Press

Ciara McDonald, a single mother of three in Jackson, Mississippi, received $1,000 a month for a year. Here’s what happened.

Aisha Nyandoro: “You have to change the narrative, and to do that, you have to change the narrator. That means making sure that individuals with lived experiences of poverty have an opportunity to tell their truth and not have someone else tell that story on their behalf.”

While Nyandoro is glad to be able to offer the additional resources, she also feels they are wholly inadequate to address the magnitude of the problems facing the families she works with and the larger structural inequities that continue to limit economic opportunities for people of color.

“Really we just saw individuals for the first time having the breathing room to sit down and actually plan for their immediate needs but also the future,” Nyandoro said. “Cash allows you the ability to actually plan and that’s what a lot of us take for granted.”

Through this guide, we are promoting three structural policy ideas – guaranteed income, guaranteed housing, and guaranteed wealth – that we have to fight for if we are ever going to make our economy work for us.