“The point is not about redistribution alone”: Interview with Mijo Lee

Part 2

Hello dear readers! It’s a rainy day in Oakland as I sit at my dining room table, writing to you. The teachers are on strike and my son is trading Pokemon cards with his neighbor on the rug a few feet away. I’ve been both thrilled and a mess this last week as I’ve launched this substack more publicly. It’s been a sweaty and exciting time. Lots of nerves and lots of helpful encouragement from many of you. Thanks for your support, commenting, liking and sharing posts with others. It’s all going well, and that’s the best/worst part.

Photo-booth pic of Mijo, in the center, with two friends on each side of her, at the Social Justice Fund Northwest annual celebration in 2018. Glittery background, fancy outfits, it’s a party scene.

Below is part two (here’s part one) of my interview with Mijo. It’s jam packed with honest assessments of this current moment in organizing the rich. In reading it over many times in the past weeks, I have been struck by how Mijo touches on so many key tensions in this work. How do wealthy people share power, while staying engaged and honest about their personal interests and priorities? How can working class led movements thoughtfully engage and organize wealthy people, while not caretaking or coddling? What do we mean by ‘donor organizing’ and is it different from fundraising? Can we move the money while also helping wealthy people leverage their relationships and positional power? These questions and more are discussed below. Nothing is resolved, and these are the types of conversations that I’m thrilled to make more public and accessible. Enjoy! And, if you’re engaged by any part of it, please drop a comment below to let Mijo and I know. It’s incredibly helpful feedback.  

What do you think are the strengths of how rich people are currently engaged by left movements? What do you think we're doing well?

ML: Something that we're definitely doing better is asking for more. I see a shift in that. The Movement for Black Lives is asking for and receiving ten year pledges. That's a sea change. We are expecting more. I think that's one of the impacts of the MacKenzie Scott¹ donations. I think those donations have raised expectations for groups about the type and size of support they can get. 

I feel like there’s more wealthy people saying, “I shouldn't be making all the decisions. This is not my money. I don't have this money because I'm smarter or more capable or anything like that.” That's great. And it makes it easier for social justice movement-led and accountable funding intermediaries² to raise money, which is always one of my top goals. [MG Note: Mijo and Rye wrote this great piece about why and how to fund intermediaries.]

MG: What are challenges and weaknesses with how wealthy people are engaged?

ML: I was talking with somebody recently who works in philanthropy who was telling me, “I spent so many years saying, ‘rich people just get out of the way!’ And now that they are doing it, I'm like, oh, wait, not all the way out of the way.” This is actually not healthy. There's a whole generation now of wealthy people who've been socialized and trained that if you're down, you will just write a check and not engage in any way. 

And good fundraisers don't want that. They want to be in a relationship with their donors. Good donor organizers, even more so. So that's tricky. 

When clients start with me, my first step is to have them fill out a worksheet on their priorities. And I have some clients who say, “It doesn’t matter.” Their priorities don’t matter. But they do. They just do. 

Because like it or not, you are the riverbank that this water is flowing through. It is shaping you and you are shaping it. And you can't pretend otherwise. So let's just put it out on the table. If you are passionate about climate justice and not immigrant rights, that's okay. And guess what? They're the same thing anyways! But, being clear about your priorities gives us direction, and that’s helpful to look at and be honest about.

I think this whole suppression of self by progressive wealthy people, the suppression of their individual wants and needs and desires is not a healthy impulse. It's going to lead to resentment and backlash. Nobody is going to be happy with that in the long term. 

There’s also this idea floating around some progressive donor spaces that you have to be in deep and authentic relationship with every organization you fund. But you can't do that. It’s not sustainable. 

I talk to clients about picking  two or three organizations that they will be in close relationship with. I think it’s helpful to encourage people to focus on a few organizations they will really show up for.   The rest?  Hand them off to a donor advisor to manage or give money to intermediaries–  they'll steward those relationships for you. 

I think there's a greater recognition these days that wealthy people can be organizing each other. I go to all these donor briefings and hear the speaker say, “funders, go get your people, donors go get your people.”³ But then the problem is that there's no support for them to actually do that. This is not something that people just instinctively know how to do. Organizing wealthy people is a really specialized skill set and it's hard. Organizing your parents carries a different kind of risk from organizing your coworkers.  Your parents are the people that you love most in the world, who often know you best …and maybe they are the cause of your greatest trauma. It's just a whole thing. 

Another weakness is that there are limitations to how well we can take a standard community organizing framework and apply it to donor organizing.⁴ The idea of collective power and transforming power relationships is the fundamental concept in organizing that must be transferred to a framework of donor organizing. But a lot of traditional organizing has this sort of ‘target’ type orientation⁵ that does not translate to donor organizing, and that leads some wealthy people to think, ‘my dad is the enemy.’ To be clear, your dad might be the enemy. I'm not saying that dads are never the enemy, but, you know, sometimes that's not the right power analysis or that's not what's going to actually get you the goods. 

MG: What parts of the work or the ecosystem are the most mature and what parts are most in need of development?

ML: Good question. You know, it's so hard because the parts of the ecosystem that should be mature have had to start over so many times that they haven't really been allowed to fully develop and grow up. I think of all the activist led social justice public foundations, the public foundations that were established to fund movements. So that's the FEX Funds, that’s Grassroots International. It's everybody that came out of that moment of the late seventies, early eighties where so many of these funds were started. If they had actually been able to build steadily for these last 50 years…where would they be now? Would they be mature? They would be mind blowing, right? But most of them had to do a whole ‘Phoenix rise from the ashes’ thing. Multiple times! Because they died or almost died. Every one of them has been through some kind of hellacious financial crisis or leadership transition or something like that. A lot of them didn't make it. A lot of them haven't survived. So it's a painful question because I feel like they are the oldest parts of the ecosystem, and could be the most mature, but they’ve had to start over multiple times. There are a few who have been able to maintain some continuity, and that’s been a really good thing.  

Resource Generation (RG) has one of the most developed frameworks and skill sets around wealthy people organizing, and deals with some of the same problems I just talked about. It’s an inherent tension of a young people’s organization to always be starting over in some ways, with a new crop of leaders, which is fucking infuriating and also necessary. Now, with me being an old person having seen several versions of RG in my time, it really is noticeable what a challenge it is that RG is regularly losing its most experienced leaders because they age out. I think they are doing a better and better job at staying close with alumni and older leaders, and it’s still an issue. I talk with Yahya [Alazrak, Executive Director of RG] about it and Yahya does have a sense of the history, but they can only know what they know and I only know a piece too. There is  definitely lots of lost knowledge and stories that would be worth hearing. 

It's a really hard question. Philanthropy has changed so much in such a short time. 

In terms of what parts are most in need of development, I want to see more training and support for donor organizing as a skill set. And I want to see more leadership pipelines for rich people and for the people who organize them. And I want to see that done within a really clear political framework.

MG: Why do you keep on using the term ‘donor organizing’ to describe wealthy people organizing?⁶

ML: That's a good question. Wealthy people organizing just sounds really clunky.

MG: Yeah, I hear that.

ML: So it's partly because I don't have a better term, but I mean, I'm organizing them because they're donors, right? I'm not only organizing them as donors, but that's the point of entry. Also, any wealthy person that I'm organizing, damn well better be a donor. If not, what the fuck? 

But, it's a good question, because we want them to be more than that, obviously. It's also this inherent tension of whether people over or under identify with their wealth. If we are organizing them around that wealthy identity and at the same time trying to get people to right size that attachment, and let go of their wealth, that seems like a real contradiction.

I think maybe the short answer to your question is that the term “donor” is less triggering for some people than “wealthy”. Some people don't like the term “donor”, but it's a lot less triggering, controversial, and divisive than “wealthy people” or “owning class” or naming any kind of class for that matter. A donor is something that you do. Whereas a wealthy person or owning class is something that you are. And that's a lot more baggage.

I am left unsatisfied, store up my frustration with that term in a little ball in my gut, to be used for later writing, and move on.

MG: What's next? Looking ahead to 2050, what's a best case scenario for how the US Left could be engaging in organizing wealthy people? 

ML: There's a part of me that wants to have some completely outrageous shoot for the moon answer to this. And there's a part of me that's very, very conservative and cynical. So I struggle with this.

I think we need more social justice movement aligned donor networks. There are some doing a really excellent job - Solidaire, RG, Movement Voter Project, and others. And there are some that don't have a strong enough political compass. I want there to be more. And for there to be more aligned donor networks that really train and support their members to become organizers. And to build on what I said previously, can we help these wealthy donors more fully use their economic power and social capital to build political power for left movements? Can we connect the dots between our campaigns and the relationships and influence of our wealthy donors, to help them leverage their access and power so we can win? 

For many of my clients, they have family relationships with the leadership of major companies, or they are one or two steps away from really personal relationships with top business and financial leaders and boardrooms where key decisions are made. And yet many of them, because of their progressive values, have actively tried to distance themselves from those worlds. For so many of my clients, they own parts of businesses that have influence and power but they don’t know what to do with that or how to organize around it strategically, and frankly neither do I. There's got to be a way that we can translate these relationships and financial power into some kind of political power for our movements. There’s got to be a way. So maybe by 2050 we're there, and we’ve figured that out.

In terms of outcomes, of course I want tons of money flowing freely and with ease to our movements. Let’s have that by 2050.

MG: Given those goals, what would you identify as priorities for lefty, rich people organizing for the next five years?

ML: Well, again, it feels like we need to really build this infrastructure for training, coaching, peer support, to develop wealthy people into organizers.

Second, I would prioritize working on this question about how to translate our most aligned wealthy people’s economic power and social capital into left political power.

I think the third is to create more entry points into this world and work for wealthy people. I'm biased because this is the reason that we created DIGG. We need more spaces to welcome wealthy people in.

MG: So why aren't the progressive donor networks we have effective entry points?

ML: They're not effective entry points because, number one, I don't think people really find them unless they're already politicized or organized to some degree. And number two, I think it's super hard to understand what's going on, to take advantage of the programming, to vibe with the culture or any of those things if you're not already in the lefty club. I think we need more entry points and more different kinds of entry points.

This is such a small pond we swim in, of people who educate and advise and organize wealthy people towards justice and equity, alongside progressive movements. There’s just so few of us. We would be all better and smarter at this if there were more of us. 

MG: Agreed. That is so much of what this project is about. There needs to be more of us. And one thing we don't do well is talk openly and publicly and boldly about what we've done, so that many more people can learn from our work and get involved. 

I’m trying to say more and more loudly, how in this moment we're seeing the largest movement of wealthy people in the history of class societies trying to transform the system that gave them their unequal power in the first place, and join with poor and working class movements in going to something different. I think it’s important that those of us who have been doing this work, claim our leadership role. So we don’t let it become a dry, reformist, professionalized story about donations, investments and charity. I want the story to be about people and relationships, mutual interest and collective liberation, movement building and cross-class solidarity, and, always, rigorous, messy, and imperfect organizing.

This is our opportunity to say: “For better or for worse, we're the most experienced people you've got at this historic moment doing this historic thing.” And we're shit at actually telling you about it. So, let’s try to change that. Let's tell you about what we've done and figured out.

ML: Part of the reason we don't speak publicly or plainly about these things is because we're all holding so many confidential stories. We’re trying to think strategically about what we can share and what we can’t.  There’s so much to learn from these stories, but they’re hard to tell. Maybe we can anonymize them. It’s a real challenge. 

MG: What is your 150 year vision of success?

ML: I don't like this question, but it's a good question. I mean, the shit is so dire in the next 150 years. I do believe that there's going to be a transformation of our economic system in the next 50 years. I do believe this is our shot at a just transition. So let's do that. 

For some reason Jessan Hutchison-Quillian [former SJF Board Member and RG leader] just popped into my mind. I haven't thought about him in a long time. He’s very analytical and systematic with how he thinks, and if Jessan was here, he would have a number. He would say, “We need X percentage of people to be redistributing their wealth at X percent in this way, in order to transform everything.” He would actually have a metric for this that he would just pull out of his ass and I would be like, “Dude!” I don't have that ability. But he's not wrong that there is likely a number at which the scales tip.

MG: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. (Laughing)

ML: I have no idea what it is, but let's get to that number! Because the point to me is not about redistribution alone. To me, that's not the political project. The goal is not only redistributing wealth. The goal is also about the transformation that those people and their families go through when they redistribute the wealth and, through intentional organizing, the collective transformation that can be built from that. Because the amount of money the wealthy people that we work with, and could possibly work with, the amount of money that they can redistribute is not enough to tip the scales on its own. The vast majority of the 1% will never redistribute their wealth, and their wealth will just keep growing. It's not only about redistributing the resources. It’s about redistributing it to the right places – to multiracial, working class led movements that can build and hold onto power and govern. And in order for that to happen, it's equally as important that these wealthy people go through that process, that transforms their relationship to wealth and power. And that we get to see what the political implications of that transformation will be. 

MG: I’ve been wanting to ask our whole conversation, because we use these words so much…How do you describe the difference between fundraising and donor organizing? 

ML: I mean, there are different definitions out there, here’s one I’m working on now. The most fundamental piece is that organizing is about collective power. Fundraising can be collective, but is most often an individual act. Organizing by definition can’t be done alone. It needs a group. It’s why donor networks are so helpful and important. Taking action as part of a group is the most fundamental part of organizing to make change. But donor organizing isn’t just relational fundraising, or peer fundraising. It’s about building collective power for movements and it’s accountable to movements.  

MG: Last question, you were telling me a story the other day that I wanted to come back to. Can you share your thoughts on the importance of wealthy people knowing our own goodness?

ML:  We talked about that this morning during the workshop I led. I’ve seen that wealthy people often come to the groups they fund seeking validation of their own goodness and worthiness. That really resonated with some of the people in this workshop, where they were like, “I totally see donors coming to us seeking validation. And I didn't really realize that's what that was. And we shouldn’t try to give them that.” And I responded, “You not only shouldn't, you actually can't.” You can tell people, “I like you. I think you're a good person.” That's a really nice thing to say to anybody. And then you should probably tell them, “And I hope you know that for yourself.” I hope you're telling yourself that you’re a good person because that's really the only place that can come from. 

I remember the quote you had on your office wall all those years ago. Something about wealthy people knowing their own goodness enough to look at the oppressive things they had done and work to fix them. [MG Note: The quote is from a mentor of mine. It is “Imagine a world where the owning class are so sure of their own goodness that they can face unflinchingly the genocide, slavery, and oppression that they have engineered and profited from for centuries and commit to backing those that can end it."] 

It didn’t click for me at the time. I didn’t really get it. 

And now I do. I see it everywhere. Wealthy people wanting to feel liked and happy with themselves through their giving, and upset when that feeling that they thought they had ordered isn’t delivered to them. And the fact is, no one can do that for them. It has to come from inside. There are some people who can deliver that feeling in a short term way, but I am not one of those people. That’s not my vibe. 

There’s this idea and struggle I’ve heard from some wealthy people. This belief that there’s a big enough check to write to become a good person.  Ooh. It hurts to hear that. It’s been really affecting me to see wealthy people struggle with that. 

I’ve seen over and over again what happens when wealthy people have this unmet need for validation. They’ve been raised with this idea, this entitlement, that if they have a need, somebody out there can meet it. This idea that they should be able to pay somebody, purchase something, leverage some power to get that need met.

And if that's not happening, it's like, “What the fuck is wrong with me? Why can't I feel better?” It is not the job of grassroots organizers. It is not the job of working class people to make rich people feel better about themselves. I do not have a problem with people saying ‘eat the rich’. I do not have a problem with guillotine jokes. I don't have a problem with any of that. 

But there is something I want to see left movements understand.  Mo Mitchell wrote about it this last year. Can we be more nuanced and understanding that everybody is a whole, complex person that is more than their identity markers? Can we be more relational in our organizing? Can we trust ourselves and each other to handle hard things? Can we see ourselves and each other, in all our weird complexity, in the context of collective strategy? Can we do that for all of us, including for the wealthy people that are putting in the work, that are trying to be in real solidarity? I believe we all have so much to gain if we do. 

—-------------------

Wow. Thank you Mijo!

If you got this far, I’m so glad. And I know you have thoughts bubbling up. This is a community of readers that cares about this topic and these ideas. I’d love to know, what is sticking with you? What thoughts are coming to mind? Drop a comment below, like or share the post to help continue and grow this conversation. 

1. Mackenzie Scott is an author, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, and one of the most social justice aligned billionaire philanthropists I know of. In the past few years, she has made many large unrestricted donations to important progressive community organizing groups, such as Southerners On New Ground, One Fair Wage, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Movement for Black Lives as well as social justice philanthropic intermediaries like Groundswell Fund, Astraea Lesbian Fund for Justice, Solidaire, Grassroots International and more.

2. Funding intermediaries are usually public foundations that raise money and then give it to other groups through their own grant-making process.

3. “Go get your people” is a way to say “go get people like you involved”.

4. Mijo is using ‘donor organizing’ to mean ‘organizing wealthy people as donors’. This is a common use of the term. Donor is often used as a synonym for wealthy person in the progressives organizing spaces I’m in. Mijo and I briefly discuss these terms, their definitions and uses later in the interview. I’ll be coming back to the question of how to understand ‘donor organizing’ in future posts as well. I think it’s important.

5. The ‘target’ type orientation Mijo is referring to is the idea that to lead a successful organizing campaign, it’s important to personalize the issue by picking someone as a target to focus on. I am no scholar of community organizing but I do know that, in Saul Alinsky’s famous book, “Rules for Radicals”, his 13th rule is, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

6. It is one of my pet projects to try to get everyone I know to stop using donor organizing as code and shorthand for rich people organizing. I think it encourages us to forget that the majority of donors are not wealthy, and I think it can limit our vision for wealthy people to being a good donor of the pennies they have arbitrarily put aside for philanthropy. Iimay Ho writes more about this in their blog post “Donors”: If you mean rich people, just say so. So far, I have been wildly unsuccessful, in part because I don’t have a compelling alternative to offer.