Twelve years after starting college, the white female borrower has paid off 72% of her loan balance. Over the same time period, the typical Black female borrower's balance has grown by 13%.
Gulf Coast communities face the same environmental and racial injustices they faced during Hurricane Katrina—except now with the overlapping crises of COVID-19, economic collapse, and uprisings for Black Lives. Policy change must undo this injustice.
"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."
“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."
An executive action for student debt cancellation would provide much needed economic relief to millions of Black and Latinx families in order to avoid financial catastrophe during the continuing global pandemic.
“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.”
"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 winter storm disaster in Texas was a crisis fueled by a failure to address climate change and the influence of oil and gas companies in state and local politics.
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.
The Build Back Better Act would dramatically help working people and families. Now, the passage of this once-in-a-lifetime framework is in the hands of a few legislators who are beholden to corporations and the ultrarich.
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.
Organizers from the Texas Organizing Project (TOP) have been working to change the balance of power in the county to ensure a more equitable distribution of disaster funding, so that the people most impacted by climate change have the most say in how that funding is spent.
This case study follows the coalition For Us Not Amazon (FUNA) and members of the Athena Coalition as they organized to prevent one of the biggest corporations in the world from taking over the civic, social, and political life of Northern Virginia and beyond.