As part of an effort to reshape rules around debt and lending to reduce racial wealth inequality, we propose establishing a public credit registry to gradually replace the current for-profit credit reporting system.
This report was completed in collaboration with the Advancement Project, Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, Demos, Faith in Action, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Congress of American Indians, National Urban League, Race Forward, and UnidosUS. These groups are a collaborative of leading national racial-equity organizations supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Demos strongly urges the Department of Homeland Security to withdraw the proposed rule to radically enlarge the list of criteria that will be used to decide whether an immigrant is likely to become a “public charge.”
Public-sector jobs in Massachusetts are more likely than private-sector jobs to be good jobs that provide a family-supporting income and wealth-building benefits. They need to be preserved.
Advocates and policymakers are frequently asked how they plan to pay for progressive policy investments. This memo provides guidance on how to respond.
Both economic and racial justice are core progressive priorities, but too often we discuss them separately. On the contrary, racial and economic harms are intertwined, as are our desired solutions to them. Wealthy elites exploit racial fears to turn working people against each other and government; economic pain increases racial resentment and facilitates scapegoating, fueling support for punitive measures against people of color.
Once an institution accepts the premise that all people, regardless of their background, have the potential to thrive and contribute to the success of an organization, they can begin to recognize systemic disparities and gaps as flaws to be addressed.
For the last year, we—Demos, Anat Shenker-Osorio (ASO Communications) and Ian Haney López (author of Dog Whistle Politics), —have partnered in an ambitious multi-phase project to build an effective new narrative on race, class, and democracy. The central question we’ve explored is how to engage simultaneously around race and class in ways that strengthen social solidarity, reduce division and scapegoating, and create a viable foundation for progressive policy victories.
Demos’ Race-Class Narrative (RCN) project developed an empirically-tested narrative on race and class that resonates with all working people and offers an alternative to—and neutralizes the use of—dog-whistle racism.