An Open Letter to Max’s Parents (abridged)
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan: #GiveUsFacebook
Read the full version of the letter
Sign the Petition
Dear Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan,
Thank you for your life’s commitment to sharing. Reading your letter to Max, I can see that your hearts are full of newborn love and that you truly intend for this commitment to improve our children’s collective welfare.
Like both of you, I believe that all lives have equal value and that we have a moral responsibility to future generations. I also believe that human potential can only be fully harnessed when people have shared ownership over our collective resources.
So I feel compelled to encourage you to consider an even worthier use of the shares you have committed to charity: Redistribute your shares in Facebook to its members and disrupt the social paradigm of inequality and marginalization.
You have the opportunity to create an everlasting legacy by engineering the greatest redistribution of wealth and power in human history.
Designing and improving social programs on behalf of recipients will never promote human potential and equity on the scale of your inspiring ambition. Building yet another philanthropic initiative would only perpetuate the entrenched systems of power and ego that corrupt our global society.
Throughout our history, those with wealth and access have made decisions on behalf of those without. You cannot solve the world’s problems by reinforcing this paradigm. We need and we deserve a society that gives everyone a voice in decisions that affect our lives.
Although we are more networked than ever, we are less connected. Globally, we are witnessing a return to fundamentalism, extremism and fascism. You have networked those of us with access to the Internet and empowered us with tools to share ideas and mobilize like never before. But we remain divided.
We now know that a model combining poorly-regulated capitalism and philanthropic donations allocated by the elite will never produce an equitable distribution of wealth. Getting there requires courageous people with vision to redistribute their power to make society more equal.
I invite you to lead this movement and continue fulfilling your life’s incredible potential by giving us shared ownership of our network. Empower us to co-author the first chapter of a shared human future that will bring us all closer together and unleash the potential of all future generations.
In hope,
Jon Stever
To Read the full version of the letter: click here
To learn more about the #GiveUsFacebook Movement: click here
To lead the #GiveUsFacebook movement with us: click here
