Everyday working people just can’t seem to get ahead. We work longer and harder, and yet our wages remain stagnant, our cost of living continues to climb, and our families continue to struggle just to get by. Meanwhile, the top 1% and the very wealthy among us play by a very different set of rules, consolidating their wealth at the expense of the middle class.
The extreme inequality caused by this arrangement has been disastrous. Between 2010 and 2016, the top 100 CEOs in the United States made 794 times what the median non-supervisory worker made. That’s 794 dollars for every dollar.
Over the past 3 years, through the Runaway Inequality program developed at The Labor Institute, WEC has educated more than 2,000 workers, activists and advocates on the devastating impact private equity and hedge fund managers have had on our communities, strip mining our economy and leaving us to fight for the crumbs.
As a result, activists and trainers involved in this project have gone on to fight for tax incentive reform, a progressive tax structure and, in 2019, participated in the fight that won the $15 an hour minimum wage.
Now, we want to help build alliances in your community, between labor unions, environmentalist groups and community organizations, to combat the extreme inequality that has decimated our state.
Engage with us, help us identify issues in your community, their economic roots, and who is profiting from the damage they cause. Then, through education and organization, let’s build a campaign to end runaway inequality in your community and in our state.
Want to learn more? Contact: Brandon Castro, WEC Campaign Organizer, [email protected]
Demand New Jersey divest from Wall Street and invest in us!
The state government of New Jersey collects billions of dollars in revenue from taxes and fees every year and deposits them into Wall Street banks. Meanwhile, rampant inequality had led to a smaller tax base—meaning less money for public institutions and infrastructure projects.
Wall Street then lends money back to us to finance these projects, sometimes collecting double the cost of the project in profits on the backs of taxpayers!
While this happens, Wall Street also continues to exploit average New Jersey residents and workers through predatory lending and financial strip-mining.
A state bank can undo this vicious cycle, which turns human rights and our democracy into profits for the ultra rich, by providing a public institution which can invest in the public good instead of private profits!
“Runaway inequality is at the root of many of the problems we face, including the meteoric and disastrous rise of the financial sector, defunding of the public sector, environmental destruction, increased racial discrimination, the gender gap in wages and the rise of our mammoth prison population…if we share a clear understanding of runaway inequality – and the basic economic situation we face – we can begin to build a common, broad-based movement for fundamental economic justice that will take on America’s economic elites.”