Wealth Redistribution How To

A CONVERSATION WITH STUDENT ORGANIZERS

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Wealth Redistribution How To

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2. Join or establish a group of people with shared goals and values that are committed to your project Create a name and mission statement

Creating a mission statement is especially helpful for long-term groups rather than a spontaneous group that will disband shortly after their goal is achieved. Mission statements help a group determine what their purpose, goals and values are.

A mission statement is something that you all are constantly working towards rather than something you are already perfectly executing. Your mission statement may change as your group or organization changes. On the next page is an earlier iteration of one of VPEWR’ s mission statements.

VPEWR Mission Statement

Vassar Political Education Wealth Redistribution (VPEWR) is a student-led initiative that is working under the Vassar BSU Political Education committee. Our goal is to redistribute wealth to communities most affected by and actively working against police brutality. To do so, we are tapping into networks and asking individuals for reasonable donations to VPEWR. We are organizing a series of week-long fundraising drives to benefit different locations across the US.

For the second wealth redistribution week (7/20-7/26) we are supporting 5 organizations based in D.C.: No Justice No Pride (NJNP), P0stb1nary World, BYP100 D.C. Chapter, Life After Release (LAR), and Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS). For more information on these organizations, please go to “Organizations we are supporting in D.C. ” on the linktree.

For the first week we redistributed to organizations based in Minnesota. For information on those orgs go to “Organizations We Supported For Week 1 in Minnesota ” on the linktree.

We hope that our communities (Vassar and beyond) can create a network dedicated to redistributing monetary funds towards those who are advocating for investment in community care and divestment from inherently violent police forces.

3. Recruit volunteers

a.Identify people in your network who might be willing to join your cause. Then have the people who agree to volunteer reach out to their own networks and recruit even more volunteers! You can access a guide for asking people to join here! 4. Divide up the labor

a.Who knows or is willing to learn how to make graphics/logos? Who is good with finances? Who wants to create and run social media accounts? 5. Decide where the money is going to

a.You should be intentional when deciding this step. For our first two drives we decided to redistribute to community organizations. We took time to research different organizations we felt aligned with our visions of an abolitionist future . We took two votes; one to decide what location we were focusing on and second to determine which specific organizations.

6. Research and decide how you will handle the money Common ways that groups handle money: A member ’ s account (bank account, Venmo, Cash App, Paypal) Fiscal Sponsor Unincorporated association account Tax exempt organization 7. Political Education In addition to redistributing wealth, it' s important to deepen the political consciousness of your group and within your larger community Create a list of books and podcasts for those interested in learning more about abolition beyond social media. Infographics can be an easy to spread information but the drawback is that things can be glossed over and it does not help develop deeper understandings of the issues.