Victoria Ren On Abundance-Left Fusionism, Organizational Independence, and Structural Change
"It’s clear that we’re all on the same side, and we’ll all need to work together if we do want to build power."
Victoria Ren is the co-founder and executive director of Students for Abundance, a national campus network that launched in September 2025 with chapters across ten states. This conversation took place on February 18, 2026, and has been edited for length and clarity. Recently, they hosted Camp Abundance, training students to advocate and organize for pro-growth policy change.
Zachary: Please introduce yourself and your role in the abundance movement.
Victoria: Hi. My name is Victoria Ren. I’m a senior at Stanford, originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I helped start and now run Students for Abundance, a national campus network trying to bring abundance ideas to college campuses.
Zachary: I want to talk about the areas of skepticism that people on the left have with, not necessarily abundance ideas, but the abundance movement as it exists as a set of institutions. Probably the number one critique you’ll see online concerns Niskanen and the Abundance Network: the organizations often draw funding from groups like Coefficient Giving, formerly Open Philanthropy, and from Patrick Collison, Arnold Ventures, and occasionally Stand Together and other elements of the Koch network. Many on the left interpret that funding map as proof that these groups are astroturf and serve concentrated interests. So how do you think about maintaining independence from those funders? How do you respond to that critique? And why do you think those funders back organizations like this?
Victoria: It’s a good question. I’ll speak to the student organizing side, because that’s what I mainly do. I started the first campus chapter one year ago, in January 2025, and at the time there was no funding, and, to be frank, not as much support. Different adults would tell me: students don’t have time; chapters or clubs aren’t going to get people interested. Other people would say something along the lines of, these ideas are so niche — who cares?
But I believed in abundance, and I can share a little bit more about my own personal story too. The short of it is that, for the first time, I felt like I had a political home, in the sense that the way people talked about these problems made sense to me. It also made me feel like I could tangibly do things for other people. I could point to a sidewalk and say, we helped make that better for you. I could point to a home and say, now we have more of those for different folks. And so I just began hosting random events. We started with some speakers, and we’re lucky that the Bay Area has a lot of folks thinking about these problems.
In those months, I ended up meeting some of the founding team. I met Maxwell, a senior at Berkeley, who also helped start SFA. He and I met because he had seen how his mom struggled in Oakland for years just to get a place for herself, just to rent a small apartment, so abundance ideas resonated there. I then met Matthew at the same time, who also helped start Students for Abundance and now works at Niskanen. For him, climate change was a very personal issue for a lot of different reasons, and by studying the policy, he saw that the only way to address and solve the challenge was to build more clean energy and deliver on that promise.
Long way of saying, we’ve met a lot of other students too, but on the student organizing side, a lot of this just started because people cared. It made them feel unstuck; it made them feel activated. Our coalition of ten right now, after a year, is mainly word of mouth. We haven’t been super public about the work we’re doing and who’s joining. And now we’re grateful to be part of the ecosystem, in the sense that we have funding, which is very different from last year, when I had to beg other clubs to partner with us so we could buy pizza for people. Maxwell and I plan to work on this full time, so we’re hoping to make this institution lasting and durable.
But I really do understand people’s fears. I get it on a personal level, where I don’t come from the policy and politics world, and so as an outsider peering in, it can be obscure. And I get it from a more generational point of view, where we’ve seen a lot of leaders and organizations that said certain things about what they were going to do and didn’t, and ended up betraying trust and not being good faith players. I understand it in both of those respects.
Part of my goal in running Students for Abundance, and in taking the idea seriously and presenting it in good faith, is to share more and be more public about how we run, what we’re up to, and what we’re learning, since there are a lot of things we’re going to figure out, things that aren’t going to work, and mistakes we’ll make along the way. And also where we go next.
In terms of the broader movement, from the limited conversations I’ve had with funders, a lot of the people who work at philanthropies used to be involved in activism and advocacy. One funder we’ve been lucky to speak to was a green energy activist in college. This was the early 2000s, before that form of environmentalism really picked up steam. For him, he’s just really excited that there finally seems to be a moment where people recognize that building more clean energy is part of saving the planet, and that to get that set of reforms you need change at an institutional level, but also at a policy level and a cultural one. I can’t speak for everyone, since we haven’t been in close contact, but that was one story that resonated a lot, and we spent some time talking to him about it and about how we can learn from his student organizing.
Zachary: I think that type of story reads to me as pretty sincere for a lot of activists on the ground and for the organizations. But let’s be honest about the broader institutional ecology that you’re operating in and, should you scale up successfully, would plausibly be receiving funding from. If you go to something like the Abundance 2025 conference in DC, the keynote speakers are Derek Thompson, Ezra Klein, and the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox. We can put a pin in Spencer Cox for now. But some of the other speakers at that event included somebody like Brian Hooks from Stand Together, which is a core part of the Koch network. There are a lot of people in the funding space for abundance who I do not think we would say are on board with the green liberal agenda that somebody like Klein or Thompson puts forward, in ways that might be less obviously compatible with left-wing values. So are you willing to make that cut and say, yes, these are two different components of a movement that has been given the same name but has different funding structures and different networks, and of course you collaborate on some issues? Or do you think that connection, as I think many on the left would say, reveals something deeper about the nature of the battles abundance picks?
Victoria: Here’s what I will say. Abundance is early, maybe one year old, and I think we can improve on two fronts. The first is that the movement broadly has been so interested in bipartisanship — sometimes for the sake of bipartisanship — that it actually dilutes the ideas. Abundance didn’t start because there was funding and people realized that. Abundance started because people began noticing that across the economy, certain groups of interests were powerful and entrenched and were stopping a lot of people from getting more of what they deserved, making them poorer and less powerful. And simultaneously, parts of our institutions were stuck: even when we wanted to do something, we couldn’t do it. So the movement started as ideas first. One thing I’ll note, and I think you’re rightly pushing on this, is that we can’t lose that in an effort to be bridge builders. We are interested in spreading these ideas, and whoever takes them up and is genuinely interested in changing the status quo and fixing it, we will support. The people who are using it as a token, or saying it just to say it, we will pressure. And if they don’t actually commit to the changes that abundance seeks, if they’re defending the very things many in the abundance coalition are trying to change, then in my view they’re not abundance.
The second point I’d make, and something we’ve got to do a better job on, is that there’s a difference between the abundance project and the moderation project within the Democratic Party. Some of the people who are in the moderation project also happen to really, really like abundance. But again, we believe things are broken. Being part of, for example, the old guard of the Democratic establishment that doesn’t like the left but doesn’t have any ideas, and so clings to abundance — we welcome their interest, but if they don’t actually commit to the changes, again, they’re not part of the movement. They’re not actually delivering on the outcomes that I think most people in the coalition would agree on, which is to focus more on the physical world and to help people access the basic goods that matter in order to participate, have a chance to thrive, and build what they believe to be the good life.
Zachary: That brings me to another question, but first I’d like to ask: I find it interesting that you say abundance is only a year old. What is the founding moment that makes the cut explicit from previously existing movements that are often grouped into the same coalition? The Cato Institute is not a year old. So how do you think about that cut, ideologically and in the history of this coalition?
Victoria: From my point of view, you’re right that a lot of abundance ideas are longstanding. There were the liberaltarians. There was The Captured Economy in 2017. There’s civic tech. All the groups that are sort of in this pot are often portrayed under one umbrella. The reason I say one year old is that the movement, in terms of being part of a national conversation and a broader story, really started one year ago. It’s not to discredit some of the organizers, some of the people already doing the work. But this unifying concept of abundance, and it being something colloquially recognized within policy circles and also among some voters, depending on what people are reading and listening to, I think that’s new. And I think that rightfully demands questions around, well, what is this going to be? What is the long-term strategy? I don’t have all the answers, but my role is to work on the students and young people front and figure out ways for the students who are interested to contribute and get involved, learn and debate.
Zachary: So let’s get to a question relating to the moderation cut. There are numerous individuals and groups who have become, to many on the left, the face of abundance. I don’t understand the antagonistic relationship toward Ezra Klein, but to be quite frank, I do understand it in the case of Josh Barro. And I understand it occasionally in the case of the New Liberals, especially their San Francisco chapter. To many leftists, these groups and individuals — people like Matthew Yglesias, who admittedly is engaged in a project of attempting to move the Democratic Party to the center, or the New Liberals, who are an outgrowth of PPI — become the face, rather than somebody like Ned Resnikoff, who I think would be much more amenable to alliances with the left. So do you think these figures inhibit cooperation with the left, or are they simply outside of your coalition and you can’t control the brand? Or do you think there needs to be work done, and I admit that the left possibly needs to do work like this too, in disciplining members of each of our coalitions to enable cooperation?
Victoria: Great question. I welcome the abundance-left fusion and narratives of collaboration. I’m excited by it. Fundamentally, abundance, as you know, focuses on fighting entrenched power that keeps people poor and less powerful. It’s not always obvious. But there are homeowners, there’s the American Medical Association, there are certain occupational licensing requirements that really benefit a small group of people. And the left also focuses on entrenched power that harms everyday people. Sometimes the problems and solutions we see will be the same. In healthcare, for example, I think there are a lot of reforms that are both abundance and antitrust. Other times these solutions will be complementary, and I’m excited for that. I’m excited because especially in one-party areas, where there’s more factional fighting than working together, abundance is one important tool that will help us get unstuck and help the country move into better times. But it’s not the only one, and to really get us out of this moment and chart some path forward, we will have to work with different ideas and different groups and build a bigger tent story that people can resonate with and feel is actually going to solve their problems.
Zachary: Does that become more difficult when you have, say, Jeff Maurer, who is probably a good example? People who are incredibly aggressive toward the left and their candidates online. I can think here of some of the people who recommended a vote for Cuomo over Zohran. In this context, do you think that inhibits cooperation? Or do you think that when push comes to shove, once you actually get into government, it no longer matters, because it’s about fixing the problems, not about doing online discourse, and we can just leave the people doing mean online discourse to themselves?
Victoria: No, I think it matters a lot that people are oriented toward talking to people and trying in good faith to work with them when priorities overlap, and when it’s clear there’s a broader goal beyond any one coalition’s specific policy and political preferences that we’re all trying to reach. I’ll speak on this at the student level. As an organizer, when I’m on campus talking to students, trying to spread some of these ideas and get people’s thoughts on whether they resonate or not, I see manifestations of what we see online, in person, because people read some of the punditry and some of the arguments. And it takes longer to say, hey, that’s not actually reflective, when you think about it in terms of ideas and away from the interpersonal politics that has brought abundance and the left into tension when it shouldn’t have to be. As an organizer and someone who believes in the ideas, I want more people to feel like they have a place here. Obviously there is a limit, where not everything’s going to be abundant and not everyone’s going to be abundance, and that’s okay. But especially when there is a common vision around changing things as they are, I think it’s really important that we maintain a spirit of openness and a spirit of warmth and good faith.
Zachary: Have you tried to cooperate with any left-wing groups on any projects?
Victoria: On campus work, totally. One example, and I’ll speak for Stanford, is that we’ve been working on Stanford’s General Use Permit. Part of Stanford Abundance’s job is to be the student convener, the one who has relationships with administrators but also relationships with students, and who bridges some of the divide that often happens, since campus is big, administrators are busy, and students often don’t know who to talk to. We’re working with Students for Workers’ Rights and Students for a Sustainable Stanford, and everyone in the coalition has different asks and demands, but we all know that it’s important to build more affordable housing and to build more transit. We’re excited in the coming months to continue that partnership and continue that work of contributing to our campus specifically and making it more abundant through this collaboration.
Zachary: What’s been the most difficult part of those collaborations? Have any failed?
Victoria: I will say that sometimes when I tell people I’m working on abundance, they’ll ask, is this neoliberalism? Or, I’ve heard X, Y, and Z. Or they’re not even open to getting coffee or starting the conversation. That’s certainly happened a few times, but not that many, because I think when people see that our group on campus is really trying to work on tangible things — yes, we’re here to talk about ideas too, and we’re here to hang out, and we’re here to build some kind of culture and group where people can feel at home and feel comfortable — part of the abundant spirit is trying to fix things for people and to actually take some form of agency, to recognize that these problems are something we can all contribute to. For us, tangibly, this has looked like room booking, some of the land use work, making more third spaces on campus. And I think when we talk on the issue level and it becomes really clear that we’re here to help, we’ve been able to chat with people and build different relationships and work as a coalition to get the thing done, which has been really exciting and also fulfilling.
Zachary: So let’s talk about tension on the issue level. How do you think the actually existing institutions and individuals that compose the abundance coalition are thinking about cooperation with organized labor, which has often been a real tension? You will often see leftists on Twitter saying things like, yes, they are right on housing, but as you can see here, Derek Thompson has this disagreement with the teachers’ union, and so forth. So do you think that is a site of real tension, or do you think there are still so many positive trades to be made here that it’s not a hard strategic problem? Or do you think it really is a blocking point?
Victoria: I’m going to be honest: from what I understand, I think there’s going to have to be a lot more work and conversation around what abundance and labor looks like. On the campus chapter level, we’ve had multiple of our groups host discussions around abundance and unions, trying to figure out, if we’re interested in these ideas of more housing for folks, more transportation for folks, better education, better healthcare, where are the areas we can work together and where are the areas we can’t?
And I think sometimes there is tension between abundance and unions, since abundance ultimately focuses on the person, the family, and the community interacting with government and services. I’ll give one example: police unions. Someone with an abundance point of view may take issue with police unions, because what’s best for their union may not be best for the safety of a mom walking down the street trying to protect her kids. It’s not satisfying, but I do think there are some disagreements, depending on the issue, around where labor plays a role.
But I do want to emphasize that it does really matter that workers have protections, and it does really matter that abundance is not used as a vehicle to strip back progress that people fought for, progress that has often been codified in the form of unions, as part of its agenda to deliver.
Zachary: Do you think that’s a real risk? What do you think would be a sign that it’s occurring, that abundance is being used to roll back labor protections and originally worthwhile regulations? What would be a warning sign that that’s what’s happening, rather than something more substantive?
Victoria: You have to look at specific efforts, since unions aren’t a monolith. For example, California at the state versus the local level, versus Montana, Texas, that sort of thing. I think when politicians, as one example, invoke abundance while passing some policy, or trying to remove some policy, that very clearly seems not to produce better or quicker outcomes but that maybe more substantively affects the people building the thing or doing the thing, then I think it’s clearer. But it’s hard to say without exact legislative examples.
Zachary: On the other side, we could possibly be in a world in which, by 2028, we look back and see that Mayors Mamdani, Katie Wilson, and Nithya Raman have implemented a series of reforms that directionally are what YIMBYs have asked for for more than a decade, that have really worked toward building up state capacity at a municipal level, and that have made them, to many, surprising implementers of much of the municipal abundance agenda, especially for transit and urbanist advocates. Why do you think we are not in the world in which we’re talking about, in 2028, mayors Zohran and so on implementing that agenda on its own terms? Why have abundance liberals not won elections in the places where the policies would be most beneficial?
Victoria: Something I will say, and I don’t know if it’s true: abundance ideas, no matter how long you believe them to have percolated, whether it’s a year, ten years, or twenty years, have always been quite wonky. Few people are interested in digging into permit reform or zoning reform and the core of some of the policy ideas behind it. But a lot more people are interested in what abundance can do, which is lower prices and make government services feel dignified and excellent for individual people.
I think the people who are interested in the ideas of how to get us there are dispositionally a little nerdier, and less willing, especially in this attention environment, to take a hard stand, name a villain, and really tell a clear story about why they believe what they believe. I’m no political expert, but this is something we’ve seen in our chapters too, in terms of some of the folks coming in. It’s always great to have people focused on the policy and the specifics, and any movement needs to be able to deliver on its promises to sustain itself. So we love, and I deeply respect, the work that everyone’s doing to shore this up intellectually and make sure that we’re doing right by the research and by the numbers.
But you also need people who can evangelize. You also need people who can share that message, whether they use the word abundance or not. Regardless, I’m happy that there are politicians in office doing that kind of work and clearly making their constituents’ lives better in a way that aligns with some of these ideas.
Zachary: Do you think what’s happened here is just elite persuasion? Or do you think there are deeper structural reasons why a left-wing executive would end up adopting a state capacity and supply-side agenda? Or do you think Derek and Ezra just wrote a good book?
Victoria: I think to do ambitious things with the state, which a lot of these mayors are thinking about and focusing on, it’s not as easy as signing this or having city council pass and work on this. I think we most clearly saw some of the challenges of implementing large legislation in the Biden administration. I worked on the CHIPS and Science Act during the fall of 2025 and just saw how difficult it was, and not for a lack of hard work. People in my office were working maybe 70 to 80 hours a week trying to get the contracts negotiated, trying to get the fabs built, trying to get the money delivered.
So when mayors step into their office, especially since at the local level there’s a clearer feedback loop between what you say you’re doing, what you’re doing, and what people are experiencing, I think people recognize then that we have stopped government from being able to do things. Whether it’s the way we hire people, making it really, really hard to even get people to apply by way of our requirements — New York City is one famous example — or the way we think about the culture we’re rewarding, and making sure that people who work in local government get kudos for trying something and taking a risk and not defaulting to the safest option.
Long way of saying, I think when people get into office and want to do the things they want to do, it’s clear that our institutions are maybe more adept at saying no. But if you’re progressive and you want change, that’s going to have to change pretty quick.
Zachary: Not to get too in the weeds here, and it’s only been 50 days, but why do you think this appears to have worked better for somebody like Mamdani than for Brandon Johnson? Do you think at that level it’s elite persuasion? Brandon Johnson also wants to do a bunch of great big things with Chicago and was just incapable of doing so. Do you think at that level it’s about getting to left-wing politicians and convincing them this is what they need to do? Or do you think there is something about someone’s political background?
Victoria: We should talk to the politician who’s running to do big things and change things, and also to the folks who are going to be running the agencies and the departments and really trying to implement the agenda that the mayor and the elected official is trying to push forth.
Something awesome about the Zohran campaign and administration was that, as he was running, he was open to changing his views, in the same way that I think abundance people should be open to changing views, when a case is made and when it seems like that might be the best way to get this outcome of affordability for residents.
You saw that with housing and maybe the role of developers to play in that process. And I think you also saw it in some of his staffing choices, drawing not just from folks who initially were part of his political milieu but also expanding to some of the people he recruited when he decided certain policy goals were the goal, and he wanted expertise and a bench of talent to figure out the problem and actually do the thing within four years.
Zachary: I think we can generalize that, then. A plausible model, both at the municipal level and maybe even at the presidential level, is a left-wing executive adopting a quite rigorous, progressive agenda that requires state capacity and supply-side policies wholesale. In which case, abundance groups become a kind of junior partner, supplying technocratic input, but especially staffing. Are you comfortable with that role? Do you think other people within the abundance movement would be comfortable in that role? Do you think that would be viewed as a success? Obviously there may be some who would not be and some who would. But as a general disposition, do you think the technocratic elements of abundance quite lend themselves to such a role?
Victoria: I think with abundance, the core goal is to be able to make these changes, as we talked about, at the policy level, at the institutional level, and at a cultural level too, to help the economy get unstuck, help people get unstuck, and actually have institutions that can meet the 21st century and some of the rapid change that we’re seeing. If this is one dynamic that works well as a model, I’m happy, and I’m glad that we can actually make change in Americans’ and everyday people’s lives.
One thing I will push back on is, I don’t think everyone in abundance is as technocratic, though maybe more people are. A lot of our members are more progressive, and I could see them doing some kind of fusion where they’re brought up in both backgrounds and, on one hand, believe in abundance ideas but also have other ideological commitments, and do some fusion work around that.
So, just pushing back on the idea that all of the movement is that composition or that demographic. We’ve certainly seen a lot of younger people — big fans of Zohran, for single-payer healthcare, very progressive in the agenda they want to implement — still get excited around what abundance ideas can be as a tool for them, and around the identity of getting stuff done and really caring about the delivery aspect.
Zachary: Okay, one more question. The March for Billionaires. Oh, my God. What do you view the limitations of the action to be?
Victoria: Look, I won’t speak for Students for Abundance; I’m an individual in this capacity. But in a moment where people are no longer doing better than their parents, where all the paths that we have told people to take to get a better life — we promised that if you studied X, Y, and Z, if you went to college, if you took out those debts, then you would be able to get a house, raise a family, do whatever you wanted to do, have a good life — when all of that is unraveling, and it’s clear that there are small groups of people who have a disproportionate amount of power and money, I think it deeply misses the moment and misses the forest for the trees. People are struggling. Our politics is not working. You can have specific disagreements on what taxation looks like, and how much people ought to contribute, that sort of thing. But making it into this broader sort of demonstration really misses the point of what we are fighting against and what we are really trying to fight for. At the end of the day, I think when you weigh those two things, it’s clear that we’re all on the same side, and we’ll all need to work together if we do want to build power, build majorities, and pass something that is not just a minor tweak at the problems we’ve been experiencing.
