The Working Group on Extreme Inequality began coming together in 2007. Many of the organizations involved in the Working Group had, over the years, been active in organizing against poverty and economic insecurity. That effort had helped us understand that the fight against inequality, to make significant headway, has to both “raise the floor” and challenge the concentrated wealth and power that increasingly sit at the top of our economic ladder. Our Working Group is a coalition-in-formation. Based at the Institute for Policy Studies, we’re reaching out to different constituencies, generating educational materials, and promoting public policies to slim grand accumulations of private wealth. Our work revolves around . . . Mobilization. We’re engaging labor, religious, civic, and business groups concerned about poverty and unequal opportunity in dialogue about the importance of confronting the dangers that concentrated wealth and power increasingly engender. Education. We’re talking with the wider public about these dangers — and the need for public policies that encourage the dispersal of wealth. Through research, reports, publications, media work, public forums, and popular education workshops, we’re reaching broad and diverse audiences. Advocacy. We’re building support for public policies that can address the concentration of wealth and, at the same time, raise badly needed revenue for social investments that foster real economic opportunity. We host legislative forums, provide support for Congressional hearings, and publish fact sheets and other informational materials.http://extremeinequality.org/
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www.jamaicaplainforum.org Three national experts join us to both celebrate the election of Barack Obama and discuss the persistent disparities of wealth that still exist along racial lines. The forum corresponds with the release of State of the Dream 2009, a timely study examining racial wealth disparities. Over the past few months, the nation has been energized by the election of the nations first black president, and many say that we are living in a post-racial America. Yet, economic statist...
Dedrick Muhammad, co-author of, “Foreclosed: State of the Dream 2008,” comments on why Barack Obama’s candidacy may have little impact on the racial wealth divide. The mortgage meltdown has revealed a staggering wage and home ownership gap between white and black Americans, one that has changed little since the height of the civil rights era. Indeed, the black homeownership rate is only 47 percent, compared with 75 percent for whites. And, in the subprime fiasco, African-Americans will lose be...