Written testimony of Demos Associate Director of Policy and Research, Amy Traub before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services
"Although credit scores never formally take race into account, they draw on data about personal borrowing and payment history that is shaped by generations of discriminatory public policies and corporate practices that limit access to wealth for Black and Latinx families."
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.
The Executive Order on Racial Equity represents a firm commitment by the Biden Administration to champion racial equity and to advance equitable practices in data collection and data provision.
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.
The For the People Act can begin to address the longstanding racist exclusions in our democracy with policy solutions that are proven to advance racial equity.
"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.”
Today, nearly 60 years removed from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s speech during the March on Washington, countless barriers remain between his dream and America’s reality.
An economy that ultimately lives up to our country’s promise will require us to invest in public goods and health infrastructure, break up concentrated economic power, and ensure equitable access for Black and brown communities.
Why we need to prioritize passing H.R.1 along with H.R.4 and legislation granting statehood to Washington, D.C. (H.R.51) as the first items of business in the 117th Congress.
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.
Written testimony of Demos President K. Sabeel Rahman before the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law
The policy platform outlines actions that address environmental justice, just recovery from disasters, equity accounting in climate policy, and energy democracy.
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.
Private credit reporting companies should be replaced by a publicly run credit registry that operates in the public interest and that automatically corrects for events like natural disasters and global health crises.
“The potential for executive action to jumpstart the transition that we need — to reorient our democracy for democratic engagement and redress historic inequities — is huge.”
There have been devastating reports of disproportionate rates of death in Black communities as a result of COVID-19. Racial capitalism and structural racism are to blame.