A weekly newsletter from the Institute for Policy Studies |
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August 28 will mark the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. On that summer’s day in 1963, over a quarter of a million people from across the country convened at our National Mall to demand a reckoning with racist injustice.
Those workers and activists were marching, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it plainly, to cash a check. America had defaulted on the promissory note from our founders that guaranteed all Americans life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
“Instead of honoring this sacred obligation,” Dr. King declared, "America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’”
That Black economic inequality, our new Still a Dream report lays out, stubbornly persists. And we have a good idea of how Dr. King would feel about that. “We refuse to believe,” he said 60 years ago, “that the bank of justice is bankrupt.”
We couldn't agree more. In this week’s issue, more on the contemporary resonance of the March on Washington and the solutions we need to realize Dr. King’s dream for all Americans.
One quick note: Our annual Executive Excess report drops tomorrow. Check us out online for the full text. The Inequality.org newsletter will be on hiatus next week, but we’ll return right after Labor Day with a new issue chock-full of juicy details from our latest CEO pay research.
Bella DeVaan, for the Institute for Policy Studies' Inequality.org team |
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| INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS |
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Black Organizers Channel the March on Washington’s Legacy
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” remains one of the most quoted speeches of all time. But the context of that speech, the full March on Washington program, has significantly faded from public awareness.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research recently hosted a panel of experts to discuss the forgotten history of the March, its leaders, and their political convictions. "A countless number of women made the march possible,” recalls Tanya Wallace-Gobern, the executive director of the National Black Workers Center. These women diligently mobilized in their home communities. Along with hundreds of thousands of Black men and workers, they harnessed their collective power and changed the course of American history. We now stand called, Wallace-Gobern emphasizes, “to tap into their legacy.”
The March on Washington led directly to the landmark Civil Rights Act a year later, but the 1963 event also surfaced calls for school desegregation, fair wages, and federal employment guarantees that have yet to become reality. Wallace-Gobern’s organization is taking up the demands of the March’s women and workers through a Black Workers Bill of Rights. Learn how at the link below. |
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Turning the Dream of Black Economic Equality Into Reality Sixty years after the March on Washington, Black economic inequality persists.
“Our country has taken significant steps towards racial equity since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s,” explains Inequality.org co-editor Chuck Collins. “But growing income and wealth inequality over the last four decades has supercharged historic racial wealth disparities, slowing and even reversing many of those gains.”
A new report, Still a Dream — co-authored by Collins, Omar Ocampo, and Dedrick Asante-Muhammad with Sally Sim of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition — examines how our country has failed to substantially narrow the Black-white wealth divide since 1963.
This amounts to a colossal policy failure. “But just as federal policy helped create the racial wealth gap, it can also help close it,” notes Collins. Bold actions — ranging from a push for full employment and guaranteed jobs to moves that could reduce dynastic concentrations of wealth and power — can’t wait. Take a look. |
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In Some New Stats, an Old Story: Our Rich Are Raking It In
Luxury villa rental agencies have been doing a bang-up business. At one point this summer, a single agency had over three dozen villas renting for over $130,000 a week. How many people on our Earth today can afford to put down — without batting an eye — that sort of cash? We have an answer from the latest Global Wealth Report just published by the Swiss banking giants UBS and Credit Suisse. Among the juicy stats in this year’s edition: Over half our globe’s deep pockets worth over $50 million call the USA home. Inequality.org’s Sam Pizzigati has more.
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PETULANT PLUTOCRAT OF THE WEEK |
A Billionaire Six Times Over Inching Angrily to Centenarian Status This week’s dour deep pocket: Bernie Marcus, the 94-year-old billionaire co-founder of Home Depot. What has him sour: “Woke people” and “socialists” in general. As Marcus told the Financial Post last December: “Nobody works. Nobody gives a damn.”
In 2016, Marcus ended up one of Donald Trump’s biggest campaign contributors, and, over the years, has funneled at least $64 million into the campaigns of rich people-friendly pols. Of late, he’s turned his giving attention to Prager University, a provider of right-wing video “educational” materials that has no claim to university status. PragerU’s two-year-old kids division has recently become a recognized official vendor for the Florida public schools. Among its products: a 2023 video featuring a young Polish girl comparing “taking a stand against green energy to fighting Nazi oppression.”
The last word: “You can kick up some dust, you can make things happen,” Marcus crowed last fall in an interview promoting his new book, “and leave the world a better place.” |
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This week on Inequality.org
Bob Lord, Oligarchy Has Arrived. Congress Must Take Notice — and Act! An innovative tax-the-rich proposal now before lawmakers would reverse the wealth concentration that’s suffocating our democracy. Elsewhere on the Web
Stan Cox, The Hubris of Plutocrats: They Can’t Escape the Heat That’s Coming, City Lights. Our richest remain focused on reducing only their own exposure to climate hazards.
Astra Taylor, Our Economy Thrives on Bad Feelings, New York Times. In our unequal times, manufactured insecurity is intensifying.
Robert Reich, Rich Men North of Richmond. Cultural populism — white male Christian nationalism — channels Americans away from any moves that could threaten the wealth of America’s wealthy. Michael Klare, What a 2005 Bestseller Tells Us About Climate Change and Human Survival, TomDispatch. Down through history, the failure of wealthy elites to address climate change challenges has opened the door to social collapse.
Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall Street Mega Banks and Their Disgraceful Bailout, Wall Street on Parade. The Clinton administration’s 1999 repeal of the 1933 Banking Act, commonly known as the Glass-Steagall Act, has helped usher in the greatest kleptocracy America has ever known. Robert Gordon, The super-rich are getting away with murder, Independent Australia. Taxing the richest of our globe offers a pathway to saving the planet from environmental catastrophe.
Sarah Ramirez, Questioning the Authenticity of the World’s Happiest Countries, Alaska Commons. The World Happiness Report rests on a statistical measure that overlooks the distribution of wealth and the concentration of resources in the hands of a privileged few.
Jonathan Fuge, The Kitchen First Look Reveals Netflix & Daniel Kaluuya’s London-Set Dystopian Drama, MovieWeb. The Kitchen will drop audiences into London 2040, where the gap between rich and poor has stretched to unimaginable extremes. |
Hollywood Round Table- Civil Rights (1963). Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, Joseph Mankiewicz, James Baldwin and David Schoenbrun discuss the 1963 March on Washington.
She Speaks: Moral Monday Call to Conscience, Repairers of the Breach, the League of Women Voters, Black Voters Matter, and the Beloved Community Center. On August 28, faith leaders, impacted people, and activists will gather online to honor women's contributions to the nation's social justice movements and demand a life-saving policy agenda.
Philanthropic Reform Update: Two Game-Changing Proposals from the Feds, CalNonprofits. Register for this August 30 webinar to learn where philanthropy reform is heading with new efforts to create a more transparent and accountable charitable landscape.
National Rent Control? It’s Closer Than You Think, More Perfect Union. A historic wave of tenant organizing stands on the verge of winning renter protections that would help a quarter of apartment renters. But Greystar, Blackstone, and AvalonBay are spending millions to block these protections. |
Billy Bragg, Rich Men Earning North of a Million. "You’ll see where the problem really lies / When the union comes around: Rich men earning north of a million / Wanna keep the working folk down."
Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei, The Lavender Scare, Throughline. In a moment when LGBTQ+ rights are again in the public crosshairs, we need to remember the Lavender Scare, a purge of gay and lesbian people ordered at the highest levels of the U.S. government. |
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The rate of Black home ownership has increased since the 1963 March on Washington. But the gap in ownership rates between Black and white families has actually widened.
In 1960, the white home ownership rate stood 26 percentage points higher than the Black rate. As of 2020, that gap had stretched to nearly 30 points, according to our new Still a Dream report.
Structural barriers like lower incomes, higher rates of mortgage denials, and racial segregation are denying Black families the opportunity to acquire this most basic wealth-building asset. |
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Inequality.org | www.inequality.org | inequality@ips-dc.org Managing Editor: Isabella DeVaan
Co-Editors: Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, and Sam Pizzigati Production: Isabella DeVaan |
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