In collaboration with grassroots and faith-based partners working in communities of color, Demos is challenging Florida’s racially discriminatory attack on voting rights in the wake of unprecedented turnout by voters of color in the 2020 presidential election.
Taifa Smith Butler, joins News NOW on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day to discuss why Black women in America have to work 579 days to earn what a white man does in one year and how companies can work to combat this pay disparity and inequality.
Although the path forward is still uncertain, one thing is clear: There is momentum around voting rights, and Americans across the country are ready for our elected officials to do everything they can to make it easier — not harder — to vote.
"Central to the work of racial justice is ensuring that Black and brown, our most marginalized communities, our most marginalized residents of this country, have access to the ballot."
Angela joins Moms Rising CEO Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner to talk worker power and a new generation of unions, and why a multiracial democracy is essential for a thriving economy.
“In their genesis, they’re about preventing Black people in the South from voting. So especially in our pursuit of a multiracial, inclusive democracy, these laws can’t exist.”
“Voting rights is the foundational issue in American politics and American society. Simply put, if we don’t all have an equal say, how can we expect to have an equal chance?”
“It’s a lot of debt out there. But that debt and the burden of that debt is not necessarily being felt equally. It’s extremely difficult for borrowers of color in particular."
"State officials are rightly wary of the goals of the commission because it does seem that the whole purpose for setting it up is to justify a preordained conclusion that somehow millions of votes were cast illegally in the last election," says Brenda Wright, vice president for policy and legal strategies at Demos, a progressive think tank. "That's the verdict, and now they want to hold a trial." [...]
“We think of education funding, particularly at the state level, as a spending issue, but it’s myopic,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. “There are all kinds of second order effects to investing in education — homeownership or wealth building is certainly one of them. If you don’t spend the money on students now and that means that they’re less likely to go to college or they’re more likely to take on debt, that is going to impact their future economic activity.” [...]