Hi, my name is Mahi. I am part of the host-committee for MMMC 2015. I will tell you about my involvement with RG and MMMC 2014 last year. When I moved to Colorado, it was because of money. I couldn’t find a job as an engineer in Minneapolis, Minnesota and didn’t have an income….
Each generation must, out of its relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it. -Frantz Fanon I’m part of a generation (I’m 27) in North America that grew up being told that everyone should be born equal and have equal opportunity. I think my parents’ generation believed that so much they started to think of it as…
Reflections on the campaign to fund Black liberation In the last year, the movement for Black liberation has grown at an exhilarating pace. Even as the systemic violence against Black lives continues, this social movement has built tremendous transformative power nationwide. In the late summer and fall of 2014, we in RG realized that our…
I saw all the announcements about RG becoming an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Why are we talking about this again? Great question. I may be a little biased as an operations geek, but I think it’s helpful to pull the curtain back and share with the RG community why we make certain decisions about our organizational…
By: bex kolins Since joining the leadership team of the It Starts Today! campaign to fund Black led organizing work, I’ve been inspired, excited, and energized by the incredible work RGers are doing in not just redistributing our wealth, but redistributing our wealth with a clear priority to support Black led organizing. With the release…
This post is a part of the blog series and RG campaign, “It Starts Today: Moving $1 Million to Black-Led, Black Liberation Organizing.” Click here for more info on the campaign. What can we as Resource Generation members do to show up for Selma, Alabama and the U.S. South, 50 years after the height of…
Last year at the 2014 Transformative Leadership Institute, we tried a small experiment that I borrowed from my last job at KFTC. It was called “Each One Reach One” and it was our first official trial of an organized member recruiting members program here at RG. TLI participants greeted the idea with a lot of…
I’m writing to share with you about a movement-building delegation in the deep South. As someone who is helping to organize this delegation, I want to invite RG members to join us in Alabama the first week of March. I’m a pretty new Resource Generation member, living in Birmingham, Alabama. I am helping the Alabama…
When you bring motivated, passionate Resource Generation chapter leaders together from across New England, the discussion inevitably turns to tackling difficult, important questions: Thai or Lebanese? (Lebanese) Order pizza or go out to the local Japanese restaurant? (Japanese restaurant). Jokes aside, by the end of the first ever Northeast regional RG retreat, in addition to…
Dear RG Community and Friends, We are a group of four RG members and leaders who came together over the course of the last few years because: We are all cis-men, all white, one gay guy and three straight-ish guys, three who inherited wealth and one who earned wealth through his business. We have been…
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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