EquityBlog

The Golden State’s tremendous diversity will be the key to its future economic success—if its leaders take action to increase fairness and opportunity. Equity is not only a moral imperative—it is also an economic one.

These are the key messages of the new report California’s Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model, authored by PolicyLink and the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE). The report was released at a legislative briefing earlier this month hosted by PolicyLink and the California Legislative Tri-Caucus, and was attended by legislative staff and nearly 40 advocates from all parts of the state.

Below is a reflection on the report from Urban Habitat President & CEO Allen Fernandez Smith:

Urban Habitat fully supports PolicyLink and PERE’s core finding in the California Report that to create a prosperous California, we must address current systemic inequities, avoid creating new ones, and serve residents of all races and incomes equally.

At Urban Habitat, we situate our work at the intersections of education, advocacy, research, and coalition building to advance environmental, economic, and social justice in the Bay Area region for low-income people and communities of color.  We believe that equitable growth is critical to securing a prosperous California and that the state’s demographic diversity is an economic asset.

Recent data show that low‐income people and communities of color are fragmented across regions. This fragmentation constrains these communities’ ability to establish the networks, political solidarity, and information infrastructure needed to influence the regional agencies that oversee important issues, such as transportation justice, economic development, affordable housing, and the environment.

In order for Californians to live up to their highest potential, we must change the way these regional agencies have historically made decisions. To do so, we need people to think locally and act regionally.

Urban Habitat is very proud to lead two strategic initiatives in the Bay Area to address these issues: Our Social Equity Caucus unites leaders across sectors to create a unified regional social justice community; and our Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute trains the next generation of leaders in the Bay Area region.

By lifting up new and under-represented voices to become strong advocates, and by uniting these leaders with social justice organizations working to advance equity, we can build the powerful movement needed to win a prosperous California.

Earlier this month, we shared with you the new PolicyLink/PERE report California’s Tomorrow, which looks at how demographic and economic trends in California have converged in ways that make equity central to the future of California’s economy.

Today, we’re releasing two new papers that summarize roundtable conversation conversations we had with local leaders in Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley to discuss demographic change and new policy ideas that reflect a changing, increasingly diverse United States. These conversations, titled “Toward 2050 in California” are a part of a series of roundtables that Progress 2050 and PolicyLink are hosting around the country.

We hope that you find these to be useful resources in your own work, and we encourage you to keep the conversation going here on Equity Blog. What do you think are the next steps for creating a stronger Golden State? Tell us below in the comments section, we want to hear from you.

P.S. – We would like to thank the Center for American Progress and the Partnership for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) for partnering with us on the reports.

The Golden State’s tremendous diversity will be the key to its future economic success—if its leaders take action to increase fairness and opportunity. Equity is not only a moral imperative—it is also an economic one.

These are the key messages of the new report California’s Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model, authored by PolicyLink and the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE). The report was released this week at a legislative briefing hosted by PolicyLink and the California Legislative Tri-Caucus, and was attended by legislative staff and nearly 40 advocates from all parts of the state.

Below is a reflection on the report from Kendra Bridges of Sacramento’s Coalition on Regional Equity (CORE):

On Monday, members of the Sacramento region’s Coalition on Regional Equity attended a briefing in California’s State Capitol Building that discussed the future of California, and proposed an exciting and timely new way to think about and plan for our future. This opportunity to hear from thought leaders and our elected leadership from the Latino Legislative Caucus, Legislative Black Caucus and Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus gave us a view into how California can best climb out of the economic hole dug by the recession, into a future of equity and prosperity for all.

Simply put, we heard that Equity is the Superior Growth Model, and will help California move forward.

In order for California to emerge from this recession into a productive future, a shift in thinking and investment must occur. We can no longer defer maintenance of our educational system, defer funding for workforce training, or fail to invest in our communities. In order for all Californians to prosper tomorrow, equity must be a priority today.

Our state has undergone a demographic shift, and people of color are the new majority. The educational attainment necessary for the jobs of tomorrow is not yet a reality for many people of color. Many neighborhoods where people of color live suffer from lack of investment, poor infrastructure, and unhealthy conditions. Accordingly, investment in opportunity for our children and in our existing neighborhoods will help ensure that all Californians are able to stand up to the challenge of the new economy.

We know that providing the tools necessary to help the next generation succeed will help us all emerge from the economic downturn and create new prosperity in our state. We look to our elected and community leaders to make positive change happen. There are a few important ways the leaders in our state can ensure that we all prosper:

• Invest in our schools. Tomorrow’s workforce needs the necessary education and skills to meet the demands of the rebuilt economy.
• Invest in our communities. Our public spaces need to be safe and accessible, and our communities need resources such as jobs, services, and places to be physically active. Healthy communities produce a productive workforce!

Promoting equity in opportunity will help California grow and prosper. We look forward to helping our elected leaders make equity a priority in California.

 

The Golden State’s tremendous diversity will be the key to its future economic success—if its leaders take action to increase fairness and opportunity. Equity is not only a moral imperative—it is also an economic one.

These are the key messages of the new report California’s Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model, authored by PolicyLink and the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE). The report was released this week at a legislative briefing hosted by PolicyLink and the California Legislative Tri-Caucus, and was attended by legislative staff and nearly 40 advocates from all parts of the state.

Below is a reflection on the report from Shamus Roller, Executive Director of Housing California:

PolicyLink and PERE have articulated what many of us know in our gut, that widening inequality is not just bad for the people at the bottom of the economic spectrum but also bad for California’s economic competitiveness.  Both of my parents graduated from state universities a time when California truly invested in its young people.  Effective economic development is not about the government picking winners and losers in the market but by providing the physical infrastructure and human infrastructure to support business.

Physical infrastructure for the future includes transit, internet access and affordable homes.  Human infrastructure includes real investment in education including higher education and support of parents with young children.  We’ve been coasting on the investments of the past and now it’s time rebuild.

Photo Courtesy of WhiteHouse.gov

The following is a statement by PolicyLink Founder and CEO Angela Glover Blackwell on President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union Address:

“If the playing field is level, I promise you — America will always win.”– President Obama

Last night’s State of the Union address laid out a solid vision for pushing America into a more equitable and inclusive future. With a targeted focus on job creation, infrastructure, workforce training, and fiscal reform, President Obama offered proposals for creating an economic system in which everyone can participate and prosper, including:

• Investing in infrastructure projects that would produce decent-paying jobs
• Funding community college programs to train America’s future skilled workforce
• Ensuring that the rich share the economic burden by paying at least 30 percent in taxes (the “Buffett Rule”)
• Preventing increases in student loan interest rates, and doubling the number of work-study jobs over the next five years
• Creating clean energy jobs programs

These proposals and others outlined in the President’s speech mark important steps toward closing the nation’s widening income divide. But absent a firm commitment from lawmakers to making equity an economic imperative, they will remain only ideas.

In a letter delivered yesterday to the President and members of Congress –- and signed by more than 130 organizations nationwide — PolicyLink presented a number of policy recommendations aimed at expanding opportunity for low-income people and communities of color hit first and worst by the recession and unfair economic practices. We stand with President Obama in pushing for equitable policy solutions that will help close America’s prosperity gap, and urge our legislators on Capitol Hill to do the same. Together, we can re-build an economy that works for all people.

Still buzzing about last night’s speech? Join us below in the comments to continue the conversation, and share your thoughts on President Obama’s vision for America.

Also, we encourage you to respond to local media coverage in your area and vocalize your support of a bold policy agenda for the 99%. 

This post is part of a series presenting equity leaders’ reactions to “America’s Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model” — a new paper that challenges the nation to invest in our collective future. This post is written by Peter Dreier, E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. Click here to read other reflections

One hundred years ago, progressive thinkers and activists who called for women’s suffrage, laws protecting the environment, an end to lynching, the right of workers to form unions, a progressive income tax, a federal minimum wage, old-age insurance, the eight-hour workday, and government-subsidized health care were considered impractical idealists, utopian dreamers, or dangerous socialists. Now we take these ideas for granted. The radical ideas of one generation have become the common sense of the next.

The major idea of America’s Tomorrow – that a policy agenda centered on growth-with-equity is the best way forward – is hardly radical.  The entire report is full of practical, common sense remedies to the current economic crisis. It should be a no-brainer. But it isn’t, because there are political forces in our country that demonize the very idea of equality, who stigmatize government as inherently inefficient, who think that if families struggle to find jobs, earn a living wage, and pay the mortgage it is their own fault, and who believe that there is no such thing as the common good or the public interest. In recent years, these forces have gained ground in the political world and in the battle of ideas.

But recently these forces, including the Tea Party and its allies in business and politics, have been in retreat.  The Occupy Wall Street movement helped change the national conversation. At kitchen tables, in coffee shops, in offices and factories, and in newsrooms, Americans are now talking about economic inequality, corporate greed, and how America’s super-rich have damaged our economy and our democracy. The wide gulf between the richest one percent and the rest of Americans hasn’t changed during the past year, but Occupy Wall Street has made it a major topic of discussion across the nation.

The question now is whether a coalition of conscience can take advantage of the new mood in the country, which has created openings for unions, community organizations, faith-groups, and fair-minded elected officials to promote the “growth-with-equity” agenda. What’s need now is a broad movement that can translate the ideas in America’s Tomorrow into the world of politics and policy. Expanding much-needed public infrastructure, creating good, green jobs that pay a living wage, and advocating a progressive fair tax system should be the rallying cry of grassroots activists and the litmus test issues in the upcoming 2012 elections. The urgent ideas in America’s Tomorrow offer a blueprint for the next New Deal.  Can we seize the opportunity to make it happen?

Peter Dreier is E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. He is coauthor of Regions That Work, Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21^st Century, and The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City.  His next book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20^th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame, will be published by Nation Books in the spring of 2012.

This post is part of a series presenting equity leaders’ reactions to “America’s Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model” — a new paper that challenges the nation to invest in our collective future. Miles Rapoport, president of Demos and The American Prospect, wrote this dispatch below. Click here to read other reflections.

PolicyLink has a vision for America’s tomorrow that should give everyone hope. This is an exciting, eye-opening blueprint for fostering a growing economy where all Americans share in the fruits of prosperity. The power of this report is that it shows how growth is contingent on tackling our nation’s greatest challenge – rising inequities of wealth and opportunity. And, as well, it shows how the profound demographic changes ushering in a more diverse America are a huge asset that can and should be leveraged to create new prosperity. These two insights should be central to today’s economic debate.

Thanks to recent events, inequality is finally moving onto the national agenda. The moment is ripe for presenting bold visions about how to create a fairer economy, and PolicyLink has such a vision. The core policy recommendations of the report – to invest more in infrastructure, supporting small business, and building human capital – are not new, but “America’s Tomorrow” shows how these strategies can fit together to fuel growth and help build a future American middle class that will be far more diverse than in the past.

It’s not just this report’s policy ideas that are spot on. So is the political analysis. The report is exactly right that we need new kinds of alliances in order to advance growth and equity at the same time. Growth advocates in the business world need to focus more on race and equity if they want to achieve their goals, while those of us who champion equity need more appreciation of the importance of business in creating jobs and opportunity.

NOTE: Demos also posted their own reaction to the paper on their blog. Read it here.

The future of equity has never looked more adorable.

On Monday, PolicyLink released a new fifteen second public service announcement that will run on the Times Square Jumbo Tron (popularly known as the “David Letterman Screen”) in Manhattan until November 30th.

As part of our new multimedia series “America’s Tomorrow: Equity in a Changing Nation,” we’ve been tracking the country’s changing demographics and exploring what these changes mean for the future of America. This promo’s message is clear: by 2042, people of color will be the majority in America; by the end of this decade half of all youth will be of color. We must invest in their futures now – for the sake of our own and that of the entire nation.

Check it out below and tell us what you think!

UPDATE: Watch this cool behind-the-scenes look at the making of the PSA, as well as an extended thirty second version.

To download the video you can right click here and save to your desktop

Photo Courtesy of Tavis Smiley Presents and PBS.org

Tonight, PBS will air “Too Important to Fail,” a new prime time special presented by Tavis Smiley that looks at the educational challenges facing African American male youth across the country. The special will feature interviews with educators, policymakers, and young people who, in their own voices, describe myriad obstacles they have and continue to encounter in their pursuit of a quality education.

In a companion blog post to tonight’s special, PolicyLink Founder and CEO Angela Glover Blackwell goes beyond the issue of education to explore other critical problems facing boys and men of color and the communities in which they live – including joblessness, poverty, high incarceration, lack of public transit, and more. According to Blackwell, the path to resolution must start with investments in comprehensive policy solutions that will slash the “opportunity deficit” disparately impacting male and female youth of color today, and end cycles of poverty in low-income communities and communities of color.

Blackwell says:

We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the problems facing low-income people and communities of color, particularly the black and brown youth who will soon constitute the majority. In fact, we have an urgent moral and economic imperative to address them.

In a shifting and competitive global economy, the dearth of quality, meaningful opportunities, combined with persistent obstacles and deficient academic and social supports, risks dismantling the very families and communities that are raising our future skilled workforce.

To slash America’s opportunity deficit, we must start by standing up for new and existing solutions to education, workforce training and job creation that would help shatter cycles of generational poverty by preparing young workers of color for better-paying, long-term jobs of the future.

Read the full piece here on PBS.org.

What did you think of Tavis’ prime time special? After you watch, be sure to visit the comments section below and let us know.

Newly released Census data on race/ethnicity by age shows our rapid demographic transformation.

Nationally, 80 percent of seniors are white and only in a few counties are most seniors people of color. But the younger population looks vastly different: the majority of babies born in the last two years were nonwhite, and across the country—from our largest cities to suburbs, small towns, and rural areas—young Americans are increasingly people of color.

Today we released a new animated map illustrating this stark racial and generational divide. Please view the map, share it, and share in the comments what you think it means for our nation’s future.

Want more on “America’s Tomorrow?” Visit here to follow the entire multimedia series

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