The Money Isn't Mine: Questioning Inheritance - Morgan Curtis, Solidaire Network

This podcast is part of a new series called Confronting Complicity in Capitalism. 

I cannot think of a better first special guest on this series as we confront our privilege: Morgan Curtis, who supports people with wealth and class privilege toward redistribution and repair, starting with herself.

THE IMPACT. Morgan Curtis:

• Supports people with wealth and class privilege toward redistribution, atonement, and repair. 

• Does this herself: redistributing 100% of her inherited wealth to Black- and Indigenous-led movements and land projects, and 50% of her coaching income.

• And supports others: as a facilitator, money coach, organizer and ritualist, both with individuals and with collectives like Solidaire Network and Resource Generation. 

• Lives in a multi-racial, cross-class, intergenerational intentional community: Canticle Farm. 

• Holds a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, where she focused on the spiritual dimension of reparations work for white descendants of colonizers and enslavers.

Mentioned resources:

• Article by Iris Brilliant: How to create safety and security without accumulating wealth

• The NPR podcast with Morgan challenging her dad and generations of inherited family wealth.

• The spectrum of allies. 

• Morgan’s extensive resource library on ancestors, money and redistribution.

THE JOURNEY. In our conversation, highlights that stand out from Morgan:

• Seeing complicity. "Capitalism: both my grandfathers worked on Wall Street. White supremacy: no one has ever taught me about race, but I'm coming to see that I am white. Colonialism: that's those creepy ancestors on the wall. I see that the pain I felt from what was happening on our planet this time couldn't be separated from the family history that I was born into, and the choices my ancestors made to extract so much from people and the planet."
• Capitalism and privilege.  "What capitalism conditions us to do, those of us that have privilege, access, wealth, is to replace relationships with transactions. This vicious cycle: we need help, we turn to money. We use money to buy a good or a service that we think is gonna help us meet our needs, then it doesn't. And we feel alone again. And we think we need more money to get a different strategy to meet that need. We are stuck thinking that we need more. The way our bodies know, our ancestors know, is that we meet needs through relationship with one another, with the earth, with place, with ancestors, with intergenerational community.”
• On finding her role. “People started finding me and whispering in the hallway ‘I secretly have a trust fund and I've never told anybody; can we talk?’ This might be the thing that I do: walk with, accompany, love the people that find themselves in this tension between the resources they inherited and the values they now hold."
• On accumulation and extraction. "Part of our responsibility is to [see that] no story of accumulation can be disentangled from a story of extraction. We live on a zero sum earth. When we have more than we need, others have less than they need."
• Not needing to convince everyone.  "The only strategic move is to work with your passive allies to get them to take action. Your opposition: bless them. May they change, may they see something different, if that's their path. For me, that was such a relief. My role is to support the people who feel disempowered, overwhelmed, confused, alone, but already have a longing within them to step onto this path."
• Parenting. "I could choose. Am I gonna accumulate money, save money to buy all the stuff and care and education that my children need? Or can I lean into strengthening the ties of community? I feel clear that's my path. And it definitely still involves money.”
• Who decides. “ Wait, am I really the right one to figure out how to change this world? I came out of the system that produced this mess. I can't ever really take it off, as much as I try to unlearn and learn.”