2012 has been a transformative year so far. I moved across the country from Seattle to New York, started a new job at Resource Generation organizing young people of color with wealth, and turned thirty. I was excited to step into the unknown, and ready to take on big challenges. I expected that there would…
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…
There are two things that I’ve loved for decades. One, is asking questions. The second is hanging out with old people. Not just old people, but elders. For me, an elder is anyone older than me. With three older siblings, I learned how to listen and to learn from their lived experiences. At 25, I…
I was recently asked to speak to a captive audience on the subject of why I’m a “progressive funder.” I was more than happy to oblige, with one minor change: I preferred to answer the question of why I’m a radical activist who happens to have some money. Knowing that I’d likely ramble and run…
Have you ever wondered about giving circles? What are they? How do they work? How do you start one? Are you in a giving circle and wondering how others are doing it? In these interviews, RG folks share their experiences with and reflections about participating in giving circles. We have interviewed young people with wealth who have…
There were six of us. Katherine Orr, Julia Read, Michelle Rider, Ellie Weiner, Nickerson Hill and myself. We’d formed a group with the expressed purpose of pooling a large amount of money to give away. But why were we doing this? Why was group giving so important to us? Isn’t giving money supposed to be…
When I saw the tumblr site “We are the 1%. We stand with the 99%,” I thought about $140,050 sitting in a bank account in my name at the Permaculture Credit Union, money I’d received in distribution payments from my 5% share in an apartment complex. I questioned myself: How would I really be standing…
It is spring of 2008, and I am giving a workshop on prison industrial complex abolition at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. We start by asking participants, “What makes you feel safe?” There is a wide range of answers, from “my friends” to “having healthcare” to “self-defense classes” to “knowing my parents could support me in…
I love the crap out of rich people. RG has helped show me that. Meeting dozens and dozens of wealthy people, each and every one who is smart, thoughtful, and wanting so badly to do right by the world—time and time again, I am bowled over by the sheer magnitude of kindness and generosity in…
Another version of this post originally appeared on the AAPIP blog. It is probably no surprise that there is a long-standing need for funding for organizations that support Asian American and Pacific Islander LGBTQ communities, but I was surprised by just how little funding these organizations get. The numbers tell the beginning of the story:…
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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