Post written by RG staff and board members. Special thank you to board member Nakisha Lewis for kicking this into action. We also released a press release titled “Young People with Wealth Stand in Solidarity with Ferguson, Mo.” inspired by this post. At Resource Generation, we are deeply saddened and outraged over the death of…
Hello Resource Generation! My name is Colette Henderson and I became your new Membership Associate as of the beginning of this month. I come to RG and New York City from down south in Louisville, Kentucky where my passion and commitment for movement building was born. I’m so excited and happy to be here in…
I am writing to open a conversation about what it’s like to live and work rurally and be engaged as an activist with Resource Generation. At this point I have more questions than answers, but I hope telling my story and asking these questions may provoke some thoughts, ideas, or dialogue in the community. This…
Three years ago, I decided to go to Making Money Make Change, the annual conference put on by Resource Generation. I know that I will inherit wealth in the future, so I decided to go to the conference to start thinking about this privilege, about my family, and my own access to wealth. I wanted…
Adapted from Classified: How to Stop Hiding Your Privilege and Use It for Social ChangeTo go to Adam’s Buzzfeed article with the above title, click here. Hey all. My name’s Adam, and this is a first time post to the RG blog! I’m excited to contribute to a community that has, in a short period…
At RG, we like experiments. Really our whole existence as an organization is an experiment in what’s possible. Can we really organize young wealthy people for justice? What will that take? Can we do it with true cross-class leadership? In accountable, powerful and healthy ways? These have been the questions we’ve been asking since we…
My first involvement with RG as a constituent with class privilege was June 2004 when I participated in my first RG workshop “Social Change Financial Planning.” Since then, I not only participated in RG programming as a constituent (e.g. MMMC, Donor Organizing Institute, CCTFP, Dinners) but also as a researcher with both personal and academic…
I, anna winham, an undergraduate student at Dartmouth and current RG Bay Area intern, recently wrote this piece in The Dartmouth Radical, identifying my struggles to reconcile my politics with my background, my identity with my identity. I worry about how to stay out of “false generosity” territory while still leveraging my class privilege. My pal Paulo tells…
Re-blogged, due to our partnership with Bolder Giving:Elspeth Gilmore, current executive director of RG, writes in Bolder Giving about coming to terms with class privilege and inheritance. At age 33, I’m at last coming into my own about my wealth. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve learned a lot. I’m finally clear that, for me, using my resources to…
This is an edited version of a sermon I gave this spring at the Mid-Columbia Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, a congregation I served as minister this last year. UUs are known for being great about sexuality education, but money can be much harder to talk frankly about. Hence, this sermon. Growing up, our family never worried…
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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