Politics of Basic Income Talk Series – Nika Soon-Shiong, Liz Fouksman, Richard Wallace & Elise Klein on March 21, 2024: “Basic Income and Reparations”

Our four guests will speak about the links between UBI and growing calls for reparations as a tool for global social justice, which can address the historical and contemporary ills of racial capitalism, coloniality, and ongoing dispossession. Can UBI be a mechanism for achieving repair? Is it possible for UBI to advance justice if it doesn’t situate itself within wider struggles towards reparations?

Title: Basic Income and Reparations

Time: 21.03.2024, 06:00-07:30 pm (UK).

Location: Zoom (Click here to join the meeting)

Abstract: America’s systems of welfare and mass incarceration criminalize and harm people for being Black, brown, Indigenous, poor, immigrants, and more. 65% of Black Americans were made ineligible for Social Security when it began, followed by the legal exclusion of Black citizens from the wealth-building apparatuses of the New Deal and G.I. Bill. Discriminatory social services and tax laws consistently provide fewer resources to people and neighborhoods of color. Contrast this to the $300 Billion the US annually spends on the system of mass incarceration. A system of direct, recurring income support cannot wait for more evidence that says reducing poverty reduces poverty. Real success demands unravelling the corporate construction of crime, fraud, and safety. Nika will discuss movement-led efforts to intervene in procurement: how governments choose which vendors to go to. If we get the political commitments, even the policy wins, or declarations, the implementation shouldn’t rely on the same old companies and consultants who built what needs to change.

Bio

Elise Klein (OAM) is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Crawford School at the Australian National University. Her research is situated in the intersections (and cracks) of development, social policy, de(coloniality) and care. She is the co-director of the Australian Basic Income Lab.

Nika Soon-Shiong is executive director of the Fund for Guaranteed Income, an organization that raises money to advocate for and distribute universal basic income payments to certain communities. It uses identity politics as basis for determining which communities should receive the payments, prioritizing ethnic minorities and impoverished people.

Richard Wallace, Founder and Executive Director of Equity and Transformation (EAT) is an artist & community organizer dedicated to advancing racial equity in the US. In 2021, EAT launched the Chicago Future Fund, a groundbreaking Guaranteed Income pilot for formerly incarcerated people. He currently sits on the Global Advisory Board for the Atlantic Institute and serves on the Strategy Table for the Movement for Black Lives.

Dr Liz Fouksman is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Social Justice at the Centre for Public Policy Research at King’s College London. Liz’s research focuses on understanding moral, social and cultural attachments to work and working. It looks at the impediment such attachments pose to new imaginaries of the future of labour and distribution in an increasingly automated world, drawing on long-term empirical fieldwork in South Africa and Namibia to understand resistance to radical redistributive policies such universal basic income.

Starting in Oct 2023: Politics of Basic Income Talk Series!

Starting in October 2023 and continuing monthly on every 3rd Thursday, join us for a global exploration of Universal Basic Income (UBI) politics, hosted by the Bath UBI Beacon and Freiburg Institute of Basic Income Studies (FRIBIS), in partnership with the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). Experts from around the world will share insights on UBI policy, movement building, and research.

Find out more here.