#LiberateWE
A group designed to think strategically about what the long term goals are that we need to achieve to truly bring about systemic change?
The starts off with the basic question: One we stop the police from killing us, then what?
Recent news stories have stated that the black unemployment rate has been double the white unemployment rate for as long as records have been kept: 42years!
The black/white wealth gap has also increased http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/15/black-white-wealth-gap/
"The average African-American household takes home around 40 percent less income than a similar white family...the median wealth of white households [was] 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households” back in 2009."
We are making progress on achieving collegiate credentials but it's often at the hands of private for profit colleges - University of Phoenix is one of the largest issuers of degrees to minorities - this comes with a hefty price tag.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/25/university-of-phoenix-minority-students_n_2011893.html
These are just some of the myriad of issues we are facing.
So the question becomes what legislative/policy changes should we organize around for the next 1,2,5,10,20 years?
I would like to put together a list of outcomes we would like to see and form topical working groups to begin to brainstorm.
I have a couple of ideas to begin but I would like this movement to be crowd-sourced.
One such idea is Incomes 4 Outcomes (I40) https://actionnetwork.org/groups/i4o-incomes-4-outcomes
Incomes 4 Outcomes (I4O) could either be an organization or an organizing mantra created to facilitate the empowerment of marginalized communities by leveraging their consumer spending power and redirecting a portion of it to influence the political, social, and policy outcomes they want to see.
The communities I visualize participating in Incomes 4 Outcomes are primarily young people, millennials and under-represented minorities -- people who individually possess a very small percentage of the collective American wealth, but are high consumers, and thus the target of massive marketing campaigns that seek to turn them into customers. We seek to change this paradigm and instead leverage that spending power to turn them into a social and political force that uses the power of the checkbook to hold politicians and corporations alike accountable.
In the new political reality post-Citizen's United, marginalized communities must be able to use not only traditional organizing methods and social media to spread our message, but also our economic strength.
Individual dollars and individual donors may not be able to command attention, but as a unified force, we can move mountains.
Over the next 2-3 years, Black consumer power is projected to reach $1.1 trillion, Latino spending power to reach $1.6 trillion, Asian spending power to reach $1 trillion, and millennials $1 trillion.
If we could divert just 5-10% of this spending power, we could create a more inclusive and representative America.
Another such idea is making student loan debt payments adjust according to regional costs of living http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brandon-greene/student-debt_b_5023757.html.
This is particularly relevant given who is likely to take on the most debt for college (psst it's us)
Now is the time to muster the energy into a sustainable change movement. To really build local, regional, and national power.
I hope you will join with me.