Shaping Bold Futures: Advancing Justice & Healing with Government
Part of the 2024 GIA Conference Blog
Erin Toale
“Shaping Bold Futures: Advancing Justice & Healing with Government" explored the transformative impact of two specific policy initiatives: Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Reparations. GIA President & CEO Eddie Torres introduced the panel as a key part of GIA’s new Cultural Policy and Public Practice track—created to cultivate best practices for coalition building, outcomes assessment, and navigating public policy in philanthropy. Torres reminded attendees that “philanthropy exists to mitigate the impact of bad public policies,” calling on foundations to advocate for change while taking tangible steps to protect oppressed and vulnerable populations. Allyson Esposito of Good Chaos welcomed the panelists, noting that these leaders have successfully implemented programs that “center reparative healing and economic justice in this time of pretty tired late-stage capitalism and layered meta-crisis.”
Panelist Candace Moore, Senior Strategic Advisor at Race Forward, described herself as a big racial justice nerd who embraces audacious innovation. Joining her was Robin Rue Simmons, Founder and Executive Director of FirstRepair and a retired 5th Ward Alderwoman for the City of Evanston, IL. She led the passage of Evanston’s municipally-funded reparations legislation for Black residents (the nation’s first), and continues to advocate for reparations on a national scale at FirstRepair. The third panelist, former mayor of Stockton, CA Michael Tubbs, implemented the first mayor-led guaranteed income pilot in the country. He is currently the Founder & Chair of Mayors & Counties for Guaranteed Income. Each panelist stressed the importance of long-term, holistic solutions to systemic racial disenfranchisement.
Simmons spoke of how the Evanston reparations project took form in 2019 in response to skyrocketing costs of living in the Chicago suburb. She is a longtime supporter of the stalled H.R.40 “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act” - first introduced in 1989. Simmons emphasized that reparations and restitution are needed not only to address the generational trauma visited by the institution of slavery, but to eradicate the vestiges of anti-blackness “still baked into our local policy and zoning laws”—including practices such as redlining. The Evanston initiative was seeded with the first ten million of the city’s recreational cannabis sales tax and provided cash payments for housing support to direct descendants of enslaved ancestors. The PBS Documentary The Big Payback chronicles the project.
Tubbs locates his passion for UBI as rooted in his experience growing up with a teen mom and an incarcerated father. His upbringing cultivated an abundance mindset of generosity and mutual aid, despite living in an under-resourced community. He described the shock of arriving at Stanford, where poverty was falsely framed as a moral or intellectual failing—as opposed to a form of systemic structural violence. Tubbs cited Martin Luther King Jr.’s final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, which calls for guaranteed income. Tubbs, following this, emphasized the need for holistic, direct, and sustainable financial support versus treating societal ills like poverty and violence with isolated triage/emergency responses—stating: “if you guarantee people don't have their basic needs met, you're guaranteeing negative outcomes.” Tubbs was the executive producer on a documentary looking at several such pilot UBI programs: It’s Basic. Tubbs reminds us that ours is a country “that's built on land theft, genocide, and 400 years of free labor.” He called on those present to take risks, foster empathy, and push through the discomfort of advocating for radical change “because being comfortable is not going to get us where we need to go.”
The panel deconstructed the ways the societal status quo, rooted in anti-blackness, fails BIPOC constituents, while acknowledging that civic trauma and bureaucratic burnout occur especially when advocating from within oppressed and vulnerable populations. They called on the leaders and philanthropists present to put into action restorative policies like reparations and UBI—noting the distinction between charity (voluntary giving) and justice (ethically repairing harm caused). As Moore framed it: conversations about harm must be had in tandem with conversions about healing. The keynote disbursed, setting attendees to the tasks of reimagining our social fabric in ways that advance racial justice. Transformative equity work that Tubbs, quoting Nelson Mandela, reminds us: “always seems impossible until it’s done.”
ABOUT THE KEYNOTE
Shaping Bold Futures: Advancing Justice & Healing with Government
Mayor Michael Tubbs, Robin Rue Simmons, and Candace Moore explored the transformative impact of initiatives like Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Reparations. Grounded in Illinois’ legacy of innovation and activism, they discussed how these programs can advance racial justice and reimagine our social fabric.
