Matt – I was so hoping that someone would say they knew that graffiti! (Actually I was hoping that someone would say they wrote it but it’s still cool)
I didn’t know you were my neighbor!

Your neighbor,
Matt

I don’t remember where it was, but a while ago I was inspired by Dean’s discussion of how he chose to give money. He included a bunch of really good reasons for why to give to people asking for money on the street. One of the points I think he made was that, in this context, the importance of giving is not just economic but also symbolic – the importance of stopping and listening and recognizing somebody. I have begun to try to recognize and respond (give) to people asking me for money, and I have gotten a lot of pleasure out of it.

I think there is something powerful in the fact that giving often feels good. Not ‘good’ in the charity-model sense of “I’m being so generous and amazing”, or “Oh, good, I feel less guilty now” but because there is actually a human exchange involved, and because people one gives money to have things to give as well, even though our culture tells us that they don’t. Did that make sense?

Anyway, I think the question of whether to give to people asking for money is often a useful one to start to talk about some of these issues with friends, and to start to think about some of the intense emotions I, as a class-privileged person, have about “my” money.

I’ve also recently started, as a first step, a personal policy of giving away (to community organizations) any sums of money ($50, $100, etc.) that come my way out of the blue. For instance, randomly receiving an academic award, I try not to immediately latch on to it as “my” money, but instead think that this money should have gone elsewhere – so I’ll redirect it.

Those are just some ideas I wanted to share in case they help anybody else with this stuff.

Ooh, I have so many thoughts about all your questions – when I say “living as little as possible off the exploitation of others” I don’t have a concrete standard in mind (capitalism makes our life choices about living justly within an exploitative economy so complex and contradictory at times) – but my sentiment was about how capitalism is such that for most of us, living off inheritance means using the profits from the un- and underpaid labor of poor people to support ourselves. So I’d like to see that conversation happening a little more openly – and a big step forward seems like giving away unjustly accumulated inherited fortunes (most of which are bound up in – and profiting from – multinational corporations) to social justice work.

And I *definitely* don’t think that wealth redistribution will be achieved by rich people deciding to give away their money. I think economic justice is about fighting for INvoluntary wealth redistribution. I think of giving away money more as a good practice for people who believe in justice, and also as a form of (personal, insufficient, somewhat abstract) reparations for the deep violence and oppression perpetrated by the accumulation of wealth. I definitely don’t see young radical rich people giving away their inherited wealth as a solution or a way of ending poverty and oppression – just as an important thing to do that is useful as part of a broader struggle.

(And just for some of my personal thoughts about how to give money and to what types of institutions/organizations: http://www.enoughenough.org/article/104/what-i-gave-and-where-i-gave-it-2008-giving-plan/ – I don’t mean like Bill and Melinda Gates!)