Last November, Jess and Dean worked on putting together a dinner party that would function as a kind of group consciousness-raising session about wealth redistribution. We invited a number of friends, several who did not know each other but were connected socially through us and others. The group we invited included people from a range of class experiences and current circumstances. We created the event based on the idea that a key way to make change around wealth redistribution is to start conversations in our intimate circles that are overtly aimed at being non-judgmental and where people can address fears and concerns and teach each other models and ideas for addressing them. We created a warm space by providing food and having the event at a home. We structured the conversation around a couple questions: “What keeps us from clearly seeing our role in the economy?” and “What can be done to redistribute wealth now?” We ate food and then put some big paper on the wall and started discussing the first question. People were amazingly eager to get at the root fears and issues that come up in these discussions and even share intimate facts about their personal economics. We were surprised and delighted. We had not planned to have the group each deliver personal narratives about how we are addressing money in our lives and how it relates to our histories and fears and hopes, but a participant suggested it and at one point we all went around in a circle and shared a bit of this personal perspective. The group was far more daring than we had expected in a first event and it was very exciting. Below we have included the invitation we used (via email) and the notes from the periods of conversation that were focused on the two main questions and the tangents they produced. We hope this model is useful and that you will adapt it to your context and write to Enough and tell us what happens!

Dear Friends,

We hope this message finds you well.

We’re writing to invite you to a community dinner to eat and talk together about money and economic justice – in particular, our own complicated relationships to both. We’ve been part of a recent set of conversations with people from around the country who believe talking about the complex politics of money is a good thing to do with intimate groups of friends who share various values so that people can confront all the cultural incentives to NOT talk about these things. We want to have dinner and talk informally about things like: What keeps us from clearly seeing our positions in the global economy? How do our own financial lives relate to our political beliefs and social-justice work? What feels troubling about all this? What feels good?

We are both working on and thinking about these issues in various ways. Dean is currently co-editing a new Web site called “Enough” aimed at opening up conversations amongst activists and progressives about how we can live our politics of wealth redistribution, how we can acknowledge our own and each other’s contradictions non-judgmentally, and how we can inspire personal action to redistribute wealth. Jessica is active with an organization called Resource Generation, in which young progressive/radical people with class privilege support and challenge each other to align their resources with their social-change values (<http://www.resourcegeneration.org/>). We want to have intimate, honest, cross-class conversations with people in our communities about politics and money, and we’d love for you to participate.

This first conversation is meant as a space to build trust, start talking, and inspire more conversation and work on these issues. We are being intentional about who eats and talks together around this table, so please RSVP at your earliest convenience to let us know whether you will or won’t be there.

Thursday, Nov. 1, 2007, 7:30pm

Dean is coordinating food, so be in touch with him if you’d like to bring something.

Love,

Dean and Jess

Notes from the dinner:

First Discussion Question: What keeps us from clearly seeing our positions in the global economy?

• Pop culture-representation of wealth-celebrity
• Day-to-day survival-easy to forget things outside that
• Neighborhoodsàconsciousnessàstandards/norms
  • • • àinforms relative sense of wealth/income
      • àdiversity
• conflicting info = no sense of big picture (global/national)
  • • • àlittle bits of infoànot immersed
• pleasure + relief = need for space to deal with day-to-day oppression and survival
  • à overwhelm needs relief
  • à $ is a source of pleasure/spending/”deserving”
• info does not equal agency/power
• class level names are misleading (“rich,” “poverty line”)
• always climb the class ladder-increase expenses as income increases
• pressure on poorest people to have flashy consumer goods
• consumption on credit
• status symbols – consumption in subcultures to look “poor”
• valorization of “broke” creates shame/silence around wealth
• What does security mean? (national/personal financial)
• Security personal rather than collective
• Safety in material possessions
• Family messages
• Security/insecurity in coming to new country–$ to provide security – trying to be safe
• Survival of oppressive experiences: Jews, Japanese Americans

Second Discussion Question: What can we do to redistribute wealth? What interesting approaches and ideas have we heard about or participated in?

Specific ideas that came up:

• Give to radical philanthropic orgs (foundations)—is that an oxymoron?
• Give to activist-led funds
• Making giving a part of everyday life
• Redistributing land?
• à South Africa: land to farmers
• defining wealth beyond monetary terms
• Gifts to individuals
• Paying full price for art projects or events (of friends, etc.)
• Scamming the state – unemployment insurance, etc.
• Being a citizen of a community who has responsibility to others’ welfare
• Sharing with friends exciting ways to redistribute
• “small” amounts make a difference .. a few dollars matter
• history of giving by faith-based progressive groups
• tithing formulas
• places to research where to give money?
• Giving to majority-POC orgs, by-and-for orgs, orgs governed with redistributionist politics
• Giving thoughtfully
• Donor organizing
• Funding orgs where youth are in power
• Microfinancing – a good model? Power issues? Could we do it more locally? Capitalist structure? Zero-interest loans—what about just giving?
• Giving circles – use group identity to give more than you would on your own

Concerns/ways to address them that came up:

community process around giving: accountability

• is donating a valid form of redistributing wealth?
• As an artist – balancing survival and giving
• Different feelings about different methods
  • Give to individuals
  • Give to a specific event
  • Give to build movement infrastructure
  • Give to non-501c3s
• Help people be comfortable with different ways of giving
• How can we be critical without being immobilized by guilt?
• Relationships between donors and grantmakers and grantees – how can that be accountable?
• The emotional difficulty is part of the work
• To do this work, we have to step out of interacting only with people just like us, and all the challenges of that
• Asking ourselves what makes us feel safe instead of assuming that financial security is the answer (things that make us feel safe: Community, mutual support, communities of care – opposite of privatized health care, privatized wealth)
• donors who want recognition (how can we let go of control in giving)
• building resources in your immediate community
  • false sense of sharing?
  • Elite?
• How much to give?
  • Based on what you’re giving to?
  • Based on your total wealth? Income?
  • Whatever you can do in the moment?
• Donating art/self (work, help) instead of money?
• Decide what you need to live on, donate anything you have beyond that
• Does this work in every field?
• Choosing beyond “need”:
  • Living alone
  • Other ways of spending
  • What’s a luxury? What’s necessity?
• Save for retirement? Family?
• Socially responsible investing?
• Socially responsible family planners?
• Continuum: traditional investing to SRI to donations to nonprofits to giving away everything
• Choices of where to fall on that continuum are related to our trust in social change and our trust in the system
• How much is enough? How much can I give? What seems necessary in the context I am in? How does that relate to others’ needs? How do extremes of poverty and wealth coexist? Where do I fit?
• Are we essentializing human nature? Or are we becoming too relativist?
• The more I keep, the more someone else doesn’t have – what does it mean to accept that as true?
• Sustain or destroy capitalism?
• Does welfare stave off class revolt? Is class revolt a relevant concept today?
• Is interest immoral?
• What if you give all the interest you earn?
• Can we really influence culture around giving?
• Well, if it’s all impossible, let’s just do it!
• Can we expand our ideas of what revolution looks like?
• Consciousness raising
• The action is so tangible – giving away money
• Visualize the new world
• Sharing resources – where to give
• Figure out your own way
• Give randomly – is this negligent?
• Where did the $ come from?
• What inspires me? How to support that?
• Give up control of where you’re giving and give randomly?

Resources named: Bomb the Suburbs/No More Prisons by Billy Wimsatt; The Revolution Will Not Be Funded by Incite!

Action Steps:

• Continue cross-class conversations regarding living a politics of wealth redistribution
• Group accountability and personal initiative to do
• Sharing ideas
• Counter the inhumanity of capitalism – continue dialogue
• Figure out what I can do proactively (figure out what I do know)
• Talk to my family as a part of my practice
• Create concentric circles beyond this one
• Notice which themes come up, every time, in these conversations
• What tools could we create to provoke this dialogue in lots of different contexts?
• Want to focus on the hard questions, the nitty gritty: the politics of spending money on wine, computers, electricity bills, clothing
• A wave of persistent shame and guilt – need to pull it apart
• Research, understand more about $ and how it works in the world
• Be more conscious about various actions involving $
• Being confused is part of it
• Give more and more consciously
• Having these conversations with others (e.g., wealthy people who are not politicized)
• Talk about race and class
• Privileged people using privileged access to talk to other privileged people