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John -- Last week, Resource Generation joined a funder briefing organized by the Movement for Black Lives where they asked for $50M in *new* funding to support Black-led liberation organizing. Their demand was clear: “Fund us like you want us to win.”
When we say we want to end racial capitalism and practice wealth redistribution, it means following the demands of Black people to defund the police, invest in Black communities, and fund a generation of Black Liberation organizing. We want Black-led liberation organizing to win. We want poor and working-class movements leading the fight for the equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power to win.
Resource Generation is committed to raise $5 million by 2020 in *new* money towards M4BL’s $50M ask to increase funding support of this movement right now.
As a community of young people with access to wealth committed to racial and economic justice and solidarity with poor and working-class led movements, we are being called to meet this moment.
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Here’s how RG plans to support young people with access to wealth and class privilege in showing up to meet this ask of Black-led movements:
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This Friday, June 19th, aka Juneteenth is a day commemorating June 19th, 1865 when, two full years after the Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery, this news finally reached enslaved Black people in Galveston, TX. This Friday and Juneteenth weekend (and beyond!), M4BL are calling for days of action to defend Black Lives. RGers - let's show up for this!
- NOW: Text “DEFEND” to ‘90975’ to get on M4BL's text list for updates about this weekend’s actions and future actions
- TOMORROW: Join M4BL’s mass Zoom meeting at 3 PM ET/12 PM PT on how you can support the weekend of action (Note: if you were unable to join a previous zoom, please register for this one which will have a higher capacity)
- THIS JUNETEENTH WEEKEND:
- Mobilize for in person and virtual actions! (See if your chapter is mobilizing for an action this weekend, if not offer to coordinate an RG crew to show up together or just show up! Look up and RSVP to in person and virtual actions at sixnineteen.com)
- Boost actions and content on social with this toolkit from M4BL.
- ALL WEEK & UNTIL WE WIN: Tweet, post, call/email legislators and lift up the demands to Defund the Police and Invest in Black Communities at sixnineteen.com/demands/
In the years after the Emancipation Proclamation, a form of reparations for slavery was proposed -- 40 acres and a mule promised to freed people. It ultimately was blocked. In 2015, the Atlanta Blackstar[1] did a round-up of different calculations for the financial cost of reparations -- the lowest amount, which would account only for the land and a mule, is $6.4 trillion.
Meeting this moment of raising $5M for Black-led liberation organizing from the RG community is a small but necessary step in investing in the movement that will lead us to the new wins and possibilities that the future holds. True reparations in the form of truth and reconciliation needs to go far beyond money and must include money.
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RG will raise $5M in *new* funds for Black-led liberation organizing in 2020! Here is why:
- Our 2018 Resource Survey, completed by over 300 RG members, showed that our collective individual net assets were about $1 billion. $5M is .5% of this community’s total net assets. (We know RGers’ access to wealth varies widely and this is still less than a percent of our total net assets. This is just the beginning.)
- In 2014 in response to the nascent Black Lives Matter Movement we ran our first large-scale coordinated fundraising campaign, It Starts Today, to collectively move $1M to Black-led liberation organizing -- we ended up moving $1.6 M as a community. Since then our membership has grown significantly. We know that $5M is well within our reach and reflects our capacity.
- Our organizational goal this year is to reach $50M overall committed through our Giving Pledge to social justice movements in 2020, and $5M is 10% of that annual goal. (10% is aligned with our goal for members to give 10% of their overall giving to our national campaign partners and their networks).
- Specifically we’re calling on our members to practice voluntary wealth redistribution in the service of systemic wealth redistribution! This looks like:
- Give at least 10% of your net access to wealth. Since 7% is the average stock market return, 10% of your net assets is the start of actually redistributing wealth and we’ll be organizing each other to do more, together. (Check out RG's Giving Guidelines to get started, then after you give to M4BL please fill out RG's Giving Pledge!)
- Make multi-year commitments of at least 5 years in the same spirit. Consider making a 10-year pledge. The call from M4BL was to fund this work for a generation.
- High-net wealth members (people whose net wealth places them in the richest 1% of the U.S): commit to moving at least 10% of your net assets this year to help the RG community reach our $5M goal.
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We know that white supremacy and capitalism are deeply entwined, and that in order to fulfill our mission we must also abolish white supremacy and its manifestations as policing and prisons.
To quote Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson of the Highlander Center and the Movement for Black Lives; “If they tried to bury us, but did not know we were seeds… now is the harvest.”
In community,
The RG Team
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1. https://atlantablackstar.com/2015/05/23/case-reparations-40-acres-mule-cost-america-least-6-4-trillion-today/
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