Showing posts with label charity. Show all posts

29 December 2025

She sold a painting for $165 million and gave it all away. & LDF Mourns the Loss of Agnes Gund, Devoted Philanthropist and Advocate for Social Good 16DEZ & 19SEP25

WHAT an amazing person! Godspeed Ms Gund, and thank you! From the New York Times and the Legal Defense Fund.....

She sold a painting for $165 million and gave it all away.

She sold a painting for $165 million and gave it all away. By Elizabeth Alexander

One December morning in 2016, I got a call from Darren Walker, who was then the president of the Ford Foundation and my boss. “I need you to meet me at Aggie’s at 4 o’clock today,” he said. “We need to help her build something.” We met at the elegant Park Avenue apartment of Agnes Gund — or Aggie, as she was known to everyone. That afternoon, she sat on her sofa beneath the intricate universe of Jasper Johns’s 1963 painting “Map.” A Roni Horn totem stood near her like a sentry, and I could see the smooth, ribbonlike curve of a Martin Puryear wood sculpture in the dining room.

Gund was an avid art collector and philanthropist, and over the years she had served as the president of MoMA and donated more than 1,000 works to the museum. “I feel guilty about having so much more than most people,” she once explained in an interview. “If I can have it, others should be able to enjoy it.” She rarely sold the work, preferring to give it to art institutions.

But that afternoon, she explained that she had sold a painting from her collection, one that she loved and had lived with for 41 years. It was the iconic midcentury Pop Art work “Masterpiece,” by Roy Lichtenstein, which hung for years over the mantel in her dining room and, before that, in her home in Concord, Mass. For her, the painting was a daily and beloved connection to Lichtenstein and his wife, Dorothy, both of whom had been her friends.

The painting sold for $165 million, at the time one of the highest prices for a work of art, and Gund wanted to use the money on a campaign to end mass incarceration in the United States. It was a wildly ambitious notion, but she was determined. We were there to help her design the vision.

Over time, I came to understand how incisive Gund was about all aspects of her life, from how she dressed to the institutions she shaped. She welcomed people into her home and her life with generosity and grace, especially artists, whom she adored. She had a dry wit, a love for family of blood and choice and a painfully felt sense of right and wrong.

She grew up in a wealthy family in Cleveland, part of a generation and class that emphasized divisions. She once said she knew only one Black person, Henrietta Givens, whom her parents employed as a housekeeper and cook. Early on, she was pulled toward art, taking drawing classes as a child and memorizing the works she loved most. When her father died, she inherited a trust and became a wealthy woman. It was then that she bought her first significant work, a sculpture by the English midcentury artist Henry Moore.

Her wealth — and a divorce — gave her the freedom to move to New York with her children in her 40s. She continued to study art history and collect, going on to develop deep relationships with some of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st centuries — Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning, Louise Bourgeois, Kara Walker and many more. As Marina Abramovic put it: “So many collectors never have any relationship with the artist at all. They will buy the art, and then never meet the artist.” But Gund “found the key to our hearts and really made friends.”

Gund believed that art should be available to everyone, and this tenet informed her philanthropy. When New York City significantly cut funding for art in its public schools in 1977, she founded Studio in a School, a nonprofit to bring artists into the schools. In the 2010s, her sense of responsibility expanded after a series of infamous killings of Black men and boys, including Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner. She was influenced by books, including “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander and “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson. It was after watching Ava DuVernay’s documentary “13th,” which explored interlocking questions of race, injustice and mass incarceration, that Gund told Darren Walker she wanted to use her resources to fund criminal-justice reform and creative expression.

Over the six months after our meeting in her living room, our small team helped her design what would become the Art for Justice Fund: an organization that, from 2017 to 2023, awarded $127 million in grants to support bail reform, criminal-justice advocacy and individual artists, many of whom had themselves been in prison. Gund welcomed formerly incarcerated people into her home to share their work and ideas.

There are many stately photographs of Gund, some taken in that Park Avenue living room, attired in pale lemon, saffron, coral, teal, her hair perfectly in place — and often with a beloved painting behind her. But a different photograph is my favorite. We see her from behind, next to a barbed-wire fence, in a quilted vest. She is walking beside an African American man wearing a jacket that says “prisoner” across the back. She is touching his arm, leaning toward him.

They are standing together inside the San Quentin prison in California, where the man she is speaking to has been incarcerated. And Aggie is listening to him closely.

Elizabeth Alexander is a poet and the president of the Mellon Foundation.

LDF Mourns the Loss of Agnes Gund, Devoted Philanthropist and Advocate for Social Good

The Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is deeply saddened by the passing of Agnes Gund, a devoted philanthropist whose enduring commitment to racial and social justice left a lasting impact on both communities and institutions. A renowned art collector and expert, Ms. Gund dedicated her life to using art as a vehicle for driving equity, justice, and social change. Ms. Gund passed away at her home in Manhattan on Sept. 18, 2025. She was 87 years old.

“We deeply mourn the loss of Ms. Agnes Gund, an unrelenting advocate and cherished friend of LDF,” said Janai Nelson, LDF President and Director-Counsel. “Ms. Gund was an extraordinary supporter and thought partner whose generosity and passion were matched only by her visionary insight and unwavering resolve to use her position and resources for transformative change. Ms. Gund held a core conviction that art could inspire meaningful advocacy, which guided her work to advance justice, promote equity, and further the public good. In one of her most ground-breaking contributions, Ms. Gund established the Art for Justice Fund, an innovative initiative that aims to support criminal justice reform and advance racial justice through creative arts and advocacy. Our heartfelt condolences are with her family and loved ones during this difficult time. While her loss is tremendous, she leaves behind an indelible legacy that will continue to empower and inspire generations to come.”

At the time of her death, Ms. Gund was a President Emerita and Life Trustee of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). From 1991-2002, Ms. Gund served as MoMA’s president, where she oversaw the major expansion of the museum. In 1977, Ms. Gund founded Studio in a School, a nonprofit that brings professional artists into New York City public schools, providing arts education to thousands of students and fostering creativity in underserved communities.

For many years, Ms. Gund maintained a close relationship with LDF, providing invaluable support to many causes including voting rights advocacy and scholarship opportunities for college and law students. She was also closely connected to LDF through her establishment of the Art for Justice Fund, which helped to support LDF’s Justice in Public Safety Project which addresses systemic inequities in the criminal justice system and supports those affected by over-policing and mass incarceration.

In 2017, LDF honored Ms. Gund with a National Equal Justice Award (NEJAD) for her exceptional dedication to advancing racial and social justice.

19 December 2025

8 Stories That Gave Us Hope in 2025 17DEZ25

IT is Advent counting down to the celebration of Christmas, celebrating the faith of the virgin Mary, the love of her husband Joseph, and the birth of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, our Savior. While full of trials and tribulations, this from Sojourners also reminds us of the hope we share and the living faith that has helped us get through 2025. Thank you for these stories from Sojourners.....

8 Stories That Gave Us Hope in 2025

The church has a funny sense of time. When everyone else is looking at Spotify Wrapped and other year-in-reviews, the Christian liturgical calendar has already turned the page, insisting a new year is already here. You’d be forgiven for thinking of Advent as an end-of-year marker, but as any theology nerd will remind you, Advent is the first season in the church’s annual cycle, not the last. Which is to say: The church starts the new year not with champagne or fireworks, but with a season of waiting.

In the Northern Hemisphere, this year-end/year-beginning coincides with colder days, longer nights, and bare trees. And it’s in this moment—when it’s gray and freezing and most things look dead—that Christians make a daring claim: This bleakness all around us is not the end, but a beginning. The new life God promises begins in the dark.

You’ve felt some bleakness this year, I suspect: So many of the stories Sojourners published were stories of loss—cut funding, detained students, slashed budgets, deported neighbors, occupied cities, bombed boats, unjust peace. And those were just the losses that made headlines; many of us suffered quieter losses too—of jobs, good health, a sense of safety, people we loved, or dreams we had for the future. We grieve.

And amid all this, Advent has the nerve to whisper: God is at work. In our grief over all that’s ended, we’re invited to keep watch and stay alert, attentive to signs of the light that is both coming and already here.

At this flipping of the calendar, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite stories that gave us hope in 2025—stories of creative defiance, courageous solidarity, and radical testimony to a way of living that transcends this ol’ mess. We offer them as contemporary echoes of John the Baptist: slightly odd, often-countercultural proclamations from the wilderness of the past year declaring, despite it all, light shines in the darkness. It may feel like the end. But Advent tells us it’s the beginning.

The bishop whose sermon went viral

The day after Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration, Bishop Mariann Budde said what many of us were thinking when she directly addressed Trump in her sermon, asking him to have mercy on LGBTQ+ folks, migrants, and refugees. “I wanted to impress upon everyone, not just the president, that when we are in a position to be merciful, it’s biblical and it’s our obligation,” Bishop Budde told our senior associate news editor Mitchell Atencio later in an interview with Sojourners. “It’s part of what it means to be a humane and moral society.”

These creative acts of faith in the first 100 days of Trump’s second term

In the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, there were myriad ways the policies of a new administration wreaked harm on international aid, federal workers, migrants, and so many others. But as our president Adam Russell Taylor outlines in this op-ed, there were also countless ways people of faith joined in the work of those who were directly harmed, from leading vigils and filing lawsuits, to dialing down polarization and stitching quilts.

The migrant communities who faced the threat of immigration raids with courage…

“We are full of fear, but we are not helpless,” Giselle, a 40-year-old living in a mixed-status immigrant family in Chicago told Sojourners in reporting by Ken Chitwood. “We have the power of God, the power of the church, and the power of the Holy Spirit on our side.”

…and the allies who have found creative ways to keep their migrant neighbors safe

Advocates and organizers have Congregations across the country have made plans for what they’d do if ICE came to their church. Community members in Montana have worked to secure the release of those wrongfully detained. Churches have partnered with other groups to offer rapid response networks, offering impacted migrant communities everything from boots to groceries.

Plus the pastors who’ve put their bodies on the line to protest ICE’s treatment of those in detention centers

“During a lull in the action, I was slammed to the ground and zip-tied. Later, I was charged with three misdemeanors,” wrote Rev. Michael Woolf, recounting his arrest outside an ICE detention center. “If they are doing this to pastors who are praying […] then it makes me shudder to imagine what they might be doing to our neighbors behind closed doors,” Rev. David Black told our associate editor Josina Guess in an interview.

This broad coalition of evangelicals who came together in solidarity with Palestinian Christians

In September, a group of evangelicals, including those like Preston Sprinkle who identify as “a Bible-believing, non-liberal, card-carrying evangelical Christian,” gathered in a Chicago suburb to listen to Palestinian Christians. Though theologically diverse, these evangelicals and other U.S. Christians grieved the uncritical support many U.S. Christians have given Israel as its retaliatory attacks on Gaza have left tens of thousands of civilians dead, hungry, or homeless. “Collective liberation—for Palestinians and everyone else—will only be possible through forming broad coalitions of people with diverging beliefs and opinions,” wrote our senior associate opinion editor Josiah R. Daniels in his essay about the gathering.

A volunteer choir that helps keep protests safe and participatory

“I had never run a choir or even done much song leading outside of being a camp counselor until I decided this needed to be done,” Peter Burkholder, co-founder of the Rapid Response Choir, told Sojourners in an interview. “It makes me feel so much comfort and joy to wake up and say, “Well, the news is awful, but at least we’re here, trying to do something about it.”

These people who gave away their inherited wealth

There was no shortage of stories about billionaires behaving badly this year. But two articles we published—including this story about 100 acres of inherited farmland and this interview with former 1-percenter Chuck Collins—featured people of faith who were moved to give away their wealth and testify to a more just economy.

Betsy Shirley

Betsy Shirley is the editor in chief of Sojourners.

‘All Bullies Are Frightened Children’
A pastor’s reflections after being shot at by ICE agents.
by David Black

18 December 2025

VERSE AND VOICE FROM SOJOURNERS AND ESPECIALLY APPROPRIATE FOR THESE TIMES 18DEZ25

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Verse of the day

Beloved, you do faithfully whatever you do for the brothers and sisters, even though they are strangers to you; they have testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on in a manner worthy of God.
- 3 John 1:5-6

Voice of the day

I have heard it said we are the uninvited. We are the unwelcome. We should take our misfortune elsewhere. But I hear your mother's voice, over the tide, and she whispers in my ear, “Oh, but if they say, my darling. Even half of what you have. If only they saw. They would say kinder things, surely.”
- Khaled Hosseini, “Sea Prayer” (2018)

Prayer of the day

God, open our hearts to our brethren that long for refuge and let them experience a spirit of welcome rather than disdain.

Our Latest Stories

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Who we choose to grieve amidst great moral cacophony indicates who we consider to be human.

In ‘Rental Family,’ Brendan Fraser Loves His Neighbor by Lying to Them (by Jenna Barnett)

Fraser portrays an American actor living in Tokyo who’s hired to play roles in the lives of real people.

‘Lord of the Rings’ Doesn’t Mean What MAGA Thinks It Does (by Ethan Meyers)

Advent reminds us that in life, like in Middle-Earth, the most powerful people are not necessarily the most heroic.

I Came to the U.S. a Capitalist, Now I Support Mamdani (by Yanan Rahim Navarez Melo)

“I found myself trapped within the depths of this American religio-capitalist system, digging myself further into its abyss.”

24 October 2025

PLEASE DONATE UNWANTED TOYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS.....

11 November 2021

Daily Prayers for November 11 Originally called Armistice Day 11NOV21

We can thank God we are no longer at war in Afghanistan on Veterans Day, 11 NOV 2021.

Daily Prayers for November 11

Originally called Armistice Day, November 11 is set aside to remember the 24.9 million military veterans in the United States.

O Lord, let my soul rise up to meet you

as the day rises to meet the sun.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,

as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Come, let us bow down and bend the knee : let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

Song “O Lord, Hear My Prayer”

Listen, Lord, listen : not to our words but to our prayer.

Psalm 60:1 – 5

O God, you have cast us off and broken us : you have been angry; oh, take us back to you again.

You have shaken the earth and split it open : repair the cracks in it, for it totters.

You have made your -people know hardship : you have given us wine that makes us stagger.

You have set up a banner for those who fear you : to be a refuge from the power of the bow.

Save us by your right hand and answer us : that those who are dear to you may be delivered.

Listen, Lord, listen : not to our words but to our prayer.

Habakkuk 3:1 – 18 Revelation 13:11 – 18

Listen, Lord, listen : not to our words but to our prayer.

Charles Péguy said, “We must be saved together. We cannot go to God alone; else he would ask, ‘Where are the others?’ ”

Prayers for Others

Our Father

Lord, whether we face it or not, we do not live in isolation. Our words and our actions impact our communities. Help us to learn to speak after appropriate silence and reflection. Help us to recognize the work we can put our hands to so we are able to engage with it prayerfully and patiently. Amen.

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you : wherever he may send you;

may he guide you through the wilderness : protect you through the storm;

may he bring you home rejoicing : at the wonders he has shown you;

may he bring you home rejoicing : once again into our doors.

VETERANS DAY & Highly-Rated Nonprofits Dedicated to Veterans and Military Service Members 11NOV21

TODAY is Veterans Day, a day we recognize and give thanks for the service and sacrifice of our military veterans, retired and active duty. I think a vast majority of Americans are hypocritical about their gratitude to our vets and active duty military. Too many think telling vets and active military 'Thank you for your service' a couple times of a year is good enough. IT IS NOT. True gratitude to our vets and active military and to the families of those who have died defending our nation would be voting in every election. It would be providing the uniforms and equipment required by our deployed troops for them to be kept safe and to be able to carry out their mission without having to pay for any of it themselves. It would be cutting the waste and cost over-run fraud of the military-industrial complex so that charities benefitting vets and active military would not be necessary. True gratitude would be a fully funded and staffed VA medical system so no soldier or vet would have to petition the system for care and / or have to wait weeks or months for treatment. It would be cutting contracts with war profiteering contractors / mercenaries so soldiers are paid enough that their families do not qualify for SNAP / Food Stamps. TRUE GRATITUDE can be expressed by e mailing your representative and senators and demanding more be done to provide for our vets and active duty, and not just once a year. If this post expresses your views then cut & paste it in your e mails. If not, express yourself, but at lease send your e mails. AND SINCE CHARITIES for our vets and military active duty are necessary here is the list from Charity Navigator of

Highly-Rated Nonprofits Dedicated to Veterans and Military Service Members

Americans love, respect, and honor our troops all year round -- in fact, people donate more than $2.5 billion annually to the over 40,000 American charities with military-related missions. Each November, we set aside a special time to honor the sacrifices our brave military veterans have made. Originally called Armistice Day, Veterans Day falls on the anniversary of World War I. The holiday was renamed in 1954 to honor the service of all military members.

Charity Navigator is honored to provide a curated list of highly-rated organizations providing a variety of services, including mental health and supportive services, financial assistance for food, utilities, and medical expenses. We hope that you will consider supporting one of the many organizations on the list below.

To nonprofits: If you are a 3- or 4-Star rated nonprofit providing support to active members of the military and veterans, please complete this survey for your organization to be reviewed for this list. We hope to greatly expand our list of charities presented.

Wounded Troops Services

Military Social Services

Military Family Support

Wounded Troops Services charities address the unique difficulties those injured in combat face.