For over fifty years, a growing movement has been quietly organizing wealthy people to redistribute their resources toward justice. From the radical rich kids of the 1970s to today's cross-class coalitions, this is the most comprehensive collection of stories to date from the front lines of this work.
Through intimate first-person accounts, strategic analysis, and hard-won wisdom, contributors reveal what it actually looks like to organize across class—the relationships built, experiments tried, victories won, and mistakes made. These pages contain the voices of inheritors giving away millions, organizers building unlikely alliances, and movement leaders grappling with the contradictions of philanthropy and power.
At a time when billionaires shape elections and inequality reaches historic levels, this anthology offers both hope and practical wisdom. It shows how the wealthy can be organized not just as donors, but as full participants in creating a just future—freeing the people to free the money to free the people.
Contributors include: Winona LaDuke, Rajasvini Bhansali, Iimay Ho, Braeden Lentz, Michael Gast, Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, Alex T. Tom, Chuck Collins, Marian Moore, Billy Wimsatt, Nigel Charles, Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Sharon Chen and Mijo Lee.
Michael Gast has been engaging, fundraising and organizing the wealthy toward justice for over 20 years. He is the former director of Resource Generation (RG), where he spent 13 years as a member, leader and staff person. Since leaving RG in 2014, he's worked as a development director, fundraising consultant, donor educator and donor advisor with individual wealth holders and groups such as Movement Voter Project, Chinese Progressive Association, Showing Up for Racial Justice and Thousand Currents. These days, Michael directs a multimedia project called Organize the Rich. Born and raised in San Francisco, he currently lives in Oakland with his awesome wife and son.
Marian Moore came to the work of convening, facilitating, coaching and organizing wealthy people through her experience in the Threshold Community, aka Donuts, which she joined in 1990. She co-founded and co-led Play BIG, Lead with Land, Just Economy Institute, the Trust Web, Jubilee Gift, and Jubilee Justice's Our Ancestral Journey, some of which are still in play. Her ancestors were colonizers who arrived here between the 1600s and 1800s. Many accumulated massive wealth and land, some of which she inherited. Her parents changed the trajectory of that lineage through their social justice activism. Marian's work emphasizes the need to shift consciousness to change patterns of wealth and land accumulation and activate redistribution.
Alex T. Tom is a second-generation Chinese American born and raised in San Francisco and the Bay Area. He is the former executive director of the Chinese Progressive Association in San Francisco and is currently the executive director of the Center for Empowered Politics, a movement capacity-building center that aims to train and develop leaders and grow movement infrastructure at the intersection of racial justice, organizing and power building. Alex is also a proud baba (father) of an awesome and autistic son and blogs regularly on parenting and politics on Diary of a Baba.
"This book documents what so many of us know but rarely see in print: organizing the wealthy is both possible and essential to our collective wellbeing. Michael Gast, Marian Moore, Alex Tom and these contributors offer honest stories from the messy work of moving money and power toward justice—showing us how the rich can be co-conspirators, not saviors, in building a different world." - Edgar Villanueva, Author, Decolonizing Wealth
“I just finished reading “Free the People…” and I’m jazzed! This anthology is chock-full of personal stories, strategic analyses, and practical ideas that collectively make me feel ready to organize resources better. It is sharp, poignant, and timely. A better world is possible. And this book is a key tool to getting there.” - Regan Pritzker, Kataly Foundation
“Reimagining a world where working-class people thrive requires the wealthy to rethink the inherent value of the class privilege they’ve come to rely on. As we see rising authoritarianism and staggering wealth inequality, this anthology is an important and timely reminder of our agency and obligations to one another. The one percent can choose to play a productive role in ushering in a world that values human potential, happiness, and solidarity.” - Maurice Mitchell, Executive Director, Working Families Party
“This book takes you on a journey that braids together the lineage of resource organizers and connects them directly to some of the most powerful social movements in history. This anthology is a reminder that money and resources must be liberated from the shackles of capitalism in order for our people to be free and the land to heal. At this moment in history our resistance is required for our survival and the revolution must be funded” - Nick Tilsen, Oglala Lakota, Founder & CEO NDN Collective.
"Arriving right on time, Free the People to Free the Money to Free the People was so helpful to me - as I know it will be for countless leaders, wherever they are in their journey around money. The webs of relationships and personal narratives paint a compelling picture of a body of work that is often hidden or hard to make sense of. By making it open for all to see, we can resource our movements more boldly." - May Boeve, Founder and Executive Director of 350.org
"Free the People to Free the Money to Free the People offers an intimate window into a little-known history of an emerging movement for cross-class solidarity and wealth redistribution. This anthology brings together brilliant, respected voices in the sector who, with the candor of a late-night retreat conversation, share hard-won lessons from the messy and necessary work of redistributing wealth and power. Humble, honest, and alive, this book feels both like a roadmap and a living journal—arriving right on time as we navigate the Great Wealth Transfer and reimagine how those with resources can help build a more just future." - Dimple Abichandani, Advisor and Author of A New Era of Philanthropy: Ten Practices to Transform Wealth Into a More Just and Sustainable Future
"In a time of authoritarian resurgence and extreme wealth concentration, this book breaks the silence about what it truly takes to move resources—and people—toward justice. At Women Donors Network, we’ve seen how transformative it is when wealth holders move beyond writing checks and align their full resources and influence with movements. This anthology captures that same truth: philanthropy alone will not save us, but collective organizing across class can. This not only makes it timely, but urgent and necessary." - Leena Barakat, Executive Director, Women Donors Network
"Wow, we have needed this for so long and it is here! An empowering guidebook for wealthy folks, the people who love them, and the people who organize them. The stories in this anthology demystify what it takes to confront and shift power dynamics, and demonstrate that not only is it possible to organize the rich for the common good, it has been happening for generations. I've been inspired by some of these stories colloquially over my past 25 years of resource mobilizing, and it is so exciting to read them in print and have them available to pass along." - Sha Grogan-Brown, long time social justice fundraiser and current Co-Director of the Rad Ops project
