Category: Blog

I’m so very slow to post things here, but one thing I’ve been meaning to put up is this email from Ramesh, a participant in the POOR session, who shares some thoughts on making a financial gift to POOR through the framework of revolutionary giving. It was great to read such transparent reflections on the process of giving, and Ramesh gave me permission to share it with Enough readers:

hey all,    

it’s been a real treat to run into some of you here and there, and keep connections alive through email and phones. i am still taking in all the gifts at our gathering from the scholars at POOR and from each of you, and for me especially the pieces around spiritual grounding.

anyways, in response to tyrone and cathy’s request to financially support POOR, i decided to take my first step at practicing reparations rather than donations. a friend of mine dropped this bit of knowledge on me, 

“don’t tell me what your values are, show me your budget, and i’ll tell you what your values are.”  

that got me thinking. and i hope the thinking i did is useful to folks like me who have a job or some banked resources and might be in a similar position. i also hope it’s useful for folks who will have a paid job and will have some banked resources some day.

so here’s what i’m doing. i’m paying the same amount as i pay for rent to POOR for the next 6 months. i pay 400 bucks in rent, this is my single largest monthly expense.  i was totally in denial once i made this decision. it wasn’t until i walked over to POOR and gave tiny the money that i even believed i was doing it. then it was done…and then came the drama of “what will they use it for?”  “should i ask that it support a particular project?”  “what if they use it for pizza?” “should i get a receipt?”  

so that was my “donations” self coming up. i decided then that if i was even going to ask those questions in my head, i better be willing to do the same for my other expenses – so am i willing to ask my landlords (a great vietnamese family) what they do with my rent check?  am i willing to get on the horn with verizon, or my car insurance company? turns out, i’m not.    turns out, when i think of my donations as reparations, i think of it like paying a bill. i do it, because i feel i owe it. now, that doesn’t mean i am justifying my bills, i’m just noticing where i put my energy into “wondering about where my money goes.” let’s see if it’s any easier next month when i know the bill is due…. 

much love to you all, and i hope your own process with reparations is going well. i’m starting to feel liberated from my relationship with money…and feeling happily governed by my relationship to people.  

peace
ramesh kathanadhi – learner in training

Ok, so people have been trying to convince me that blogging is  an appropriate forum to post thoughts that aren’t necessarily fully formed. I’ve been wanting to write about Revolutionary Giving (the weekend long session/workshop/conversation/meeting put on by POOR Magazine last month), about a feeling/idea I’ve been turning over in my mind, but it’s hard to describe and constantly evolving.

POOR’s pedagogy happens through poetry, song, theater, and storytelling. It isn’t easy to write about, so instead of trying to describe Revolutionary Giving, I want to reflect on it and offer some of the thoughts I’m left with. Continue reading “Reflections, in progress.”

While I’m waiting for the chance to process some of my thoughts from the POOR seminar in writing, please listen to this clip from the KPFA Morning Show. POOR’s segment (some brief excerpts from Revolutionary Giving) starts at 32:40 and goes until 58:20.

I just got home from training Resource Generation’s Donor Organizing Institute (it was awesome by the way – thanks so much to all the fabulous participants for your smarts and heart), and I barely have time to do laundry before getting on a plane Friday morning to head to the Bay for POOR’s Revolutionary Giving seminar. I have a million ideas racing around in my head from the combination of these two things and I’ve been dying to gather them here but I have two seconds of free time and for now – I wanted to collect my thoughts before heading into this weekend and share three reasons why I’m excited for Revolutionary Giving:

1) I’ve spent a lot of time in both: spaces for people with wealth talking about leveraging privilege for social justice AND in spaces for grassroots fundraisers talking about building accountable funding structures from the ground up. But it is SO RARE (/unheard of) to have these two (often overlapping) groups of people in one room intentionally having this conversation.

2) People who are dealing with immediate, poverty-based struggle on a daily basis very rarely get to shape conversation about philanthropy and what rich people should do with their money and what a just redistribution of resources looks like. And we need those voices at the forefront.

3) In the past few years I’ve witnessed/been part of so much awesome grassroots fundraising conversation about shifting power by raising money from a broad base of constituents/members rather than from foundations. This is such a huge and crucial part of building sustainable movements, but to me one piece that’s often missing is how we talk about rich people. Because the wealth that rich people own rightfully belongs to poor people/people of color/grassroots movements/etc. I want to be able to talk about rich people giving money as a form of reparations rather than “philanthropy” or charity. 

My head is kind of exploding from all the people from different areas of my life that I’ve always wanted to have this conversation with who are going to be there this weekend. I’m so excited and a little bit nervous and I can’t wait and I also wanted to let you know that although the registration is officially closed, my sources tell me that it is not too late to get in on this if you are cursing the fact that you never signed up. Just email deeandtiny@poormagazine.org. It starts Friday night with a Juneteenth ceremony. Maybe I’ll see you there?

I encourage everyone to take a look at this blog chronicling a new project of the brilliant Isabell Moore. It’s sort of like the sister of Enough!

Honest Living is “is a project about how people who care about radical social change figure out issues of life path, jobs, vocation, and livelihood. The blog is a space for conversations about how people work through these questions, and what the political implications of our different choices are.”

Let’s all read it and contribute to it!

I’ve had such an incredible week and have been wanting to write about it all on Enough, but I haven’t known how to organize the mile-a-minute thoughts in my head or talk about all the amazing conversations I’ve been having. 

So first, I read this great new book called Arm The Spirit by Diana Block – have you seen it? It is a total standout in the genre of memoirs by white activists who went underground in the 60s and 70s (actually Diana fascinatingly went underground in the early 80s) to participate in militant revolutionary solidarity work. Diana was part of Prairie Fire Organizing Committee and worked as a public activist for many years before she and several comrades decided to begin working clandestinely to support the Puerto Rican independence movement and other Third World struggles.   Continue reading “Lessons from elders”