I obsessively think about community resilience. Have I built up enough flow of reciprocity and authentic mutual aid in my networks? When will I know what ‘enough’ really feels like in that realm? Is crisis the only test for this? If I experience a rupture of some kind, or if RG wasn’t able to exit our years-long deficit and I lost my job last year, or a political or environmental disaster acutely unfolded in my city, are the queer relationships I am cultivating strong enough to hold me not only emotionally, but also materially?
I’ve learned to be concerned with these things—and how to organize for a better world—from leaders within solidarity economy networks; specifically from people who live and work inside cooperatives. I also come from people who’ve weathered frequent and destabilizing change: laborers and religious refugees. From all of my mentors and relations, I’ve learned project management skills, a dogged commitment to follow through, and how to request support (read: make an ask) without shame.
RG’s Fall Drive launches today, and in this time, our membership organization of about 1000 people will get to practice these things. I believe these are the fundamental aspects of belonging to a community of people linked by a vision for a more liberated world.
The Fall Drive tasks us with renewing our annual member dues, learning and organizing together, and making or honoring multi year pledges to our campaign partners—the Movement for Black Lives and Center for Popular Democracy. This is what it takes to recommit to RG as a political home in a time of ongoing crisis—with only weeks left before the election, with the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and of course with the state-sanctioned abandonment of millions of working class, disabled, unhoused, and other vulnerable people in this relentless pandemic.
At RG, we know we need to defeat authoritarianism, and then build more power than neoliberal centrist forces. We can work on both this Fall, but if we fail on the first we won’t really thrive at doing either. We’re clear the state is aligned solely with corporate interests. We’re also clear that RG is part of a broad coalition looking to win housing, education, and food for all. What a fucking relief!
So, while electoral organizing is a temporary strategy RG’s sister organization is engaging with, the long-term campaigns strategy that guides our work is a dramatic transformation and re-envisioning of all our structures. Divestment from the exploitative public market, and reinvestment into solidarity economies is a key component of that. This informs our staff’s offerings of political education and trainings this Fall:
I hope our paths can cross at some of these upcoming opportunities to convene as a membership organization. The work represented above is over 95% member funded. RG asks its members to sign the Redistribution Pledge, and to resource RG’s transformative work by moving membership dues at 5-10% of overall giving. Drives are times for us as a membership organization to explicitly center how we mobilize resources in a way that is unique to RG, and that invites members to rededicate to RG as a political home that needs funding, by supporting ongoing base-building and leadership development. So if you haven’t yet, become a dues-paying member at 5-10% of your overall giving—or renew your membership if you haven’t yet.
Towards liberation,
Charlie
they/them
RG Membership Manager & Solidarity Economy Lead
