This case study follows the Texas Organizing Project as it worked to build power and equity for working-class Black & Latino communities in greater Houston after Hurricane Harvey—ultimately implementing a winning 3-part inside-outside strategy.
This case study examines how community leaders forced the city of Pittsburgh to provide safe, accessible, and affordable water—and developed an accountability model in the process, by which ordinary people can oversee the public water utility.
The Economic Democracy Project aims to highlight and develop strategies that Black and brown communities can use to build economic and political power—beginning with four case studies spotlighting community campaigns across the U.S.
If Build Back Better is passed, how do we ensure that everyone gets their fair share? How do we follow the money from the legislation? L. Joy brings Taifa Smith Butler to the front of the class to give us the action items we need to make sure our communities get the most out of it.
Policy choices have allowed big companies to continuously use their power to preserve economic and democratic imbalances that maintain their wealth and influence at the expense of everyone else.
Big companies are using data to preserve the power imbalance that keeps them rich. This economic model is rooted in chattel slavery and relies on the extraction and commodification of data.
This Black History Month (and into March), workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama warehouse have the power to keep making history by voting for their union.
"Black and Latinx borrowers [are] more likely to be denied credit than white borrowers and more likely to be charged higher interest rates [...]. [O]ne of many ways the financial deck is stacked against Black and brown consumers.”
"Black student debtors "are 16 percent more likely to be in default or seriously delinquent than white student debtors; Latino borrowers are 8 percent more likely."
“The actual dollar amount, it’s hard to put that at a figure that’s enough to help everyone who is struggling. And because of that, I’d err on the side of doing more.”
“This is a microcosm of many intra-progressive, intra-left policy debates—whether it’s better to do something universal and achieve something with relative ease or ensure that only those struggling by some definition get relief."
From March through May, New Florida Majority Education Fund surveyed over 21,000 Floridians to ask how the pandemic was affecting their lives and well-being. This report presents our findings from those surveys.
"Imagine any financial transaction you make and someone says the price of this thing is $100,000, but you are very likely to pay nothing, but first you have to fill out all these forms."
The COVID-19 crisis has cast into stark relief what has always been true: the wealth and prosperity of the U.S. economy rests on the labor, and the lives, of black and brown communities.