May
16
2013

Relive the magic! Speeches from RG’s 15th Anniversary Celebration

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Elspeth Gilmore Posted in Alumni, Cross-Class, Donor Organizing, GIving, History of RG, House Party, Money Stories, Movement History, Philanthropy, RG News, Uncategorized |

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.

Tracy Hewat, First Executive Director

Good evening. My name is Tracy Hewat. I am one of the founding members of Resource Generation, co-editor of Resource Generation’s initial guide “Money Talks. So Can We” and the first Executive Director.  I am delighted to be here.

In order to give you some perspective on Resource Generation today, I want to talk briefly about my experience of finding progressive community before Resource Generation existed.

At that time there was no gathering spot for young people with wealth. There were a lot of great networks that had annual conferences for people with wealth, but they were primarily convening people in their 40’s and older. I went to those conferences for years, and occasionally there would be one other person my age, but never more than one.

I was always incredibly inspired by the actions of other conference-goers, but I often felt like I was participating in a strange mirror image: they talked about things like giving money to their children, and I was thinking about receiving money from my parents. I did not find a way to address the issues from my perspective, and the community, which was so, so important to me personally, didn’t meet me where I was.

On a political level, many of us wondered what we (as the left) were doing.  We had a seemingly bottomless need for both money and skill, but we weren’t effectively engaging funders under 40, and in fact, we were letting our 25-year-olds kind of go it alone, ignoring the fact that these were 25-year-olds who – if we were lucky – would be funding the left for the next 60 years. That’s no way to build a movement.

But no one organization had a mission of focusing on people with wealth in their 20’s, and no one organization had the time & the stamina & the resources to do credible outreach into this community. The result was that in my age cohort, few of us knew each other, and as a group we really weren’t giving what we could – either in terms of money or skills.

Resource generation was designed to do that outreach, to send up a bright enough flare so that young people with wealth would find it. And to hold open a space for those people to have the pressing conversations of their moment – whatever those were.

So fifteen years later, I’m pretty confident that through Resource Generation’s work, current participants are giving a baseline of several million more dollars annually (to progressive non-profits) than they would be giving if Resource Generation didn’t exist. But that’s the least of it. Because Resource Generation constituents are also doing things like: increasing the payout of their family foundations, pressuring their elected officials, and using their access in a variety of rather brilliant and creative ways. The reach of Resource Generation constituents is awesome.

But it doesn’t stop there. Because Resource Generation is focused on a specific age bracket, to fill specific needs – both within the constituency and on the left – it is always bringing in new people, and always graduating people out. This is unlike the structure of any other wealth group. Those other groups are working to have stability & low turnover. Resource generation is building at the base. And to that end it brings in new people ALL THE TIME.

Which leads me to two closing thoughts.

One is that every year some of our progressive elders, like my parents, who are in their 80’s, pass away. And every year that Resource generation is in existence, it pulls in more people, who then have some shared experience, shared skills, shared community. The result of these two things happening simultaneously is that every year Resource Generation is touching a larger percentage of the total universe of ALL progressive funders. I have no idea how many years before it’s “a statistically significant percentage” but meditate on that tonight, as you look at Resource Generation’s work.

My last thought is about funding – not for other progressive organizations, but for Resource Generation itself. I understand there’s a pitch later this evening, and I want to leave you with this: For all the reasons I’ve mentioned – the increased money to non profits, the ordinary and extraordinary acts of current constituents, the long term impact on the progressive left – there is no question in my mind that of all the giving I’ve done over the last fifteen years, no gift has been leveraged better than my gift to Resource Generation.

With that, it is my enormous honor to pass the microphone to one of the people who has made Resource Generation strong. An inspiration to me, the outgoing executive director, and tonight’s honoree, Elspeth Gilmore.
____________________________________________________________

Elspeth Gilmore, Outgoing Executive Director

Hi everyone! It’s amazing to see you all here. How are you all doing?

I’m Elspeth, the outgoing Executive Director of Resource Generation. I want to share a few things tonight and I want to start by thanking you. For coming out tonight, and for all the work you have done with RG and to support RG over the years. Each of you in this room has made RG what it is, and if this is your first brush with RG, welcome. I’m so happy to be celebrating with all of you tonight.

For 15 years now, Resource Generation has been organizing young people with wealth to move money, organize within philanthropy, break down the class system, build community, and shake things up in the name of justice.

I want to tell a little bit of my RG story. When I was 26 I went to an RG giving plan workshop with a trust fund I’d sat on for 5 years, a readiness to stop avoiding it, and no clue what walking into that first RG program would lead to. Like many RGers before and since, I was welcomed in, allowed to take baby steps, and pushed to make some moves and take some risks. Eight years later I have been part of a donor circle to support organizing in the Gulf South after Hurricane Katrina that demanded that all my big ideals be applied in a real life situation where things were no longer simple… I have given away more money than I initially inherited…. I have built incredible life long relationships with other young people with wealth and people from all class backgrounds who are working toward a shared vision of the world… I have marched with Occupy as the “1% standing with the 99%” and got real about the role the rich can have in fighting for just taxation and basic needs for all. And it’s 100% because of this community. So many of you out there and many who are not here tonight have been on similar journeys.

So let me address the question I have asked myself many times – Why are we doing all this work and why have we been doing it for so long?

Well, remember your day today. Waking up this morning, what you ate for lunch, a conversation you had… Well today is the day with the greatest disparity in the distribution of wealth since the Guilded Age a century ago. The top 1% owns, meaning they have a net worth of, more than 90% of America’s households combined. And the disparity is getting worse. Not the world you want to live in, right? Not good for you, not good for anyone.

But we know that the world could look really different…

Resource Generation envisions a world in which all communities are powerful, healthy and living in alignment with the planet. A world that is racially and economically just in which wealth, land and power are shared.

That sounds a lot better right?

So back to today. Today RG is organizing multitudes of young people with wealth to work for the redistribution of wealth, land and power, to work towards that vision.

Come with me in a time machine for a minute. If you’d like to, close your eyes, I’ll be quick.

Imagine, It’s 15 years from now, April 12th, 2028. The Executive Director of RG is standing in my shoes, speaking into this mic to all of you and to the hundreds of others who are now part of the RG community.

We’re celebrating. We’re celebrating because…

  • What started as an 5 person tax justice team…. has become a legacy of numerous campaign wins in partnership with cross-class organizations. Most recently we won the campaign to raise the estate tax back to 75%, where it was in the 30’s.

  • What started as 4 cross-class giving circles…. has become a network of donors and organizers, fundraisers and strategists who support movements to be sustainably funded, rooted in local communities and transformative relationships.

And that’s just the start.

So that’s where we’re headed. But how do we get there?

I want to propose to all of you that we’re living in a critical moment, a moment of possibility.

  • On the one hand we have this huge wealth gap, austerity measures, social security cuts, as well as continued violence towards immigrants, imprisonment of huge numbers of our population,  climate change.
  • And then on the other hand we have people rising up globally to say no, there is another way.

And we get to be a part of it. Each one of us.

But this big vision, where we’ll be in 15 years, it’s not a given. We have an opportunity to ensure that in 15 years we’re celebrating something big. And if we’re going to do it, we’re going to have to do it together.

And that’s what RG has been all about for me. The people. What we can do when we really rely on each other.

So to wrap things up,

RG is raising the bar for me and for rich people in the US and across the globe. As movements and people fighting for justice – lets work across class. If you’re not wealthy, bring all that you are to making change and push yourself to do it alongside people like me. Welcome people with wealth and expect the world of them. They’re in your midst whether you know it or not.

And if you’re wealthy, claim it, and bring all that you are to making change. Join up with people who were raised poor, working, middle, and mixed class and back them up, stick with them. We need to organize WITH each other across class – and race, gender, nationality, sexual and gender orientation, immigration status, religion…  You – and I’m speaking to everyone in this room – your vision and your story are critical. Together we’re going to help create a world of dignity and justice.

And you are the community that will help shepherd us into our next 15 years. I want to pass the mic to Jessie Spector, RG’s new Executive Director. I am so happy to pass this golden megaphone to my dear friend, visionary, leader and longtime RG staff member. She’s freakin’ brilliant and we’re real lucky to have her leading us into the next 15.
_______________________________________________________________

Jessie Spector, Incoming Executive Director

Thanks El! Hey, everyone.

It’s pretty simple – I could not be more thrilled to be taking on this role, at this time in Resource Generation. This work means SO much to me – RG has been my home since I graduated from college.

I have invested a ton of time and energy, built some of my deepest relationships, and faced some of my hardest challenges here. And I could not be more excited to dive even deeper into all of that, as Executive Director.

Its amazing – I know so many of you here. I have been working at RG for four and a half years. Almost all of you have touched me, supported me, taught me in some way. Rodney, you actually hired me onto staff! Ben, you organized me into joining my first cross-class giving circle. Gabriel, you’re my roommate now – but it was when I was a 20-year-old intern at the grassroots organization where you work that I first discovered that Resource Generation existed!

I have some serious gratitude to each of you in this crowd, and the community beyond, for getting me to this position, and for getting RG to this position – we are in really good shape, poised to do some amazing, big things – like Elspeth read us in the vision, we are working towards a world in which land, wealth, and power are shared. That’s pretty badass.

Its because of this whole incredible community that we’ve been able to get as far as we’ve come over the past 15 years.  I, and we, are going to keep needing each of you to support and challenge Resource Generation moving forward to get us to the big places we’re headed.

And I can’t wait to do it with all of you!

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May
13
2013

Choices: a poem about disability and wealth

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Nitika Raj Posted in Class Privilege, Racial Justice, Uncategorized | Tagged ,

dis/ability

ability

able

i am able to do something
i am not able to do something

class privilege is an ability

able-bodied
body is able to do something

body is not able to do something

if i am able to do something
it takes a lot of things,
people,
privileges
to make that happen

it helps if you’re white
it helps if you have money
it helps if you speak English
it helps if you are not Muslim, Sikh, Arab or Middle Eastern
or Black
or Latino
or indigenous
or any shade of Not White
or can’t be made White likes Italians Jews the Irish
it helps if your body doesn’t hurt when you move, or breathe
it helps if you have paid time off on a day when you feel cloudy
it helps if you can afford therapy
or retail therapy
it helps if you have choices
it helps if you have a community of people to ask for help
or can pay for
support with childcare
or shopping for groceries
or medication
or meditation
or yoga
or warm clothes
it helps if you have an education
it helps if you have a family who can provide for you
it actually really helps to have a lot of money
it helps if you have tax benefits
from being married
or being wealthy
or being in control of making tax policies
it helps so much
to have help

wealthy people can use money to get help
or isolate
we are living/viewing life from the vantage point of a castle
or a penthouse in manhattan
people with disabilities are more connected with our need for help, for each other
people with disabilities AND wealth have some difficult choices to make
use money? to access care
or interdependence?
i don’t know what the right answers are
because there could be so many
and all available choices could be exercised
and still not feel right or be right for someone, or a people, or a time and place

perhaps we need to be asking different questions.

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May
9
2013

Reflections from the Middle Space between Grantmaking and Grantseeking

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Braeden Lentz Posted in Advocacy, Donor Organizing, Featured, Philanthropy |

This post was originally published on Keeping a Close Eye … NCRP’s Blog. Braeden is a current board member of Resource Generation. 

I had no idea what institutional philanthropy was when I transitioned from working for nonprofits to landing a job at a grantmaker. Once I arrived, I was often asked by grantseeking colleagues what it was like on the “other side.” I understood this question came in response to the shrouds of mystery that obscures many foundation processes and a desire to know the secret code of securing a coveted grant. After eventually transitioning back to a fundraising position, my former foundation colleagues have asked the same question: What’s it like on the “other side”? I know it is hard to imagine trying to find money if you are used to giving it away.

Having spent time on both “sides” and organizing in the middle spaces, my conclusion is that grantseekers and grantmakers are not so different. I believe we would all be better off imagining each other to be actual people – with motivations, fears, joys and stories – who want to improve our communities by working in different professional functions.

Here’s what I’ve learned about grantmakers… Continue reading →

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May
9
2013

Full Circle: RG’s first Alumni Retreat

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Alicia Wittink Posted in Alumni, Class Privilege, Donor Organizing, Featured, RG News | Tagged

I’m just recently back from a great Alumni RG Retreat! What a wonderful opportunity to get re-engaged! I was active with RG 15 years ago. It’s hard to believe how quickly the time has flown, and not only that I aged out (which happened a few years, ago, and was a big bummer), but also, that almost 7 years have gone by without much engagement with RG….I’ll blame it on my kids.

So, after having been active with the community a VERY long time ago, and then inactive for the many recent years, it was with some trepidation that I ventured to the alumni retreat. After looking at the list of attendees, out of the 16 or so people, realized, I only knew 2 by face! Of course, I recognized some of the names from the list-serve, but that was the extent of my connection with them.

Even from the first opening circle, it was no surprise that the sense of community, the openness, and support for each other was so easy to find. My initial trepidation melted away. For me, it felt so wonderful to be part of that community again. I realized two things: it’s so special to come together for an alumni retreat (even with alumni I didn’t know), because there is a shared language and set of experiences (even if mine were a little dusty), as everyone had been to at least one MMMC. I also realized that I’ve been neglecting all the issues  that RG serves to support — discussions around race, class, giving plans, estate planning, and it’s back to getting more of my attention.

After a wonderful weekend, I now have an expanded set of fellow RG alums to connect with, and I hope there will be more of this space created in the future! One way the conversations will continue is through some active list-serves and hopefully regular conference calls for alums, on topics of parenting, among other things.

If you’re interested in getting involved or learning more please contact mike@resourcegeneration.org and join us!

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Apr
16
2013

RG Launches Tax Justice Campaign and Platform!

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Szmonko Posted in Uncategorized |

Dear RG community,

Last week the stock market hit record highs–but President Obama still released a budget that would cut Social Security and Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars.   

In this context, on Tax Day, we launched RG’s  new Tax Justice Platform, and a campaign to eliminate a special low tax rate for rich people by taxing Capital Gains and Dividends–profits from the stocks, bonds, mutual funds and corporate payouts to shareholders–at the same rate as wages and salaries.

RG members, alumni, and supporters from around the country called their representatives, demanding that we raise taxes on the rich instead of making cuts to the social programs that build strong and healthy communities.

QUICK FACTS ON THE CAPITAL GAINS AND DIVIDENDS TAX

The Capital Gains and Dividends Tax is a special, low tax rate for wealthy people that exponentially increases wealth disparity with each new generation.  Download our capital gains factsheet here!

Capital Gains are the profit made from selling things like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and homes that have increased in value over time. For example, if you buy a stock for $10 and then sell it for $100, your Capital Gain is $90.

  • In 2012, the top 1% of taxpayers received 71% of all Capital Gains.
  • The tax CGD is currently capped at just 20% – just half the rate of income from work, which can be taxed at close to 40%.
  • The current CGD tax rate is just half what it was in 1977.
  • By some estimates, this low CGD tax will cost the public more than $400 billion between 2011 and 2015
  • The capital gains preference is as racist as it is economically exploitative. Black people hold only 10 cents of net wealth and Latinos hold 12 cents of net wealth for every dollar that Whites hold.
  • There is no sound evidence that taxing capital gains at levels far below ordinary income increases economic growth at all.

Coming Up Next….

In the next several months, the tax team will be asking members to sign on to the Tax Justice Platform, and to reach out to their networks to get friends, family members, and other wealthy people in our lives to do the same.

Click here to download the platform and sign on!   Here’s a preview:

We want to live in a world where our friends, neighbors, and family members have enough, and hoarding wealth is not an option. We think raising taxes on the rich can get us closer to that dream: A world in which we all have access to healthy food, quality education and healthcare, reliable public transportation, meaningful work, vibrant cultural practices and community centers, and clean air, soil and water. Where we all live in strong communities that are interdependent, creative, and resilient, and we collectively make the decisions that impact our lives.

Isaac Lev Szmonko, Campaign Organizer

 

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Mar
28
2013

Announcing the next Executive Director of RG!

Posted on March 28, 2013 by RG Board Posted in RG News |

Greetings beloved RG community,

As many of you know, after years of service to Resource Generation, Elspeth has decided to transition out of the Executive Director role.

Over the last two months, we have been engaged in the process of searching for and hiring a new Executive Director. Interviews were conducted by members of the RG board and staff, RG alumni, and Ingrid Benedict, the consultant who has been leading our work on developing, articulating, and aligning our work around our theory of change.

We are excited to announce that through this process, we have hired a new Executive Director… Jessie Spector! Jessie comes to this position with over four years on staff at Resource Generation, most recently serving as RG’s Program Director. Jessie’s first day as Executive Director will be April 15, and Elspeth’s last day will be May 1.

Jessie says of her upcoming transition -

“I am honored and thrilled to be taking on a new level of leadership as Executive Director of Resource Generation. The RG community has hugely invested in, supported, and challenged me to be the person and leader I am today. I feel as though my past four and a half years of work, growth, personal and professional development have been preparing me for this opportunity. I am proud to follow in Elspeth’s footsteps as a young person with wealth and class privilege leading the RG community towards a world where land, wealth, and power are equitably distributed.”

We look forward to Jessie’s leadership and to supporting her as she steps into this new role. You can read more about Jessie below.

In community,

Sam Seidel & Irene Kao for the RG Board

Board Chairs of the Executive Transition Committee

JS ED letter photo 2

Jessie Spector has worked at Resource Generation since graduating from Wesleyan University in 2008. Over the past 4+ years, Jessie has played a variety of roles at RG including office manager, chapter organizing, co-coordinating several Making Money Make Change retreats, developing the campaign for tax justice, and facilitating East and West coast leadership trainings in her role as Program Director.

As an activist and donor, Jessie participates in several innovative cross-class models of wealth redistribution: the Criminal Justice Initiative, a circle of donors and activists who use consensus to fund the transformation of the criminal justice system in the US, and the Solidarity Family of POOR Magazine, a cohort of young people with wealth learning from and fundraising for POOR and the project of Homefulness, a permanent and sustainable pilot model of co-housing for homeless people.

Jessie is constantly inspired by the power of organizing within her own community of young people with wealth and class privilege in partnership with people working for justice from all class backgrounds. She is in particular awe of the personal and familial deepening she has experienced and gets to witness within the RG community.

When not at work you will find Jessie riding her bike, watching Downton Abbey, baking rosemary bread, or boogying on the dance floor.
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Mar
19
2013

“Coming Out” as Rich Kids: anna winham

Posted on March 19, 2013 by anna.rg Posted in Class Privilege, Featured, Interns and Fellows, Money Stories | Tagged ,

I, anna winham, an undergraduate student at Dartmouth and current RG Bay Area intern, recently wrote this piece in The Dartmouth Radical, identifying my struggles to reconcile my politics with my background, my identity with my identity. I worry about how to stay out of “false generosity” territory while still leveraging my class privilege.

My pal Paulo tells me (on the second page of Chapter 1 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed no less!):

“This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt to ‘soften’ the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their ‘generosity,’ the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this ‘generosity,’ which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. That is why dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat to its source.”

I have a confession to make: I’m a rich kid (thus, oppressor?), and I know it’s dreadfully unseemly of me to declare myself so. In fact, this social convention is so clever precisely because it keeps so many of us from that crucial first move of beginning to explore the inequality and oppression in which we are complicit. Double-in-fact, it’s likely that many “rich kids” don’t even know we are rich kids – for reference’s sake, U.S. household income at the 95th percentile is around $148,000.

As Catherine Rampell explores in her New York Times piece “Why So Many Rich People Don’t Feel Very Rich,” income inequality in the upper percentiles of the U.S. actually increases. For example, data from the Paris School of Economics shows that the top 1-.5% average income is around $398,000; the top .5-.01% is around $722,000; the top .1% is around $2,296,000. In Rampell’s words, “when evaluating their own incomes, most families are trying to keep up with the Joneses: they envy the wealthier neighbor whose lifestyle they aim to match. And in dollar terms, the rich are falling far shorter of their respective Joneses than the middle-income and lower-income are. So when the 95th-percentilers think of their incomes in the context of what their richer neighbors are earning, this cohort doesn’t feel very rich. …It is perhaps no wonder, then, that so many people who are statistically rich call themselves ‘upper middle’ or even ‘middle class.’”

WARNING: YOU MIGHT BE A RICH KID TOO. In fact, the composition of the readership at Dartmouth College makes it statistically much more likely that you are than in the general population.

It’s tremendously uncomfortable to admit to myself yet another way in which I have benefitted and continue to benefit from the oppression of other people – in the form of, for example, receiving financial wealth from the company my father works for, investors in which are connected to companies funded by some workers who don’t earn a living wage – while still thinking this oppression is wrong and trying to take action to end it. But my personal discomfort isn’t much on wage or de jure slavery.

It has, however, made me uncomfortable to such an extent that I’ve basically ignored it for several years. This obviously isn’t a very practical solution to wealth disparity – to disregard my current place on the unjust spectrum.

There are plenty of people who have been born into or stumbled into or privileged into or even to some extent earned financial privilege who want social change and acknowledge that the system which produced this wealth is bad. These people, we these people, can ignore the fact that their, our, parents hang out with the CEO of Monsanto or sit on the board of General Electric or make a lot of financial donations (… and often these donations reside in the false generosity category, going to the schools of wealthy children, to museums, or to other institutions that primarily benefit the group of people who hold the resources already). Or we can engage with these facts and leverage our privilege as part of the complex, cross-class, solidaritous process to forge a more just society.

This thought gives me pause, and I wonder what Paulo would think of all this. It strikes me that he’d be on board, but only if this leveraging of privilege remains dialectical, dialogical, reflective, and with rather than for the people. Given his discussion of the absolute necessity of engaging critically with the world as Subjects in order to unveil the structures that we otherwise would not identify so as to arrive at an understanding of ourselves as historical Subjects – Subjects in a world always becoming – who, as such, can influence the future of the objective world with which we exist. It seems that the particular limit-situations of critical thinkers who also have financial wealth present their own set of challenges. The Subjects in these situations have multiple possible routes for action, but disengaging from this privilege surely demonstrates an unwillingness to think critically about the limit-situation.

The fact of the matter is, in order to achieve a more equitable distribution of resources, we can hardly ignore the people who have most of those resources currently. And, if we happen to be some of those people who hold more resources than is just, we cannot ignore the fact that we do so; we must instead engage with our financial and/or class privilege, in the process becoming more truly solidary rather than the dispensers of false ‘generosity.’

I have begun the process of reconciling my identity with my identity, of stopping conveniently ignoring specific parts of where I come from, of paying lip-service to “engaging with privilege” while not actually engaging with my privilege at all. I hope you’ll join me, whatever your particular background. I hope we can help each other learn.

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Mar
19
2013

“Coming Out” as Rich Kids: Holly Fetter

Posted on March 19, 2013 by anna.rg Posted in Class Privilege, Featured, Money Stories |

Holly Fetter, an undergraduate student at Stanford and praxis group leader, wrote this piece in STATIC, a site for Stanford activists to connect and create.

Holly writes of her piece: “This piece was written when I was first coming into my class identity and accompanying consciousness. Though my ideas and actions around class have shifted in the past year, it still feels important to share this with others. This particular post catalyzed the development of an RG Praxis Group and several class privilege workshops and cross-class discussions at Stanford University. If you’re interested in bringing RG to your campus or community, sharing your personal experience is a great way to start.”

As soon as the word “privilege” entered my vocabulary, I found myself unpacking an inundation ofknapsacks filled with the stuff, frantically trying to unlearn 16 years of internalized racism, ableism, classism… My white identity was the easiest to grapple with because it was the most visible. So I spent (and am still spending) years reading, talking, and writing about whiteness so that I could begin to feel more comfortable living with the tension of being white in the United States.

But class was a different story. I didn’t want to even acknowledge my class identity because it made me feel guilty and ashamed. I worried about the (usually correct) assumptions that wealth carried with it, as well as how it might undermine my credibility as a budding activist. In high school, I avoided the topic altogether, choosing to make friends with other affluent kids because it felt a lot simpler. Class was apparent there – we knew what kind of cars our classmates’ had (or didn’t have), what their houses were like, and what their parents’ jobs were.

At Stanford, however, my class identity was a lot easier to hide. Suddenly, I was 1,700 miles away from my family, in a place where I magically became a “student” – a socioeconomic status that connoted egalitarianism and bean and cheese burritos at Treehouse. It’s easy for some people to hide behind this false class identity, especially students with wealth. We don’t need to confront class if we don’t want to. Our identity as “students” helps us hide our economic privilege, but it doesn’t erase it. And often, our class status doesn’t change much between The Farm and home.

But I’ve decided to come out of the class closet, and acknowledge my privilege and complicity as a part of the 1%. This process hasn’t been a particularly easy one, but it’s crucial to my development as an activist, an ally, and a friend. Because here’s what I know now: we cannot afford to hide our class identities. It’s destructive to our peers and colleagues as class privilege manifests itself in subtle but violent ways. Here are some examples that might resonate with you, based on a list provided by Resource Generation, a grassroots organization devoted to organizing young people with wealth to leverage resources for social change.

You’re abusing class privilege when…

  • You always insist on being in charge of a group, meeting, or conversation.
  • You are flakey and unreliable because you have yet to internalize the importance of dependence and commitment to a community or cause.
  • You assert that your politics are the best politics and that everyone else is wrong, without taking into account the importance of context and privilege in shaping one’s worldview.
  • You use your skills rooted in privilege (i.e., access to education and connections) to contribute to others’ projects and campaigns, but then insist on taking all the credit.
  • You assume that your degree from Stanford makes you an expert on the lives of others.
  • You see a problem and assume that you can fix it without consulting those affected by the problem itself.
  • You put too much emphasis on the importance of academic debate and analysis when contemplating a community’s issues.
  • You put yourself at the center of your work, which manifests itself in your actions in group spaces – you walk in and out of meetings as you please, you disrupt the space by leaving early or arriving late, or you make decisions about your life based on what’s best for you, and not for the community of which you want to be a part.
  • You undervalue or deride the expression of emotion by those affected by oppression.
  • You organize an event with a theme or activity that might make others uncomfortable. For example, a dorm meeting that is “homeless people”-themed, thus alienating invitees who feel connected to the experience of being unhoused. (This was actually going to be the theme of my freshman dorm house meeting one week…).

These are only a few manifestations of class privilege that can and must be unlearned if we are to work in solidarity across class barriers. And we must create movements that incorporate a variety of disparate political and personal perspectives (and thus a variety of class experiences) in order to successfully challenge and reimagine power. But one of the biggest struggles for privileged people is learning the value of interdependence. We have been socialized to believe that being independent is crucial to our success, and that our wealth allows us to be perpetually unrooted and unaccountable for our actions. By building honest relationships across class identities, we can begin to transform the problematic construction of “community” among the 1%, challenging dominant values of independence and competition that are at the foundation of the U.S.’ hypercapitalist culture.

This process may sound impossible, but it’s not. At Stanford, we’re surrounded by students from a variety of class backgrounds. Don’t be afraid to make friends outside your socioeconomic status. Visit spaces and events that make you uncomfortable. Have the hard conversations about your role as a privileged person in whatever movement you’re a part of. Engage with the Stanford First-Generation Low Income Partnership (FLIP), and build community around socioeconomic experiences. A few months ago, I attended a special version of Crossing the Line that was centered around class, and I was the only person who crossed the line when upper-class identity was mentioned. In the debrief that followed, folks were both surprised and grateful that someone who didn’t identify as low income showed up at the event. This reaction was frustrating, because itshouldn’t be a big deal if someone with class privilege shows up at a conversation about class privilege. As with privilege based on race, gender, or sexual orientation, we often assume that if we’re in the advantaged group, we don’t have to talk about it. But that ignorance reflects a damaging sense of superiority and innocence. It’s everyone’s responsibility to talk about class.

Last week, Salon published a profile on Leah Hunt-Hendrix, the granddaughter of a billionaire who has immersed herself in Occupy Wall Street. The article left me feeling conflicted, but she shared a few pieces of wisdom that I appreciated. One came from her thoughts on supporting the 99%: “There are two aspects to solidarity… One is standing with others and the other is an awareness of one’s own complicity in systems of oppression.” Aside from her use of ableist language, I like this quote. I think it speaks to the important part of privilege that we often overlook. As the 1%, we can’t deny the fact that we are benefitting from a system of inequality, a vast understatement that most of us would rather ignore. Instead of acknowledging and interrogating this experience, though, I see a lot of my wealthy peers try to escape their social positions by dressing like hipsters or living in co-ops. But when you hide behind a bohemian lifestyle, you aren’t building cross-class alliances or breaking down class barriers. We must own up to our privilege and begin to critically examine it so that we can move toward realizing justice in an empowering interpersonal and structural way.

The thing that leaves me feeling unsettled by the Salon profile is that there’s no perspective from the 99%. There’s no one but ourselves checking us on our privilege, and that can be destructive. Yes, having safe, homogeneous communities can be valuable when we begin our exploration of our privileged identities. But there needs to be space for us to work with others and get pushback for our implicit classism. When we get in these therapeutic spaces centered around self-congratulatory storytelling, we lose our effectiveness as allies. So I want to leave this post open to your criticism and questions. And I want to share some of my own as well: how (if at all!) can people with class privilege be in solidarity with those without it? Can we be authentically engaged with grassroots organizing? What does it mean to go from OWS during the week to a yacht on the weekend, as was the experience of Ms. Hunt-Hendrix? Can we benefit from economic injustice while fighting against it?

For now, I’m going to work on alleviating the side effects of my class privilege. If you’ve ever worked with me, you know I have a lot to fix. I’m going to be more honest and vulnerable with others, and continue to engage with conversations around class at Stanford. I only wish that I’d come out sooner, but part of class privilege is the privilege not to have to acknowledge it. I regret the countless microaggressions that my friends and classmates must have dealt with as I clumsily negotiated these cross-class relationships over the years, wondering why it took them so long to trust me. But now, I understand that I have a responsibility to enable trust and solidarity to develop within my friendships, and that I can’t expect that process to be quick or simple. I’ve finally learned to be okay with feeling awkward and ignorant, because that discomfort is productive.

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Mar
19
2013

“Coming Out” as Rich Kids: Elspeth Gilmore

Posted on March 19, 2013 by anna.rg Posted in Class Privilege, Featured, GIving, Money Stories | Tagged

Re-blogged, due to our partnership with Bolder Giving:

Elspeth Gilmore, current executive director of RG, writes in Bolder Giving about coming to terms with class privilege and inheritance.

At age 33, I’m at last coming into my own about my wealth.  I’ve made mistakes.  I’ve learned a lot.  I’m finally clear that, for me, using my resources to make change is about collective action.

I grew up wealthy in New York City.  Early mornings on the way to school, I was pained by the contrast between the townhouse I had just left and the people I passed sleeping on the street.  My parents raised me as a Quaker with values of justice and simplicity, and inspired me with their civil rights activism and community values.  How could I reconcile my values with our lifestyle?

Twelve years ago, I received what for many people would be a dream-come-true:  a $1 million trust fund.  But receiving a huge chunk of money felt like a burden to me. I hadn’t earned it, I knew that it was more than I needed, and I didn’t know how to connect it to my commitment to live my values. So I tried not to think about it.   I succeeded in not thinking about it for six years.

Then a friend introduced me to an organization calledResource Generation.  It’s mission: to organize young people with financial wealth to leverage their privilege and resources for social change. I was amazed to find peers who had money and shared my values.   For the first time, I could begin to sort through my feelings while developing the skills and analysis to take action. I was hugely relieved not to do it alone.

Early in my involvement with Resource Generation, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast and shocked me into action. I was a founding member of Gulf South Allied Funders (GSAF), an innovative donor circle that engaged people from three progressive donor networks – Resource Generation, Threshold Foundation, and theWomen Donors Network.  Together, we raised $3.5 million to support community rebuilding on the Gulf coast.  Unlike most giving circles where donors decide where the money goes, GSAF entrusted the distribution of these funds to a foundation that already had strong relationships with grassroots organizations in the Gulf South:  the 21st Century Foundation, one of the few, endowed, Black foundations in the U.S.  Through GSAF, I learned to take risks as a donor, wrote the biggest check I had ever written, and learned to value the sharing of power that happens in collective giving. I also came away with ideas and questions about the changes needed in philanthropy to make it truly responsible to “grantees” – the people who are directly impacted and doing the work . I emerged from the 3-year experience altered and inspired.  This experience was seminal in clarifying that I not only would, but could, give away most of my trust fund.

At first I felt paralyzed by the need to create a perfect giving plan, but I gave myself permission simply to give, even if it was smaller amounts to lots of organizations.  I personally knew lots of people working with great organizations, so these were the recipients of my first gifts. The important thing was to start. I stand to inherit a second trust, which brings up new questions, but I’m finding that for the most part my next steps remain the same. I plan to give most of the remaining and future inheritance to a few intermediaries (such as progressive community foundations).  Giving this way is in alignment with my belief that, most of the time, donors shouldn’t be the sole decision-makers for where money goes, and it lets me give effectively without spending a lot of time on philanthropy.  As I’ve told my supportive family:  I believe having less money will actually improve my quality of life, not diminish it.  I want to be self-supporting and to rely on my community rather than my money.  Wealth is too often isolating.

Right now what remains of my inheritance is invested in Community Loan Funds at varying levels of risk, such as the Lakota Community Loan Fund, providing capital in communities that are often denied loans. While I’m working on giving it, I’m happy to have my money out of the stock market and constructively used.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that no matter how much any of us give, we can create exponentially more change by organizing other people with wealth and acting together.  As co-director of Resource Generation, I see that more clearly than ever.  I’m personally really excited about the organizing around taxes that is going on right now.  I have been on a steep learning curve about tax history (rich people used to be taxed a lot more!) and the role of the wealthy in paying our fair share in taxes so that public needs like healthcare and education are met.

I’m motivated by a vision of young people with wealth becoming an increasingly strategic force for positive change.  I see us transforming philanthropy, informing new frameworks for how social justice movements are funded, supporting the rise of impact investing, and organizing around why there’s financial inequality in the first place.  There is a lot of work to do!   I’m inspired by my generation –and by others younger than me — bringing our creativity and vision to the table.  I’m looking forward to my last hurrah of redistributing much of my inheritance in the next few years, and then spending the rest of my lifetime creatively working for change.

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Feb
28
2013

Letters for Tax Justice

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Szmonko Posted in Cross-Class, Local Chapter, Money Stories, Racial Justice, Socially Responsible Investing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , ,

 

On February 20th, Resource Generation members around the country participated in a national day of action to stop “fiscal cliff” cuts to social programs and call for higher taxes on the rich. (You can find information about the impacts of the sequestration cuts in your state here, courtesy of the Coalition on Human Needs.)

We submitted more than 30 letters to the editor to newspapers in San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Washington DC, and New York, and three were published! Check out the links above to see the results. Congrats to Mac Liman, Becca Polk, and Anna Winham for getting their letters published.  Snippets of brilliance from some of our other members are below.

We wrote because we know that taxes are the best way we have of turning private wealthinto public good, even while we also have to fight to change the government’s investment in wars at home and abroad. Fighting for higher taxes on ourselves and our families is one way we can ensure wealth doesn’t stay concentrated in the hands of the few, and contribute to movements for racial and economic justice that have been leading struggles over where and how our public resources are spent.

This April the Tax team will be launching a Resource Generation tax platform, and starting to fight for a higher capital gains tax that taxes income from the stock market at the same rate as income from work.

Please get in contact with me by Monday, March 4th if you’d like to learn more or plug in to future tax actions, whether you want to join the core organizing team, serve as a liaison between the tax team and your chapter, or just participate in upcoming actions.

In Struggle,

Isaac Lev Szmonko

Campaign Organizer, on behalf of the Tax Justice Team

 

Dear Editor, 

Insisting we shouldn’t panic about the sequester because we won’t feel the effects right away is like saying, “Sure!  Swallow that arsenic!  It will take time to kill you, so why worry now?” 

The truth is, too many of my neighbors and friends already feel like they’re barely surviving: they face staggering health care and student loan debt, they’ve lost their home or can’t access credit to buy one, and after years of under- and unemployment, they’ve lost hope of ever finding a job with a living wage.  And as a Chicago south-sider, I see everyday that these struggles are even more severe among communities of color, who are disproportionately affected by our floundering economy and failed economic policies.

Meanwhile, the rich get richer and life is better than ever for the wealthiest Americans.  I know because I am the 1%: my parents’ high incomes paid for private education and excellent healthcare, allowed me to graduate from an Ivy League school without debt, cushioned our family through the recession, and afforded me privileges that I will no doubt pass on to my own children.  

So it’s true: it won’t feel like free-fall right away if we step off the “fiscal cliff.”  In the long run, though, for people like me and my family, the parachute of privilege we wear will help us survive without a scratch.  The vast majority of Americans aren’t so lucky.

Working with Resource Generation, an organization that organizes young people with financial wealth to leverage resources and privilege for social change, I have learned just how unjust our tax codes are.  As a nation, we have more than enough to go around.  We simply need to be courageous enough to ask the richest people and corporations to finally pay their fair share.  Good first steps would be closing tax loopholes for corporations, ending subsidies to agro-business and the oil and gas industries, and passing the Buffett Rule and a higher capital gains tax for individuals.

It’s time for corporations to pay their fair share. It’s time for the wealthy to pay our fair share. I volunteer. Raise my taxes.  

Ashley Horan, Chicago

 

Dear Editor,

We believe that cuts to the Pentagon shouldn’t go only to deficit reduction, but to reinvestment in schools, health care, and infrastructure.  We believe in raising taxes on the rich enough to actually expand social programs – not merely slow the bleeding.  And many of us are wealthy – I know, because I am one of them.   I want the Buffett rule, I want higher capital gains taxes, I want a transaction tax, and I want my income tax raised. Obama’s current position is actually less than I should be able to get away with, and less than the country deserves. 

Ari Wohlfeiler, Brooklyn

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