The public is warmly invited to join Chuck Collins at The New School as a part of their weeklong series, “The Festival of New,” marking the 100th anniversary of the New School. Collins will speak to this moment of extreme inequality and the different pathways that can help reverse it and bring us towards a more equitable, regenerative equality. 

As has been documented by Collins and many others, we are living in a time of extreme inequality: of income, wealth, and opportunity. The concentration of wealth has reached a pinnacle, with three billionaires owning as much wealth as the bottom half of US households combined.  The racial wealth divide is growing, with the median white household holding 41 times the wealth of the median black household. These grotesque inequalities undermine every aspect of our lives, including our physical health, environment, social connectedness, democracy, civic life, and economic health and vibrancy.  

What will it take to reverse engineer these trends to build a more radically equal and regenerative society?  How do we decolonize our concept of wealth –and disrupt the societal stories and narratives of deservedness that justify and perpetuate these inequalities?  What is a vision of a radically more equitable society look like? What are the pathways forward?

Chuck Collins is a storyteller, agitator, and campaigner who directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies.  He is co-editor of the research and action web portal, Inequality.org.