What guidance would you give to a room full of fundraisers about how to ask you for money? That was the question I tried to answer on a “#RealTalk with Major Donors” panel at the recent Allied Media Conference in Detroit. AMC is a conference led by people of color and queer and trans folks,…
I just returned from a five-night silent meditation retreat at the stunning Vallecitos Retreat Center in northern New Mexico. I’ve been a practicing Buddhist for about seven years now and regularly attend silent meditation retreats to reground, center in my practice, and create dedicated space in my life for spiritual training and nourishment.The retreat reaffirmed…
When elected officials put wealth-hoarding of the rich over the most basic human needs of the many, young people with wealth have a critical role in pushing back.
So many Resource Generation members came out to the Allied Media Conference in Detroit on June 15 – 18! Among them was Emily Bookstein of RG’s Portland Chapter — she spoke to a packed room as part of the panel, Real Talk with Major Donors, that we organized as part of AMC’s Resourcing and Sustaining…
I am a bit of a gambler. Had you asked me at any point what are the odds that you’ll work for an organization that organizes rich people, I would have bet against it. The odds were incredibly low. And yet, Resource Generation organizes young people with wealth, and I organize Resource Generation’s retreats.When I started…
On May 20th I attended the North Star Fund’s forum for Resilient New York, a forum to advance grassroots organizing as a key strategy to protect the dignity and rights of all New Yorkers. The event was a call to community members, donors, grantmakers, and organizers to unite around a proactive shared vision to support…
Act I: Family Philanthropy = Bad? My siblings and I found out that we were on the board of a family foundation six years ago over Christmas dinner. “Surprise! We are now the Pink House Foundation!” my parents announced over root vegetables and waning holiday cheer. (Our house in Northwest Washington, DC was bright pink.)…
Like many working mothers, my mom’s office doubled as a daycare center. Much of my childhood was spent in my mom’s office, filing folders, stamping brochures, folding policies, and hiding underneath the table in the breakroom and playing fort with my younger brother. We “worked” with the constant sound of my mom’s voice in the background,…
“If you work hard, people will notice and you will be recognized.” Parts of that tale are true — at least for me as a young person with class privilege and access to wealth. Every week, I churn in a few dozen hours, and twice a month, a paycheck is deposited into my checking account….
This April 29th, I’ll be in Washington D.C. marching alongside frontline communities — those who are being most directly impacted by climate change — for climate, jobs, and justice as part of the People’s Climate Movement. I’m also marching as someone whose family has profited directly off the fossil fuel economy, and has a personal…
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.
Click here to continue to RG Action or click close to return to resourcegeneration.org