John -- This is an email I struggled to write. Our annual Fall Giving Pledge and Membership Drive is launching today, and even though it’s more important than ever for us to get organized and move our resources together towards poor and working-class led movements, it’s hard to find the right words with everything hanging in the balance.

I’ve been a Resource Generation member since 2013. After five years on RG staff working with our New England chapters, I shifted into a new role this past spring as our Membership Director. Since then, it feels as if it’s been nothing but crisis after crisis: a global pandemic; the continued already-pandemic that is white supremacy and state violence; escalating threats of voter suppression, undermining the legitimacy of the election, and collapsing democracy. 

So much about our lives has changed in the past year; so much has crushingly stayed the same.

So – as we head into what is most likely to be another challenging and unstable stretch of weeks and months – I am trying to make space to reflect. What has been resourcing me? What keeps me showing up, at a cellular level, to this work that we are engaged in as Resource Generation?

A new coworker asked me this question a different way, recently: why didn’t you just do it – the whole wealth redistribution thing – on your own?

Midway through my thirties, I’m realizing my answer is pretty clear: I tried, for suuuuuch a long time, doing it on my own (lol). It didn’t work. Without relationships to support and challenge me, I spun my wheels. I asked some of the right questions, but didn’t make a plan around them. Or I’d start to make a plan, but wouldn’t follow through.

For seven years, it’s been this community – literally, many of you reading this email – that has resourced me and helped me to take bolder action. I remember the feeling of being at my first Resource Generation conference and realizing, holy shit – there are so many people here on this shared journey. There were people so much further along who I could learn from. And, maybe most striking, there were dozens of people from movement organizations, poor and working and middle class folks, saying unequivocally: we need you all to do this work. We have your back.

That support and challenge, to this day, is what moves and motivates me. How, as Resource Generation members, can we have the back of our movement partners who believe in the power of our work? At moments where poor and working class communities, Black, indigenous and communities of color, are facing increased threat and uncertainty, how, as a multiracial membership community with wealth and class privilege, are we showing up with them?

How are we following through? How are we committing hard to the organizations we care about, in this moment when they are fighting hard to ensure we all have a future in which we can thrive?

This fall, my ask for us as young people with access to wealth and/or Resource Generation members is threefold:

1. If you signed the Giving Pledge this year and/or made a pledge to our campaign partners, the Movement for Black Lives and the Center for Popular Democracy – make good on those pledges. Do it now, before the election. Make it easy on organizations. They shouldn’t need to chase us, especially not this fall. (If you haven’t heard from us yet about your pledge, RG chapters and staff will be checking in with you!)

2. If you haven’t made the above pledges yet, sign or update your Giving Pledge today! Join us in raising $5M for the Movement for Black Lives, $1M for Center for Popular Democracy, and $50M overall for movements. The Giving Pledge asks young people with access to wealth to committ to redistributing all excess wealth in our lifetimes as outlined in RG's Giving Guidelines.

3. Finally, join or renew your RG membership. Whether you’re a longtime chapter leader, an alum, a college student, or someone totally new: in this time of transition and change, I invite you to move fully into this organization. We have more power – and are loads more useful to movements – when we are able to move together collectively.

Even amidst all the uncertainty, I know this community is moving in so many powerful ways to close out 2020. No matter the outcome of the election, I know that continuing to invest in frontline leadership and organize for structural wealth redistribution is what will increase all of our collective safety and thriving. As the fight will continue, we’ll need to continue to adapt and change shape-- and I know we can do that best organized and together. 

RG will  continue to be here for us through it all. Let’s be there for our partners in movement. 

$50M in pledges, here we come. Let’s move every cent of it to where it needs to go.

In community, 
Adam Roberts
Membership Director