The Economic Policy Institute on the Unfinished March

An EPI Report that is worth reading on the incomplete economic goals of the civil rights movement . From the intro:

"On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. They marched for equal access to public accommodations, voting rights, and the end of racial discrimination in employment. While achieving the full measure of these rights remains a work-in-progress, legislative and policy commitments to these goals were secured. But the marchers also demanded the following:

• decent housing
• adequate and integrated education
• jobs for all
• a minimum wage worth more than $13 an hour today

Fifty years later, on all socioeconomic measures, African Americans still lag whites by wide margins. At the same time, economic opportunities are shrinking for working people of all races. Until we achieve all of the march’s goals, there is little hope for reducing black-white socioeconomic disparities and providing genuine opportunity for economic advancement to all Americans."

Read the rest here.

A Freedom Budget for All Americans: Recapturing the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in the Struggle for Economic Justice Today

New Book by Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates from the Monthly Review Press

While the Civil Rights Movement is remembered for efforts to end segregation and secure the rights of African Americans, the larger economic vision that animated much of the movement is often overlooked today. That vision sought economic justice for every person in the United States, regardless of race. It favored production for social use instead of profit; social ownership; and democratic control over major economic decisions. The document that best captured this vision was the Freedom Budget for All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975, To Achieve Freedom from Want published by the A. Philip Randolph Institute and endorsed by a virtual ‘who’s who’ of U.S. left liberalism and radicalism.

See rest here