;)
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded | Press Release
For Immediate Release
Contact: Jocelyn Burrell, jocelyn@southendpress.org
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE FUNDED
Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
Edited by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
“Follow the money,” so the saying goes, and inevitably it will lead you to those who pull the strings. Certainly this is a proven tactic for monitoring the uses and abuses of power by big business and government officials. But in the non-profit sector—despite a net worth surpassing many national GNPs—money flows in and out essentially unchecked. Questions of influence and benefit? Rarely asked.
The reality, however, is that both right- and left-leaning foundations exert tremendous influence on policy, public discourse, and our larger political context. And their benefits are legion.
Since the Gilded Age, the foundation world has used this power both to protect their immediate financial interests and to shield them from public scrutiny, government regulation, and perhaps especially political opposition. With In These Times recently reporting that “foundation dollars provide 70 to 90 percent of funding support for most social movements,” one might well wonder how the agendas for those movements are being set.
A major source of funding is from corporations, which benefit from the tax breaks and the good PR. They argue doing-good and turning a profit can go hand in hand. But a larger question looms, as is demonstrated in the book The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex: What if turning a profit is possible only when the underlying causes of the social ills targeted by philanthropy remain intact?
While the large foundations are an obvious target of inquiry, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded does not stop there. Rather than focusing on specific funders, this landmark collection offers a bird’s-eye view of the larger system as a whole. Over 25 activists and scholars identify the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC)—a system of relationships that deploys tools of state and owning-class control with the surveillance, derailment, and everyday management of political movements.
Having named what some might call “the elephant in the room,” they go on to critically assess the NPIC’s impact on the practice and imagination of the political left. Of central concern is the emerging dominance of the 501(c)(3) non-profit, a model which some argue threatens to permanently eclipse autonomous grassroots-movement building in the arena of social justice.
Among the largest feminist organizations in the world, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence is a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities through direct action, critical dialogue, and grassroots organizing. To learn more, please visit www.incite-national.org.
Available in April 2007 | 978-0-89608-766-8 | paper | 272 pages | $18
Return to The Revolution Will Not Be Funded