Insight Center for Community Economic

Workforce Development - Insight focuses on activities that help low-income people access jobs that pay well, have career ladders, and are high quality would benefit and opportunities. Insight conducts research and outlines solutions that ensure working people can thrive. In 2021, Insight continued our efforts to advance the well-being of Mississippians disconnected from employment and education, focusing on Black and low income persons in certain counties. Following our examination of regional labor markets, the workforce system, barriers to work, and structural factors such as occupational crowding, we outlined approaches to address the two-tiered labor market in Mississippi, with implications for other states. We continued our efforts in the San Francisco Bay area to highlight the ways in which workforce institutions may be perpetuating racial and gender biases and inequities, and continued our efforts to address employment equity for formerly incarcerated persons. Finally, we connected these efforts with our larger advocacy to eliminate harmful court fines and fees, and other policies and practices that perpetuate racial and gender inequities in the workforce development system. Economic Security - Insight is a national leader in advancing ideas and solutions that address the root causes of economic exclusion. In 2021, inside staff co-authored an article in TIME Magazine about the need to enact real structural solutions to account for racism within our economy and democracy one year from the George Floyd protests. Insight released a new paper in partnership with the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University called Running Up the Down Escalator: How Narratives Shape Our Understanding of Racial Wealth Inequality. Insight published an op-ed on the gendered narratives driving the media and politicians framing of the different infrastructure bills in Congress. Staff were featured as economic experts on new segments discussing the importance of human infrastructure spending such as expanded Child Tax Credit. Staff presented at a Federal Reserve Board event on Racism and the Economy: Focus on the Racial Wealth Divide. Insight continued its efforts to change state and local policies that unfairly take child support payments from families. Through involvement with the Truth and Justice in Child Support Coalition, Insight helped h gain benefits for families that interact with the child support system. Finally, we continue to assess the United Way of the Bay Areas campaign to cut poverty in half in the San Francisco Bay Area. Asset Building - Insight promotes policies and programs that help close the gap in assets between rich and poor communities, women and men, people of diverse races and ethnicities and recent immigrants and the U.S. born, enabling people and communities acquire, accumulate, and preserve financial and educational assets. In 2021, Insight continued its efforts that focus on debt mechanisms targeting and disproportionately affecting communities of color. As a leader in the Debt Free Justice California Coalition, Insight helped secure the passage of legislation that eliminates 17 additional criminal legal fees and discharges over an estimated $534 million in debt. By making connections between the racial wealth gap and the fines and fees, framing this as a racial and economic justice issue, Insight demonstrated the policymakers that the minority communities over-surveilled and targeted by the police are the communities that bear the brunt of criminal legal fee debt. Insight also helped secure passage of legislation that curtails the predatory collection practices used against persons saddled with criminal legal debt, such as wage garnishments and back levies on minimum wage salaries and minimal bank accounts. Insight publicized its efforts and that of the Coalition with published Op-Eds in major news outlets, showcasing California as a trailblazing state in the fight for fines and fees reform. We also conducted a webinar and free training for lawyers on the relief available and how to use the new laws, and prepared informational Flyers for community groups.