This is part II of a set of posts I have been working on with Sarah Schwartz-Sax on our organizing of partners of young people with wealth raised poor, working or middle class. Check out Sarah’s post here. It’s awesome. Why RG organizes partners of young people with wealth from poor, working and middle class…
This last May 4th-6th, we hosted and coordinated our 6th Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy Retreat (CCTFP). It is specifically for young(ish) people, 18-40, who are involved, or want to be involved, in their families’ philanthropy and care about justice and equity. Some participants attend because they participate in generations old family foundations, some attend because they earned…
Although racial justice has always been an important part of RG’s analysis, until now we haven’t clearly articulated why. In 2007, the CORE advisory committee set racial justice goals for RG and launched our young people of color with wealth organizing initiative. And in 2009, we hired our first young person of color with wealth…
As the co-chairs of the Resource Generation board, we are pleased to announce a few internal shifts within the RG staff. We thought it would be good to present this as a blog post directed to the larger RG, donor organizing, and social justice community, in part because it relates to bigger questions that many…
Hey RG community, Please take the RG survey! It is crucial in helping us in our organizing and will help us to get a read on our community these days. What are people excited about? Why are you involved in RG? What do you want more of from RG? Less of? What have you done…
Hi RG community, I am thrilled to join the staff of Resource Generation, at this particular moment, to organize young people of color with wealth. I just moved to New York City after 6+ years in Seattle and I’m grateful to be inheriting a body of work from Nicole Lewis and many others in RG’s…
Dear RG (Resource Generation) guys, This is gonna be awkward. No two ways about it. Im gonna be writing about feelings, money, our relationships, and how I want us (you and me!) to be closer. I wish it could be all music videos and photo shoots but I gotta get some things off my chest. I…
Mac and Sophie are members of the RG/Wealth For the Common Good Tax Justice Campaign. Each of them created a sign and photo to post on the tumblr blog westandwiththe99percent and then changed their facebook profile pictures as well to promote the November 17th day of action (organized by OWS). After uploading, they asked each…
Hello RG Community, We have some updates on staffing we want to share with you. We are excited to announce that we have hired Sarah Schwartz Sax as our new Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy (CCTFP) Retreat Director and Richard Graves as our new Family Philanthropy Organizer. Sarah has been a leader in RG for…
Taij Moteelall, RG’s former director, shares some reflections on her time with RG below. Reposted from the Power Up Networks Blog. As the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon grows in NYC, spreads throughout the United States and across the globe, I wonder what kind of a world will be rebuilt post-corruption, greed, and injustice that sparked this movement. How…
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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