By: Emily Duma (RG Board Member) and Taij Kumarie Moteelall (Media Sutra) At a Resource Generation National Membership Council meeting in 2018, we found ourselves in the midst of a generative conflict that planted the seeds for our cross-class and cross-race partnership. Council members and staff formed a human barometer in response to the question:…
We recently celebrated the 20th Anniversary of our Making Money Make Change conference! Making Money Make Change has been a signature part of Resource Generation’s work since our founding back in 1998. The original conference was a joint vision and collaboration between wealthy young people who wanted to get involved in social justice organizing and…
How these class-privileged people launched a successful fundraising campaign to support housing justice work led by the local community in Triangle, NC.
How does class privilege inform how we act for immigration justice?
Our member Andrea on leveraging her family’s privilege to support movements fighting to make migration humane and just for everyone.
Will we hide our inheritances and trust funds away in overseas bank accounts and repressed fears? Or will we heed the call of the marginalized everywhere to live into our responsibility and support the creation of a just world?
I had a nagging sense that wealth inequality was at the root of so much violence, but that I, as someone with wealth, wasn’t doing much, if anything, about it.
What is a “meaningful gift,” what is an antidote to shame, and why support sex worker organizing in this time? To answer these questions (and spark others), I want to write about sex work, about sex workers getting a seat at the table, and about funding sex worker organizing. Here are three stories on each…
If we want to start taking wealth redistribution seriously, talking to each other about wealth and putting our assumptions on the table is a necessary step.
As progressive young people with wealth, it’s our responsibility to organize wealthy folks to take action to end economic inequality and move money to fund economic and racial justice.
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