As the current public health and economic crisis persists, we have been working hard to ensure leaders pass policies that meet the needs of all people while building a bridge to a more equitable and climate-safe future. This requires designing policies with the most vulnerable in mind, ensuring all will benefit. Recently, we released our principles for a “common sense, street-smart recovery” that outlines how we: center racial equity, put people first, invest in community infrastructure, build an equitable economy, and protect and expand community voice and power. As we continue this work, we want to ensure we are providing you all the tools to join us in this work. See the resources below and let us know how we can partner with you.

WEBINAR - Cancel Rent, Reclaim our Homes: Bold Strategies to Advance Equitable Housing Response and Recovery from COVID-19

PolicyLink and our partners have recently launched a new initiative, Our Homes, Our Health, to advance a housing response and recovery plan that centers racial equity and transforms our unjust housing system. Please join this webinar, on Thursday, May 21, to learn how a state and local policy agenda to cancel rent and mortgages and reclaim our homes can stabilize our communities and expand affordable housing. Register today to hear from policymakers and organizers from around the country who are moving campaigns forward. 

This webinar is sponsored by PolicyLink, with the Center for Popular Democracy, Partnership for Working Families, People’s Action, the Right to the City Alliance, the Alliance for Housing Justice, and the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

New Analysis: Profile of Frontline Workers in the Bay Area

Essential workers — grocery clerks, farmworkers, bus drivers, construction workers, janitors, health-care workers, delivery drivers, and more — are on the frontlines of this pandemic, yet recent studies underscore how they are especially at risk of contracting COVID-19 and particularly vulnerable to its economic impacts. Our new profile of the Bay Area’s 1.1 million-strong essential workforce, based on regional data provided by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), including disaggregation within the region’s large and diverse Asian population, finds that Latinx, Black, Filipinx, women of color, and immigrants are disproportionately represented in essential industries. These workers also have economic and social vulnerabilities: They are more likely to live in or near poverty, pay unaffordable rents, lack US citizenship, lack health insurance, and be caring for children and/or seniors at home. Check out the analysis here.

COVID & Race
 
Check out recent commentary by PolicyLink staff and partners on how COVID-19 is impacting our communities:

• The most recent COVID-19 and Race Commentary looks at lingering inequities within the service industry and opportunities for reshaping the sector for equity and collective prosperity, organizing within this COVID-19 era, and more of the latest news about the pandemic's impact on people of color and strategies for an equitable recovery.
   
• The New York Times featured an op-ed on a federal job guarantee authored by Founder-In Residence Angela Glover Blackwell and Economist Darrick Hamilton, outlining how a public option for a job with living wages and full benefits can help households while addressing long-neglected community needs. 
   
• In a piece for Essence titled "For Black People, The Country Returning ‘Back To Normal’ Is Not Good Enough," PolicyLink staffer Tracey Ross explains, “Asking for intentional investments in communities of color is not asking for special treatment. It is asking for the types of investments that have benefited White communities to finally be made available to everyone.”