Why are you a member of Resource Generation?
Robin: If we’re going to transform our economies, aka our worldviews, and do the ancestral repair work needed in these times, we’re going to need the people who have been profiting off these systems to be in collective liberation work together and use our levers of power for transformation. We all have healing work to do to get free together, and RG is the space where inner work can happen for young wealthy people in a way that transforms into external action.
Mohit: I was first drawn to RG after watching a video that Robin made for RG’s Share My Check campaign at the beginning of COVID. That video helped me shift me out of the deep scarcity that I had grown up with around money. It pointed to an abundance mindset, where money could flow according to need and everyone’s needs could be met. From there, my friend recruited me into a Bay Area RG praxis group, I helped lead a praxis group for South Asian members, and I got involved with the national Solidarity Economy working group. This feels like it’s my work to do, given the wealthy NYC Jain community I grew up in. RG has helped me heal from damaging mindsets of wealth hoarding and helped me imagine an end to philanthropy. Money is not going to save us. But if we all roll up our sleeves and join grassroots movements in deep solidarity, maybe we have a shot at transforming society.
What have you done so far in your own divestment journey?
Robin: I fully divested the account I inherited when I was 21 and my grandpa died. I have redistributed almost all of it, except for what I reinvested into solidarity economy projects at 0% interest. This process opened me to a deeper form of divestment in the sense that I’m trying to live a life in line with the solidarity economy principles, so that our collective basic needs can get met without relying on systems of individual accumulation. After divesting my money I felt how I wanted to keep going, removing my energy from capitalism and reinvesting my attention into intergenerational communal living, neighborhood food access, working with wounds stored in our bodies, supporting others to divest/reinvest, composting toilets… and other care-based relationships and skills that make me feel more secure long term than stocks.
Mohit: My divestment journey has been a long process of feeling into the contradictions between my values and where my money was flowing. I don’t have access to inherited wealth, but I followed my family’s advice to invest excess income and family gifts into Wall Street. I knew for a long time that my Black Rock “ESG” fund in Robinhood was causing harm; being in spaces of accountability, love, and trust helped me divest those funds. I’ve doubled my redistribution almost every year I’ve been in RG and to the extent that I have savings, I’ve reinvested in a local solidarity investment option that protects land near me to be affordable in perpetuity, and that’s open to smaller dollar investors. Thinking about divestment holistically, I’ve tried to move my spending away from big corporations and towards solidarity economy-aligned cooperatives and legacy small businesses that may be overlooked in a gentrifying neighborhood. I’ve gotten money out of Chase bank, which is perhaps the biggest fossil fuel funder in the world, and into credit unions that serve underbanked communities.
Why are you prioritizing building this workshop series?
Robin: Divestment feels like harm reduction, like the least we can do to interrupt genocide right now. Divestment also feels like a muscle, so if we do it in an embodied way, that somatic reference point of alignment can guide us to use that muscle even more. In other words, to divest more fully from the stock market and the lifestyles of capitalism that it upholds. As an artist and a worker at art.coop, I’m excited to do this because artists play an essential role in reimagining futures that are possible beyond the constraints of current structures. I believe in everybody’s creative capacity to carry them through challenging transformation moments. At art.coop we get to support people in utilizing their creative energies to reimagine our economies.
Mohit: For me, divestment was something that had to build energy and momentum in my physical body before I was ready to do it. So much of my relationship with wealth and the fear of not accumulating wealth was conditioned into me from a young age. That fear lives in my body somewhere, and I have to be in spaces that remind me what true safety looks like—grounded in solidarity and community care—to start unwinding that fear. I’m also a land justice lawyer with the Sustainable Economies Law Center, and I’ve seen how funders can move either boldly or timidly with our solidarity economy and land rematriation clients. So, we’re working on a Redistribution Law project to support funders that are looking to mobilize more resources and share more power in creative ways.
Below is more info about the event.