April
2003
The
New Face of Philanthropy
By Britt Collins
|
|
There is a surge of trust fund rebels dismantling
the perception that rich kids slum around swimming pools and
squander their money on drugs. These days, many activists come
from affluent families, go to private schools and have clean
hair.
Disillusioned with the state of the world and the greed and
invasiveness of globalization, a number of well-off young
people are quietly using
their wealth and connections to inspire change. And they’re not
just cool monied rock stars and Hollywood chicks, like Moby and Alicia
Silverstone, whose youthful largess benefits a variety of green causes.
Nor are they all from anti-corporate globalization author Naomi Klein’s
thirty-something “Generation-X” contingent. These kids
are younger and their wealth is usually inherited. And this is one
of the few times in history where change is filtering up rather than
down through the class system.
Young Americans
The “cool rich kids movement,” as it is known, is taking
off in America. Founded by William Upski Wimsatt, a 29 year-old writer
and graffiti artist who believes that philanthropy will be the new
art form of the 21st century, the movement encourages young people
to work for radical social change. Being rich, Wimsatt says, is not
all it’s cracked up to be. “I didn’t want to end
up being some pimp covered in Gucci, floating around in limos and doing
drugs.” Instead, he “hooks up grassroots campaigns with
forward-thinking rich kids,” like two of Sarah Lee’s grandchildren,
the inheritors of her frozen foods company, who regularly give a fortune
away to social causes. Wimsatt, a spirited college drop-out, has co-founded
three organizations and claims that “there are five million millionaires
in the U.S. and you can’t believe how many kick-ass activists
there are until you start digging.” He is currently working on
a “Fortune 500” book, “a directory of young people
changing the world.”
Sherry DeBoer, heiress to Long’s drugstore chain on the West
Coast, traded in Hollywood for activism. The former actress and party
girl couldn’t be further away from the LA party circuit. “I
had nothing to show for the years dating and looking pretty. It was
an empty, wasted life. The real joy is in giving.” She became
a political lobbyist and helped get California’s Proposition
6 passed, banning the commercial sale of horses for human consumption,
in addition to establishing a bill for the humane treatment of pet-store
puppies and kittens. In 1990, DeBoer founded the Animal Health and
Safety Association, which lobbies for humane legislative reform at
the state level, and founded Political Animals, a political action
committee for animal advocacy in California.
“Like other animal protection people,” DeBoer says, “I entered
[the political] arena with the assumption that moral correctness has power.” She
soon discovered that the primary motivation of politicians is, by necessity,
their own re-election. “Legislators are powerless to help you if it will
result in their defeat at the polls,” she says. And to be effective, you
have to play the game. Simply put, activists who want to help the animals have
got to learn the ropes, do the research, and be professional. “The legislature
is no place for amateurs,” DeBoer advises, “no matter how enthusiastic
or well-intentioned.”
Another cool rich kid, Karen Pittelman, a 28 year-old poet
and social activist, gave away the lion’s share of
her $3 million inheritance to start the Chahara Foundation
(www.chahara.org),
which gives grants of up to $20,000 to Boston-based organizations working
with or run by lower-income women. Dismissed by her family as a “crazy
communist,” her decision to give away her inheritance was rooted
in a desire to use that money towards “a radical redistribution
of wealth.” “Everyone thought I lost my mind,” she
says. “When I was younger, I wanted to wash my hands of all the
money, pretend I had never even known it existed. That was guilt. But
guilt is just inertia, just indulgence. It accomplishes nothing.”
“Guilt and denial are often overriding and even paralyzing emotions among
many young people with access to wealth,” explains Wimsatt, who first used
the ‘cool rich kids’ phrase in his book No More Prisons (Soft Skull
Press) and gave away half of his 2001 income to social-change philanthropy. “Some
of the best candidates for the movement have spent their entire lives pretending
they’re not rich.”
Young philanthropy is nothing new, however. Twenty years
ago, John Robbins, heir of the Baskin Robbins ice cream empire,
author, filmmaker
and animal-rights campaigner, walked away from the wealthy lifestyle
of his family and their “ice cream cone-shaped swimming pool” to
educate Americans about the inhumane conditions of modern meat production
and to live a compassionate lifestyle. He has written several books,
including the bestseller Diet for a New America, in which
he presents his theories about how an animal-based diet is killing
Americans.
Cool Brit Kids
Across the pond in the UK, the cool rich kids movement is much smaller,
but there is a flourishing new wave of aristocrats championing green
causes.
Using their influence and glamour, Britain’s golden
boy environmentalist Zac Goldsmith and his sister Jemima
Khan, who works with Unicef and
the World Society for the Protection of Animals, are cultivating the
hothouse climate that is allowing the green renaissance to thrive.
The Ecologist’s 29 year-old editor Zac is
a dedicated activist. “For anybody who is both wealthy
and socially concerned, there is some contradiction in our
lives,” he admits. He says he’s “not interested
in money” but he “can’t stand by and watch
the world fall apart.” As editor of The Ecologist,
the world’s longest-running environmental magazine,
Zac is often caught in the crossfire of controversy. The
most recent issue features the coverline: “Eat shit
or die: America gives Africa a choice,” which is a
vitriolic attack on U.S. foreign policy. But while the magazine
is well-regarded, Zac’s own green credentials are sometimes
called into questioned, not least of all because he fills
that well-worn cliché of the meat-eating environmentalist.
Jemima Khan, christened by the British media as the ‘new Princess
Diana,’ has become even more prolific, from rescuing baby bear
cubs from being baited with dogs to raising money for Afghan refugees.
After reading an article that described children “dying of cold
in the refugee camps,” Jemima went to Afghanistan and provided
tents, blankets and other relief items to 80,000 refugees. “I
was horrified by the conditions there,” she says, relating what
she saw. “But what I found most upsetting was the desperation
among people for shelter. There was one little boy whose parents had
died and he had come on his own, dragging this huge tent for miles.
And there was another little girl, about nine, looking after her five
siblings. It was heartbreaking.”
A former society princess and Vogue cover girl, she runs a
small fashion label which helps fund her husband Imran Khan’s
cancer hospital in Lahore. Her clothes are an elegant blend of East
and West: jewel-bright silks and vivid hand-embroidery adorning slinky
dresses and delicate cardigans, handmade by impoverished village women.
She already has a dazzling clientele of Hollywood celebs and rock stars,
selling in London, Paris and New York.
And the Animals
The scions of the billion-dollar Vestey beef empire, former “It” girl
Julia Stephenson and her “eco-warrior” brother Mark Brown,
are also part of this new wave of green aristos. Both vegans, Julia
stripped down for her beliefs, posing nude in glossy society magazine
Tatler to promote animal welfare, while Mark, a committed environmentalist
who lives a modest lifestyle, went to court for his involvement in
Reclaim the Street’s Carnival Against Capitalism in London, which
ended in several million pounds’ worth of damage. “People
like us have always been environmentally minded,” says Julia, “but
they are sticking their heads up and being counted now. People have
woken up to what’s going on. They’re travelling a lot and
seeing what’s happening to the world. Even my friends who I thought
were skeptical about my interests are now asking questions about it.
It’s becoming cool to be vegan—we are the armed guard of
the vegetarian contingent.”
Julia Stephenson may be a living stereotype, with a luxurious
apartment off of London’s trendy Sloane Square, a trust fund and constant
flow of party invitations, but she is all too aware of the irony. “Our
economic freedom comes from the very thing I find so hard to stomach:
the meat industry. But some good has to come out of this blood money.” A
visit to a farm when she was a teenager opened her eyes. “I was
expecting to see fields of pigs and chickens roaming in the sunlight.
Instead, I was horrified by the reality of the pig house: rows of tiny
concrete stalls where sows were shackled to the filthy, metal slatted
floor. One young sow was being placed in a stall for the first time.
She threw herself against the restraint in a frenzy of panic and deafening
squeals. I am still haunted by her cries. It’s sickening, we
pretend to be a nation of animal lovers but I’ve realized there’s
just as much animal cruelty in the UK as the rest of the world, only
here we do it behind closed doors.”
In 2000, she became a Green Party candidate for the Greater
London Assembly, mainly, she concedes, so that she could
improve animal welfare: “We
all want fresh air, pure water, and healthy food. We trust our government
to deliver these basic requirements, but it has let us down. I joined
the Green Party as it is the only party with the guts to put people,
animals and the environment before short-term profits and corporate
greed.”
Animal rights activist and vegan Stella McCartney has it
written into her contract that she “won’t work with leather or fur” and
recently started her own ethical label with Gucci. While her partnering
up with fur-using Gucci was seen by many as her defection to the dark
side, Stella insists that she is fighting the “sickness of the
industry from within.” Shortly after signing up with the label,
she starred in a scathing commercial which shows the brutality of animal
slaughter and openly attacks fashion labels like Fendi, Dolce & Gabbana,
and even Gucci for their use of fur and leather.
McCartney regularly clashes with other designers, like Karl
Lagerfeld, who claims she lacks credibility because “she’s deeply
hypocritical and she’s making both herself and Gucci look ridiculous.” “All
the negative stuff doesn’t affect me,” says Stella. “There’d
be no point in doing anything if I let it get to me.”
Her sister, fashion photographer Mary McCartney, also a vegan
and activist, recently shot Brit-pop diva Sophie Ellis-Bextor
for a hotly controversial
PETA campaign wearing a sleek black evening gown, holding a dead, skinned
fox, with the caption: Here’s the rest of your fur.
This new wave of eco-warriors, however, is not without its
critics. Lord Peter Melchett—the former head of Greenpeace who led the
group’s high-profile campaign against genetically-engineered
foods—is incensed by what he sees as “It” girls and
boys glamorizing and trivializing the issues for the sake of “fashion.” Because,
he says, “The only things that matter are the issues.”
It’s not about fashion, says Julia Stephenson. Those with trust
funds make natural environmentalists. “We have more time and
money to find out what’s going on. If you’re on the work
treadmill, who has time to read The Ecologist? It’s
always been the preserve of the rich and privileged to worry about
conservation. The poor are generally more preoccupied with the business
of trying to survive.”
Britt Collins is a freelance journalist and animal rights
activist. Her writing has appeared in Sunday People, Evening
Standard, and Vogue. She is currently writing a book on
celebrities and animal rights. Britt lives in London with her eight
beautiful cats. This is an edited version of an original article published
in the May 2002 issue of Green Events (www.greenevents.fsnet.co.uk/art057.html).
 |
|
|
 |
