I have served as Demos’ president for the last four years, but I’ve worked there for 16 — practically my entire adult life. As I look back on what we’ve built together, I feel called to share some reflections from those years, for each of us who yearns to see our nation live up to its democratic promise.
It’s not just a disorganized group of citizens spontaneously challenging voters at the polls. It’s a coordinated campaign by groups like True the Vote that are well funded to try and reduce voting, often for partisan advantage.
[T]he public policy organization fights for racial equity, an expanded middle class and shaving the amount of money used in politics. Demos has just released a landmark report exclusively to theGrio explaining its studied view of why the Trump administration is bad for Black people and they have receipts.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling to uphold Ohio’s controversial voter purge law spotlights the growing clout of right-wing “election integrity” groups that have aggressively bullied and sued states and jurisdictions into kicking thousands of voters off their rolls. [...]
Demos, the voting rights group that challenged Ohio’s voter purge law, said in a statement that the decision “threatens the ability of voters to have their voices heard in our elections.”
“The fight does not stop here. If states take today’s decision as a sign that they can be even more reckless and kick eligible voters off the rolls, we will fight back in the courts, the legislatures, and with our community partners across the country,” Demos senior counsel Stuart Naifeh said in the statement.
For the working poor, getting married is hardly a guarantee of ascendance, explains Amy Traub, an associate director of policy and research at the thinktank Demos. She highlights the reality of surviving with low wages, no paid sick leave, no paid parental leave, and no subsidized childcare. Traub’s research shows that a married couple will see their income go down by 14% after they have a child.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Ohio could continue to use an aggressive process for removing people from its voting rolls, saying the procedure did not run afoul of federal voter protections.
“If states take today’s decision as a sign that they can be even more reckless and kick eligible voters off the rolls, we will fight back in the courts, the legislatures and with our community partners across the country,” Demos attorney Stuart Naifeh said.
On the same day California’s primary election produced decidedly mixed results last week — encouraging for Democrats, less so for progressives — progressive advocates gathered in Los Angeles learned about how politics in California (and nationwide) could be dramatically transformed by driving a stake through the heart of coded, dog-whistle racism, and by confronting it head-on with a call for cross-racial unity to create a better shared future.
Starbucks enlisted the help of groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Legal Defense and Education Fund (NAACP LDF) and Demos, a public policy organization committed to racial equality and economic advancement, to design a curriculum focused on recognizing bias and creating a more inclusive environment. [...]
Nothing, it seems, has been more difficult to remedy than the issue of racism and implicit bias in this country, but this week, coffeehouse juggernaut Starbucksattempted to at least begin the conversation when they shut down more than 8,000 of their stores for a day of racial bias training following
Starbucks said the long-term program is being designed and developed with input from researchers, social scientists, employees and other advisers.
Those partners include consultancy SY Partners - which worked with Starbucks to reinvent itself after a business crisis spawned by the “Great Recession”; the Perception Institute; Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; and Heather McGhee, president of public policy group Demos.
Millions of eligible voters remain unregistered. To fulfill the promise of the NVRA, states must do much more to ensure all Americans have a voice in our democracy.
Heather McGhee, leader of the nationally known public policy organization, Demos, will deliver the Commencement address at Vassar College’s 154th graduation ceremony on Sunday, May 27.
Though the public is intrigued by the idea of Starbucks' half-day all-staff training on discrimination and bias, that is just the first in many steps the company plans to take to try to implement a better system, says Heather McGhee, president of Demos, a social advocacy group.
The ability of college graduates to pay student loans isn’t simply a matter of earnings. It also reflects wealth — and differences that persist in wealth among racial and ethnic groups.
In the midst of a Twitter feed alight with stories about police being used to shut black people out of places to eat, drink, exercise, and relax, comes a story about Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) using policy to do the same. The federal government is adding new and significant hurdles to communities of color — particularly black people — being able to access housing.
According to the New York Times, full-time employees in retail generally make less than $33,000 a year. The same article states that “42 percent of retail workers earn a low hourly wage — defined as less than two-thirds of the median wage across the economy.”