Category: Blog

I’m leading a workshop in Philly on April 5 for people with access to wealth who want to support social justice work, and I thought some Enough readers might be interested. Here’s the link – Giving and Beyond: Leveraging Privilege and Resources for Grassroots Movements (I’m privately calling it “Philanthropy for Anti-Capitalists”). Please come!

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What does it mean to be both a donor and an activist? How can people with access to wealth support grassroots social justice movements? How do we challenge institutionalized oppression within philanthropy? What are some ways to leverage privilege and resources beyond giving money?

Giving and Beyond: Leveraging Privilege and Resources for Grassroots Movements
A workshop exploring class, money and social change.
Sunday April 5, 1-5pm
1500 Walnut Street, Second Floor Conference Room
Fee: Sliding Scale $35-$75 
To register for this workshop click here.
(This workshop is a solicitation-free space)

This interactive workshop is intended for people who have a working understanding of social justice philanthropy and grassroots organizing, and who have experience giving or planning to give. We’ll share some specific models for giving money within a social justice framework, explore other ways of leveraging privilege, talk about what it means to support grassroots organizing beyond the mainstream nonprofit model, and much more. We’ll also have time to delve into deeper questions about accountability, how much is “enough”, applying social justice principles to our personal practices around money, and whatever else you bring!

This workshop is designed specifically for people with social justice values who have access to financial wealth. “Wealth” can mean many different things: it can be something we have now or something we expect to gain access to in the future, it can come from earnings or inheritance, and it can range widely in scale from a thousand or less to millions or more. This workshop is for you if you feel that you have (or have access to) substantially more resources than you need to support yourself.

A couple weeks ago I was having a talk with somebody at a coffee shop in my neighborhood, and I noticed some graffiti on the bathroom wall that said: “Downward mobility is not radical.” Incidentally, the talk I was having that day was with a young white class-privileged person who was struggling with what to do with some inherited money, and we were talking about wealth and social justice and giving away inheritance and all of these things, and the whole time I kept pondering the graffiti and thinking that actually, downward mobility is radical. Wouldn’t it be very radical if all wealthy people gave away their money and spent only what they needed to live? 

[I’m talking here about the kind of downward mobility that’s chosen and intentional, not the job-loss/cuts-to-social-services/increasing-wealth-disparity kind.]

 

But I know what the graffiti means – it means that the writer is sick of people who act like they don’t have money when actually they do. Personally, I lived this problematic phenomenon for several years after high school, which I spent hitchhiking, trainhopping, and dumpster diving my way around the country in the company of other freewheeling punk youth who (like me) often lacked a particularly tight race and class analysis. Continue reading “On downward mobility”

I wanted to share a couple resources that have come to my attention recently: first, our friend Dori (magical herbalist extraordinaire) sent us this link to a couple of great radio interviews about connections between capitalism and patriarchy and many other things. She writes,

dean & tyrone,

here is an interview with sylvia federici, who wrote caliban and the witch, discussing the european witch hunts and the rise of capitalism/destruction of the commons. thought you might find it interesting, especially the part about the loss of magical knowledge as part of the undermining of the peasant class. 

http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/48133

love, dori

Also I’ve been following the (Re)thinking Walking project (a collaboration between two brilliant writers), which I highly recommend for some thoughtful and insightful reflections about important things like self-care, movement and movement building, power, history, and anti-capitalism (of course). Take a look.

Dean gave a brilliant lecture on Monday night in New York, about trans politics on a neoliberal landscape, and of course I was up half the night thinking about these things. There are many fascinating angles from which to approach this topic, but here’s the one I want to talk about now:

Neoliberalism’s hallmarks are cooptation and incorporation, meaning that the words and ideas of resistance movements are frequently recast to become legitimizing tools for oppressive political agendas. 

One simple-to-grasp example of this is LGBT organizations working to strengthen hate crimes legislation (or feminist organizations working to strengthen domestic violence legislation, etc), which in turn strengthens policing, the PIC, and the criminal legal system which are themselves major sites for violence against queer and trans people and women. Mainstream LGBT and anti-violence organizations use language about “safety” for women and queer people, but really mean safety for the privileged few who aren’t targets of policing and incarceration, and along the way queer liberation (and feminist) rhetoric gets used to enforce and legitimize racist tools of state violence.

So, one of the things I was thinking about while lying in bed the other night contemplating neoliberalism and cooptation was a book I’m reading, The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, which I highly recommend (although I’d love it more if it had a better critique of capitalism generally and of white supremacy). There are a million and one things to say about this book (which is all about neoliberalism), but there’s one small side point – about philanthropy, specifically the Ford Foundation – that I will share here because it’s relevant (and because I’m obsessed with philanthropy I guess). Continue reading “More agonizing tales from philanthropy”

I received this email from my friend Adele Carpenter that I thought Enough readers would appreciate. It’s so important to remember how much grassroots movements could really use a little economic stimulus right about now.

Dear loves,

Some of you may have been privy to the international gross-ness known as last week.  We are officially turning the beat around, as of Monday, starting with the full moon, okay?  If you were somehow spared the pervasive bummerness of last week, be glad. Continue reading “Hopeful letters from friends”

We just learned of this blog about a project where people give away $100 in whatever way they choose and then come together to discuss the experience. Have a look.

Hi Friends,

I am posting an interview with prison abolition activist and anarchist pastor Jason Lydon about his take on personal practices of wealth redistribution. Interesting and inspiring stuff.  Have a look.

I wanted to share this call for submissions from a cool organization in Massachusetts, Class Action. It’s a cross-class anthology of personal stories about class, money, privilege, oppression, and other things we love to talk about here a lot. The deadline is soon (February 28th) – but I know lots of y’all have great stories to share and you should!

Is it just me, or have things been particularly rough recently? I got back from a winter vacation a couple weeks ago to news of attacks on Gaza, Oscar Grant being shot in an Oakland BART station, and a well-known activist from my hometown admitting to being an FBI informant. The economic crisis (and its devastating effect on communities) is ongoing, neoliberal fundamentalism is as out of control as ever, organizers are still being targeted, state-sponsored murder of people of color is happening everywhere.

Meanwhile, Obama was inaugurated yesterday, but that’s not what’s giving me hope. I’ve been thinking about the tirelessness of the organizers in my life, many of whom worked hard get Obama into office, and who are still organizing – in solidarity with Gaza, to stop police violence, against privatization, gentrification, war, homelessness – mostly organizers who are affected by these things so much more directly than I am, and are inspiring me endlessly with joy, art, camp, attitude, and resilience in the face of ongoing crises.

I thought Enough readers might appreciate this wonderful statement by the Audre Lorde Project: A Different Kind of Morning in America – so helpful in thinking about the interconnectedness of these crises and how to approach them in our work.

A reader wrote in after I posted my giving plan, asking if I ever plan on having children or buying a house, and how those things affect my decisions about giving. These are questions I get a lot, so I thought I’d post part of my response here: Continue reading “Enough.”