by Katherine Wolf and Holly Fetter, Members of the New York City RG Chapter’s Giving and Campaign Committees Thank you to Maurice Mitchell for attending our chapter event on Tuesday, December 9th and for sharing all your insight and passion. This blog post has been heavily influenced by your analysis and your call to action. There’s…
Originally posted on thehuffingtonpost.com on September 10, 2013. Simone Sneed is a member of Resource Generation and a part of the New York City People of Color Praxis Group. “No building bears their names. No boardroom displays their portraits. No foundation sustains their legacy. And yet, the philanthropists best known to me are the ones…
On April 12th, 2013, the Resource Community came from near and far to celebrate RG’s 15th Anniversary in lower Manhattan. Here are the speeches given by RG’s founding, outgoing and incoming executive directors. Good evening. My name is Tracy Hewat. I am one of the founding members of Resource Generation, co-editor of Resource Generation’s initial…
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…
Reposted from a September 21st article at Left Turn. RG members have been a driving force in the SOS Campaign in Washington, DC —check it out! Victory: On September 20, 2011, the DC city council voted to increase taxes on residents making over $350,000 a year by approximately .5%. By finally creating a new tax bracket targeting…
At the heart of philanthropy is a great contradiction, one that our generation is struggling to resolve. Many philanthropists accumulated their wealth through disruptive innovations, ruthless business practice, or, as Balzac said, “great wealth with no obvious source is some forgotten crime, forgotten because it was done neatly.” Many of the great industrialists whose names…
Reposted from the Vassar Alumni Newsletter When Zoe Lloyd Foxley graduated from Vassar in 2001, she set out on a course of service to community, first as an elementary school teacher, and then, after earning a Masters from the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work, as a worker at a community mental health…
In the days following RG’s creating change through family philanthropy retreat last month, I took some time to reflect and record my thoughts. here is a taste!– Jessie Spector, RG Staff and MemberFrom my blog http://www.everydaycontradictions.blogspot.com/ family philanthropy retreat: some reflections recently resource generation hosted the 4th Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy retreat, a 40…
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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