My goal for the summer (besides finishing the first season of Orange is the New Black) is to connect college students to Resource Generation. And here’s why. First of all, college campuses are teeming with rich kids. 70% of students at the top 80 schools come from the wealthiest quarter of U.S. families. Campuses are…
RG Alumni Oona Coy talking about her experience becoming part of the Tracies, a team of major donors who have committed to giving at least $10,000 a year for at least three years to RG. During the first year, the group voted on a name and decided to call themselves The Tracies, in honor of…
Dear Friends of RG, Happy Resource Generation 15th Anniversary! It is an honor to ask you to support RG as Itransition off staff. Will you join me by donating today? Today is the day with the greatest disparity in the distribution of wealth since the Gilded Age a century ago. The top 1% own (have…
RG Alumni Julie McVeigh talking about her experience becoming part of the Tracies, a team of major donors who have committed to giving at least $10,000 a year for at least three years to RG. During the first year, the group voted on a name and decided to call themselves The Tracies, in honor of…
On April 12th, 2013, the Resource Community came from near and far to celebrate RG’s 15th Anniversary in lower Manhattan. Here are the speeches given by RG’s founding, outgoing and incoming executive directors. Good evening. My name is Tracy Hewat. I am one of the founding members of Resource Generation, co-editor of Resource Generation’s initial…
I’m just recently back from a great Alumni RG Retreat! What a wonderful opportunity to get re-engaged! I was active with RG 15 years ago. It’s hard to believe how quickly the time has flown, and not only that I aged out (which happened a few years, ago, and was a big bummer), but also,…
Dear RG community, Last week the stock market hit record highs–but President Obama still released a budget that would cut Social Security and Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars. In this context, on Tax Day, we launched RG’s new Tax Justice Platform, and a campaign to eliminate a special low tax rate for rich people by taxing Capital Gains and Dividends–profits…
Greetings beloved RG community, As many of you know, after years of service to Resource Generation, Elspeth has decided to transition out of the Executive Director role. Over the last two months, we have been engaged in the process of searching for and hiring a new Executive Director. Interviews were conducted by members of the…
A note from Elspeth Gilmore, Resource Generation’s outgoing Executive Director: Hi Friends of Resource Generation, Having been a proud member of the Resource Generation staff for the past 6 years, I am transitioning off of staff this spring. I’m looking forward to opening the door for a new young leader to step up. Needless to…
let me introduce myself – my name is anna genevieve winham and while my bio on the “About Us” page gives a few more details, i’m basically a rich kid who has a lot of problems with both the fact that “rich kids” exist and the systems through which i became one. i’m a brit,…
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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