Racial equity and reparative justice

We are placing antiracism at the core of our vision of the democratic economy. That includes acknowledging the structural nature of racism, dismantling those structures, repairing the ongoing damage done by our racist past, and centering racial equity in our democratic future. 

The racial wealth gap didn’t just happen. It is a consequence of a toxic mix of White supremacy and lust for wealth that was at the heart of our political economy when the first African slaves were brought onto the shores of America in 1619 to work land snatched from Indigenous peoples. That legacy of slavery, followed by decades of state-sanctioned segregation and discriminatory policies, continues to box Black and other people of color out of the nation’s income and wealth creation machinery. 

Building a truly democratic economy means having the courage to collectively center and confront the effects of historical and ongoing racism in the way today’s economy is built. We start by making sure those most affected by racism in the current system play a leading role in the design of what comes next. We work in coalition with leaders who are defining what it means to be “antiracist”—not just articulating support for racial equity on an individual level but actively disrupting the ways structural racism reverberates through our economic and political system.

Our demand for systemic change and vision of a democratic economy has deep roots in the historic Black liberation and civil rights movements, and keeping true to those roots is a core organizational priority. “We have fought hard and long for integration … But I’ve come to believe we’re integrating into a burning house,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said. We stand with Black, Brown and other people of color who are leading the way toward a new system of equity, reparative justice, mutuality, and ecological sustainability.