Public Money and Racial Justice (12-15-20)

A conversation about public money, its connections to racial justice and how we can organize to demand it serves our interests. ———————————————— Money impacts everything. We live and feel the reality of money and for many of us, money problems are the source of great physical and emotional strain. This webinar focuses on a crucial aspect of the money we’ve got to work with: Public finance––the role of government(s) in the economy. Specifically, we look at public money, what it is and more importantly, why we deserve to have it. We consider public money as part of racial justice work in regards to the federal government’s real fiscal capacity unmatched by its terrible response to the COVID-19 pandemic, budgets as political and moral documents, divest-invest campaigns calling to #DefundThePolice and #DefundICE, and police brutality bonds. We also look at social justice organizing involving public money demands. #PublicMoneyRacialJustice ———————————————— Participants: Raúl Carrillo is the Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project and an Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School. Prior to joining the LPE Project, Raúl practiced law for five years, focusing on consumer finance and financial technology. He is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Modern Money Network, an Executive Committee member of the National Jobs For All Network, and an Advisory Council member of Our Money. Rev. Delman Coates is the Senior Pastor of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, Maryland and founder of Our Money Campaign, an economic justice campaign that seeks to solve some of our nation’s greatest social and economic challenges. He also founded the Black Church Center for Justice and Equality to address the social and spiritual challenges of the African American faith community. He is a board member of the Parents Television Council and the National Action Network and also a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Morehouse College Board of Preachers, and the NAACP. Alyx Goodwin is a senior organizer at Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), organizing with BYP100 Chicago, and a co-founder and writer with LEFT OUT Magazine. Her writing and activism are centered around the momentum and challenges of building Black power and self-determination. Her work at ACRE currently focuses on the relationships between the finance industry, policing, and tech, and how these things exacerbate oppressions. Tamara K. Nopper is a sociologist, writer, editor, and data artist. A Fellow at Data for Progress and an Affiliate of The Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies, she recently researched and wrote several data stories for Colin Kaepernick’s Abolition for the People series and is the editor of We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, a book of Mariame Kaba’s writing and interviews, which will be published by Haymarket Books in February 2021. Shawn Sebastian is the Senior Strategist for Rural People and Planet First Campaigns at People's Action. In 2019 Shawn served as the Iowa Organizing Director of the Working Families Party and Movement Politics Organizer for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action Fund. Shawn was the director of the Fed Up Campaign at the Center for Popular Democracy, organizing working class people of color to demand full employment monetary policy at the Federal Reserve. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/b73IIo76K8Q Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks