My dad came from nothing, or so the story goes. He grew up on his family’s farm in the dry plains of western Nebraska, feeding the chickens each morning before walking to the one-room schoolhouse miles down the road. Eventually, he left home on a scholarship to study engineering at a regional university, where he landed…
By: The North Carolina Partner Praxis GroupThe North Carolina partner praxis group is a fierce, loving, and caring community. We are a group of Resource Generation members who are partners of young people with wealth. We come from poor, working, and middle class backgrounds and are currently in a cross-class relationship with someone with wealth….
Hey RG! I’m here today to talk about my experience fundraising members for RG – but first let me tell you a little bit about my own RG journey, because that’s really where the story begins.I found RG almost four years ago, when I was a freshman in college at Stanford University. I participated in…
In January 2016, RG Philly created a Political Action working group, to discern our role in and take action on local economic and racial justice campaigns. We went through a process of considering where we could have the most impact, and in March 2016 RG Philly joined the Philadelphia Coalition for Affordable Communities. PCAC’s current…
After the tragedy in Orlando, the New York City RG chapter hosted a conversation about moving money in response to crises. Here are some choice quotes from our discussion: How to understand Orlando: “We can’t forget that [Orlando] is one moment in a larger crisis of homophobia, Islamophobia, et cetera. Just like Sandy was one…
by Dominque Tan and Rachel Gelman, Bay Area RG Chapter leaders If a group of poor and indigenous people knocked on your door, would you receive them? If they asked whether you would donate your resources to community reparations, would you?This spring, POOR Magazine challenged both the Bay Area Resource Generation Chapter and the broader…
by Nicole Lewis By now you’ve probably read a blog or two or three reacting to Beyoncé’s latest video, Formation. We haven’t seen this much Beyoncé-mania since she dropped her last self-titled album without notice. No matter if you love it or hate it – if you think Beyoncé is a feminist or anti-feminist –…
At last year’s MMMC, Jay Saper, Adam Roberts and I hung out for hours in a hallway talking about the impact of (science) fiction in imagining our future and our shared enthusiasm for storytelling through zines. Adam asked me if I’d like to work with him on a zine connecting the framework of the Zen parable “Taming…
When I first heard about Resource Generation, I had two reactions. The first was skeptical. I don’t know about this…social justice organizing by young people with wealth? The second was grateful. Holy crap — I have been looking for this for YEARS. That’s because I am a young person with wealth1. In my early twenties,…
“Reducing American poverty and ending white supremacy are not the same.” Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent article in The Atlantic not only draws attention to the national debate on reparations for slavery, but invokes the centrality of white supremacy as the backbone of wealth inequality in the US. As Caribbean nations prepare to sue European nations for…
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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