Economic Justice

Combating inequality means both lifting up and building power at the bottom, and breaking up concentration of wealth and power at the top. That’s why we work at the intersection of economic and racial justice through projects designed to build leadership and self-empowerment of black workers, immigrant workers, and low-wage workers, youth and families affected by incarceration, along with projects aiming to reverse the rules that criminalize poor people of color, and projects fighting to ensure that the wealthy and Wall Street corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

Latest Work

Corporate Lawsuits Could Devastate Poor Countries Grappling with COVID-19

Wealthy corporations may use trade courts to keep public health measures from cutting into their profits.

A Virtual Assembly Takes On BlackRock’s Big Problem

‘We can’t address the climate crisis without big changes at BlackRock.’

US Billionaire Wealth Surges $434 Billion as Unemployment Filers Top 38 Million

The combined wealth of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has climbed by nearly $60 billion in the last two months.

The Inefficient and Incredibly Lucrative Chase for a Coronavirus Vaccine

Our hottest biotech firm hasn’t yet manufactured an antidote to COVID-19. Still, the company has manufactured three billionaires.

Elon Musk and the Billionaire War on Public Health

The billionaire Tesla CEO made hundreds of millions more by illegally forcing his employees back to work in a pandemic.

Georgians Can’t Let the Postal Service Fail

Georgians of all stripes will suffer if the USPS goes bankrupt, but African Americans, rural folks, and veterans will bear the brunt of it.

Civil Disobedience, Billionaire-Style

Automaker mogul Elon Musk defends his ‘freedom’ to endanger the lives of his workers.

Nonprofits Need Help. An Emergency Charity Stimulus Can Provide it.

Foundations and donors to advised funds ought to be held to new payout standards for a future that requires all hands — and dollars — on deck.

Racial Health and Economic Disparities are Two Sides of the Same Coin

COVID-19 continues to aggravate deeply embedded inequalities. We need bold policy solutions aimed at bridging the racial wealth divide now more than ever.

Death and the Economy: A Dialogue

An (imagined) conversation on the trade-offs between lives and dollars.

Black Worker Initiative

Criminalization of Race and Poverty

Drug Policy

Global Economy

Inequality.org

Program on Inequality and the Common Good

National Priorities Project

Economic Hardship Reporting Project

Reports

Report: Billionaire Bonanza 2020

Chuck Collins, Omar Ocampo, Sophia Paslaski | April 23, 2020

Billionaire wealth has grown astoundingly over the last few decades — and, for some “pandemic profiteers,” even more dramatically since the COVID-19 crisis.

Report: Who is Buying Seattle?

Chuck Collins | October 11, 2019

The deep and persistent racial wealth divide will not close without bold, structural reform.

Report: Dreams Deferred

Chuck Collins, Dedrick Asante-Muhammed, Josh Hoxie | January 13, 2019

How Enriching the 1% Widens the Racial Wealth Divide

Report: Gilded Giving 2018

Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie, Helen Flannery | November 19, 2018

Top-Heavy Philanthropy and Its Risks to the Independent Sector

Report: Agricultural Cooperatives

Michael Paarlberg | November 8, 2018

Opportunities and Challenges for African American Women in the South

Report: OceanaGold in the Philippines

John Cavanagh, Robin Broad, Catherine Coumans, Rico La Vina | October 29, 2018

Ten Violations that Should Prompt Its Removal

Report: Pay, Professionalism, and Respect

Marc Bayard, Kimberly Freeman Brown | October 5, 2018

Black Domestic Workers Continue the Call for Standards in the Care Industry

Report: Towering Excess

Chuck Collins, Emma de Goede | September 10, 2018

The Perils of the Luxury Real Estate Boom for Bostonians

Executive Excess 2018

Sarah Anderson | August 28, 2018

How Taxpayers Subsidize Giant Corporate Pay Gaps

Report: Warehousing Wealth

Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie, Helen Flannery | July 25, 2018

Donor-Advised Charity Funds Sequestering Billions in the Face of Growing Inequality

Report: Students Under Siege

Karen Dolan, Ebony Slaughter-Johnson, Myacah Sampson | July 24, 2018

How the school-to-prison pipeline, poverty, and racism endanger our school children

Report: Restoring Opportunity in California

Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie, Jessicah Pierre | May 8, 2018

Taxing Wealth to Fund College for All in California

Report: CEO-Worker Pay Ratios in the Banking Industry

Sarah Anderson, Bartlett Naylor | April 26, 2018

A decade after the crash, excessive pay is still a problem at the mega-banks and the 2nd-tier firms that stand to benefit from the current deregulation push.