In the last 18 days since the occupation of Wall Street, the Occupy movement has spread across the country. Boston, DC, San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Atlanta, and many other cities are now coming together to stand up as, for, and with the 99%. This includes many of the members of the Resource Generation community. We are taking a stand as people in the 1% and showing that it isn’t just the 99% who want change.
All around the country, not just on Wall Street, the RG community has started questioning how we can best use our access to wealth and privilege to support these mobilizations. Here are some ways we’ve been involved, and some questions our community has been asking. What about you?
- How do we best message the support of our community? Most of us at RG are not “the other 99%,” we (or our families) are the 1%. Yet we are in full solidarity with, and a part of, this movement for change too!
- Last night, about a dozen RG community members in New York marched in the massive “Community/Labor March” in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street that drew over 15,000.
- Farhad Ebrahimi, an RG member in Boston, helped support the start-up of Occupy Boston by purchasing tents, tracking down a PA system, and supporting the Media Team.
- This past Saturday, a couple RG members were part of the Brooklyn Bridge march (and ended up spending quality time with the NYPD).
- Conversation is flowing about how to use our class (and for some of us, race) privilege in the context of mass mobilization and arrests. We are thinking about how to use ourselves strategically, as people who can afford to pay jail fees, and usually don’t have the same risks of job security and livelihood as folks who are part of communities traditionally more targeted by the police.
- RGers have also provided support in NYC, Boston, and DC in the way of food donations & grocery gift cards, donations to safety/security, like giving to the National Lawyers Guild, and to support local media crews and independent publications.
- There’s been a Facebook thread talking about the language of “occupation,” and some of our own family histories that are wrapped up in legacies of occupation and colonization. Some folks have been talking about how we use our learnings from RG to ensure any solutions for this movement don’t replicate the same violence of our fore bearers.
How have you been involved? Please share your stories and photos on the Resource Generation Facebook page.
Occupy Boston, October 1, 2011
Curious RG. How are we defining the 1%? I’d love to hear which frame and latest statistics we are harolding. Thanks!