"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 outlines a vision of what’s possible when our nation lives up to its promise of being a place where all people can lift their voices via their votes and their small dollar contributions.
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.
“They collect our data without our permission. They profit from our data. They fail to invest in processes to verify accuracy. And their models are not transparent. This puts Black and Brown consumers at a serious disadvantage.”
The Biden administration should implement its public credit registry proposal to shift power away from an oligopoly that exercises inordinate control over consumers’ financial prospects and towards a fairer system that better respects consumers and reduces racial inequality.
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.
If we are to survive this crisis—and imagine a more equitable, dynamic economy to come, we must start with a recommitment to the value of universal, inclusive public infrastructure.
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
"To say that people post-crisis, as they try to rebuild their lives, have to carry the impact of this is just another round of disadvantage and discrimination.”
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.