challenging these decisions and narratives, and challenging ourselves to look deeper, is a good way to start shifting our participation in oppressive systems.

People can get a copy of the full zine by emailing Tyrone at tyronius.samson@gmail.com or by buying it here: http://www.microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/zines/2225/

1. From Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, p. 75
2. From Privilege, Power, and Difference by Allan G. Johnson, p.86-87
3. Classified, p.67
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March 2008, Cameron's Story

From Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy: The Next Generation. By Alison Goldberg, Karen Pittelman and Resource Generation.

The field of family philanthropy needs a lot of help. There's a certain stagnant way that it's been operating. There needs to be a new infusion of younger voices and conversations about what's next in the evolution of family philanthropy. There are a lot of people who are involved in social change work in their daily lives who have a lot to contribute at the foundation level. They also have the kind of access that could steer foundations in a way that's more responsive to communities they're trying to help, so there's more representation from those communities involved in the decisions.
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March 2008, Cameron's Story

From Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy: The Next Generation. By Alison Goldberg, Karen Pittelman and Resource Generation.

When my family created the foundation about four years ago, my brother and I were involved in helping to choose its area of focus. The foundation funds youth development, civic engagement, and organizing—programs where young people are not just recipients of services but are actually the ones creating change in their own communities.

Because my family started to educate me about my financial resources when I was sixteen, I actually felt pretty prepared to be a part of family philanthropy. They opened up conversations about money early on, so that I wouldn't be told all of a sudden, "Now you have this incredible financial wealth. What are you going to do?"

I've also been able to talk about money with some of my close friends, and I feel really lucky that they're willing to get into it with me. I never want to get so isolated that I'm not challenged about my financial decisions by other people. And to always ask myself questions like, "How do I want this money to factor into my life? How much do I want to give away? How much do I need for myself?" I think instead of putting these questions under the table, I have to bring them to light.

At a recent foundation meeting we had this huge conversation about how much money each board member in my generation of the family should contribute. Some family members would like to see everyone give at a high-level. I'm personally at a place where I would like to give financially, but I'm also very conscious about setting a precedent. I have ten younger cousins who are going to be a part of the foundation in the near future. I don't want to deter them from getting involved by saying, "You have to put in a very large gift to participate." I think we have to make this decision as a group.

It's brought up a number of issues about what it means for us to work together as a family. While everyone in our extended family has inherited wealth, each part of the family takes a different approach to talking with kids about money and their values around money. One of my uncles wanted to wait until after his kids started college to discuss money, as opposed to my parents who wanted us to feel responsible for it at a younger age.

I think we've been able to have some pretty honest and open conversations within the family foundation. If we're not doing some of our own work, how do we expect to build relationships with grantees? We've started to have this whole notion that if we aren't paying attention to our internal work, we aren't going to be fully engaged in the external work. The foundation has actually started to do what my grandparents had really hoped it would do, which is to bring the family together. We are dealing with things that come up because of the different ways we approach the world.

I think success means that we are constantly trying to collaborate, to break off some of the traditional ways of doing philanthropy which is very top-down and where people aren't even addressing the different levels of power at the table. To be really effective we need to constantly evolve and strive to mirror and model the work we see in the programs we fund.

I was talking with someone recently who said that the foundations she knows that are spending down their assets are the ones who've created real urgency. That's something I've been questioning—what will be the length of this foundation? I think we have a real commitment to the fields the foundation is supporting. I also think there's a real desire in the family for the foundation to be passed down. I'm weighing wanting to be personally involved while questioning whether we'll be just another one of those foundations that's set up in perpetuity and doesn't necessarily make a huge impact.

The field of family philanthropy needs a lot of help. There's a certain stagnant way that it's been operating. There needs to be a new infusion of younger voices and conversations about what's next in the evolution of family philanthropy. There are a lot of people who are involved in social change work in their daily lives who have a lot to contribute at the foundation level. They also have the kind of access that could steer foundations in a way that's more responsive to communities they're trying to help, so there's more representation from those communities involved in the decisions.

What will be the footprint of my generation in family philanthropy? I think we need to not be complacent, but to keep asking questions and challenging ourselves to take more risks. It's going to be hard work to not think of this institution as a place where we go home, get together, and make some grants but instead as an ongoing and very intensive involvement in change.

*Check out the whole book at www.changephilanthropy.org for more insights, stories and tools from the first 5 years of RG Family Philanthropy programming.
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February 2008, Libbey Goldberg

Privileged with Cancer, by Libbey Goldberg
An inspiring essay by an RG community member on grappling with privilege, oppression and taking action amid a major health crisis.
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February 2008, Libbey Goldberg

Privileged with Cancer, by Libbey Goldberg

It’s been four months since I was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer and six months since my long-term partner and I split up. Needless to say, thirty-one has been a hard year for me. Less than five percent of women with ovarian cancer have my type, germ cell, and most of those who do are between the ages of fifteen and twenty. My diagnosis and treatment have impacted my life in deeper ways than I have words to adequately express, both negatively and positively, and I have faced enormous challenges. One of the major factors contributing to my ability to successfully meet these challenges has been my class identity. My recent experiences with cancer have provided me the opportunity to more viscerally understand the individual and institutional privileges I have access to and have inspired me to share this understanding with others in similarly privileged positions. Early on my process with cancer, I made the decision to use all the angles I could, however unfair it might be, to take care of my body and to save my life. While this decision feels like the right one, my experiences have continued to feel complicated and riddled with questions. What does it mean to be a radical with access to the best medical care in the country? What privileges are okay to use? Can I still be part of the “movement”, even though I belong to the owning class? What is the best way to leverage the resources I have towards social change? For those of us whose fire inside burns stronger with the possibility of a just world, where every human need gets met, where we are collectively liberated from oppression, I am hoping that my story will encourage discussion and action.

I am a young person with financial wealth. I come from a family that belongs to the wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. residents. I have never had to worry about having enough cash to cover my living expenses. I attended expensive private schools my whole life, all the way through college and culinary school. My parents own a beautiful lake house, as well as a spacious home in Houston. I earn a middle class wage at my job as a chef, but I had the privilege of choosing a career that I love without worrying about how much money I would earn because I’m debt free and have a safety net. Because of a family inheritance, I have a very large savings account that has continued to allow me a worry-free financial existence. I can take extended vacations. I can even purchase a home in the notoriously expensive San Francisco Bay Area.

My battle with cancer and my experience overall within the health care system have been shaped loudly and clearly by this class identity. For those of us born into wealth, institutional class privileges can often be tough to concretely comprehend. We might understand, on an intellectual level, that our lives are made easier or more comfortable, but it’s difficult to get a sense of how significant a role class privilege plays because we’ve never been without it. We have never experienced its absence, so it is, in a sense, invisible and normal to us; we don’t have to work at being taken seriously by institutions. In her book, Classified, Karen Pittelman discusses institutional class privilege:

“Because institutions are created and led mainly by people with class privilege, our own privilege gives us the inside scoop on how to act and speak when we walk in the front door. We know how to ask for what we need and how to make sure we get it. All the signs of our privilege, especially the ones that are a part of our bodies, signal to those in charge that they should treat us with respect instead of suspicion.”[1]

Here’s an example of what I am talking about. My caring gynecologist called me early in the morning to reveal the results of my tumor marker blood test, which indicated I had cancer. I began to hyperventilate. One hour later, I met with a gynecology/oncology surgeon and was told that I needed major abdominal surgery as soon as possible. My parents, as every person should be, were unabashedly confident about the high level of medical care that I deserve. They guided me through a process of choosing doctors and making treatment decisions that relied heavily on the expectation of being taken seriously when walking into a hospital. They encouraged me to ask a lot of questions, helped me devise strategies to get my questions answered by inaccessible doctors, and supported me in getting second and third opinions about my diagnosis and treatment. Because my family moves in circles populated by doctors and medical professionals, getting these second and third opinions was unquestionably easier and faster. Within a few days of receiving my diagnosis, I had the home phone numbers and personal email addresses for three extremely qualified gynecologists and oncologists, one a first-cousin of my father’s best friend, another on the same doctors’ basketball team as a family friend that knows me from Passover Seders. I had invaluable conversations with these physicians that helped me reach a deeper understanding of the monster I faced. In our increasingly profit-driven health care system, I felt confident of my care and treatment decisions.

I am aware that a big part of being able to successfully move through that initial maze of information gathering stems from being socialized as valuable by a dominant culture that genuinely prioritizes the health and well-being of rich white people. As a Jewish woman growing up within a Christian dominant patriarchy, I have at times struggled for a healthy notion of self-worth. But for the most part, I have been taught that feeling healthy should be the norm, not a privilege; and people in power, institutions, and society at large have generally treated me this way. This sense of how my body should feel and a lifestyle that supports paying attention to it factored heavily in to my early diagnosis.

Poor women, women of color, transgender people, immigrants, and people in prison are often not treated as valuable by the U.S. medical system that reflects our racist, capitalist, heterosexist, and transphobic society. In fact, western medicine has historically been used in deceptively colonialist and violent ways against indigenous populations and women of color, both domestically and abroad. The “Father of Modern Gynecology”, J. Marion Sims, experimented with surgical procedures on African-American women slaves and Irish-American women without anesthesia. “African-Americans, Latinos, and American Indians have the highest rates of death attributable to preventable diseases that include heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, and AIDS. People of color often cannot access care until the disease is too advanced for successful treatment.”[2] The case of Robert Eads, a self described Georgia hillbilly, is a striking example of these disparities. He was a female-to-male transsexual diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1996. He was refused treatment by over a dozen doctors, and nearly a year went by before he was accepted as a patient by the Medical College of Georgia. Mr. Eads passed away in 1999 at the age of 53.

My privilege as a white person with wealth was present as I faced surgery, in a subtle, yet powerful way: I was spared the legacy of forced sterilization and fear or mistrust about receiving an unwanted hysterectomy. Part of what has been so challenging about my experiences and treatment is that the cancer invaded an especially precious and vulnerable place in my body. Still, I don’t come from a community whose reproductive viability has been directly targeted by the state as a threat to our nation’s “health and well-being.” With historical and current examples of forced and incentivized sterility campaigns against whole communities of African American, Native American, and Puerto Rican women, it is no surprise that many women of color don’t trust the medical system.[3] The case of Norma Jean Serena, a Native American (Creek/Shawnee) is an example of what I mean. She was a victim of sterilization abuse in 1970, while living in Apollo, Pennsylvania. Having just unfairly lost her children to the welfare system, Ms. Serena was then coerced into undergoing what she thought was a medically necessary hysterectomy. Years later, she realized that the only reason for her sterilization was being a poor Native American woman. I overwhelmingly trusted my surgeon when he told me that he wouldn’t touch my other ovary or uterus. My privilege afforded me the belief that my doctor had my best interests in mind and that I would not be used as a tool by a racist and capitalist “population control” agenda.

Having never experienced surgery as an adult, the idea of a stranger (however qualified) cutting my flesh open and rooting around in my reproductive organs was almost too much to bear. I was terrified. Nevertheless, my fears were not based in the reality of botched medical care that is too often provided at the overburdened and underfunded hospitals that treat uninsured patients.[4] I was understandably nervous about the procedure and hospital stay, since not even rich people are safe from the profit driven system that hospitals have become, but I knew that I would be given some of the best care that San Francisco has to offer.

Next came chemotherapy, of which there is so much I could say. Chemo is really, really weird and really, really horrible. It is quite something to have one’s body flooded with poisons that simultaneously wreak havoc in the body and eliminate life threatening cancer cells. Nevertheless, I am grateful beyond words for the benevolent aspect of western medicine and the researchers who discovered this treatment. As with every step of this path/experience, I again accessed institutional class privilege as I got ready to start chemotherapy. Because of the doctors that my family knows, I was fast-tracked into getting a second opinion on the pathology results from my surgery. I started chemo at the top rated cancer hospital in the country. (I am also lucky that this hospital is in Houston, where I grew up and where my family lives.) Having access to this hospital did prove to be significant medically, as the pathology results came back different there, and it was recommended that I have a second surgery I might otherwise not have had if I received treatment in San Francisco.

Throughout the three months that I underwent chemo and this additional surgery, I continued to access privilege in multiple ways. Unlike many working class women, I did not have stress about money, paying rent, or paying hospital bills while not working. I also could afford complementary therapies. I saw an acupuncturist at least once a week throughout that period, paying for it out of pocket, and I absolutely believe that this increased my body’s capacity to handle the toxicity of chemo as well as the many other physical and emotional stressors I faced. I consistently ate nourishing foods brought to the hospital by my caring family. My mother, who is self-employed, was able to take time away from her job to stay with me in the hospital for all three rounds of chemo, each one requiring a five-day hospital stay. When my outpatient doctor visits and tests swallowed up an entire day, my father did not have to go back to work and I did not have to face those experiences alone.

I try not to cash in on privilege. My anti-racist training was strongly rooted in the concept of “unpacking” white privilege and not allowing it to go unchecked. When faced with the overwhelming reality of my class privilege and its impact on my battle with cancer, I felt the urge to not use all the connections available to me. It’s simply not fair that I can circumvent weeks of bureaucracy in getting a second opinion on my pathology report from the top cancer hospital in the country because one of the doctors there is a friend of the family. Every human being deserves this type of urgency when faced with a life-threatening illness, but so few people get it. Given this disparity, I sometimes felt unprincipled in my behavior. While I was accessing so much privilege, my housemate’s (a physician’s assistant) homeless and transgendered patient was killed on the streets of San Francisco. My intention with this essay is not to make myself and others in my position feel guilty. We deserve excellent medical care and sufficient resources. Everyone does. The problem is that most people in this country don’t get it. Those of us with wealth have a responsibility. It is important that we work to understand the privileges we possess and that we make contributions, of our money and our time, towards ending oppression and a more just distribution of wealth. There are many, many ways to contribute and we all have an enormous amount to gain. I hope that my story inspires reflection, discussion, and principled activism among people with wealth.

Here are a few of my ideas of ways to take action:

• Develop a giving plan and donate your money to social justice organizations that prioritize the leadership of oppressed people in fighting for their own liberation. Inequitable health care is just a symptom of the larger injustices present in our society. It is so important to support community organizations working towards revolutionary change. Resource Generation (reourcegeneration.org) is an excellent place to get support with a giving plan. There are folks on staff who can provide guidance in your process and there may be local chapters in your area hosting community dinners and events for other young people with wealth. The RG published book, Classified: How to Stop Hiding your Privilege and Use it for Social Change is also a great resource.
  
  
• Start conversations with your family and friends who have wealth about class privilege and inequity. Encourage them to generate giving plans of their own.
  
  
• Support, with your time and money, a local organization that works to improve access to quality health care and cancer treatment for affected communities. Most organizations have systems in place to help you support their work. I’ve compiled a list with the best organizations I’ve come across, many of which are specific to the SF Bay Area so let me know if you’d like more info at libbeyg@gmail.com
  

footnotes:

1. Karen Pittleman, Molly Hein, and Resource Generation, Classified: How to Stop Hiding Your Privilege and Use It for Social Change, (Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2005), p.61

2. Taken from Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo’s essay, “The Medicalization of Domestic Violence”. This essay is included the Color of Violence, the incite! Anthology and is an excellent resource on the historical and current uses of medical violence against women of color in the US.

3. For more information the state’s historical and current use of forced sterilizations and “population control” methods, check out Policing the National Body: Race, Gender, and Criminalization, edited by Jael Silliman and Anannya Bhattacharjee.

4. According to the latest available information from the Census Bureau, a record high percentage of the US population, nearly 16 percent or 47 million people, were uninsured in 2005. The real number is likely significantly higher due to the number of undocumented immigrants not counted in the Census.
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