Audience: Low-Income Communities

Many people communicating for social change are exploring how to tell diverse and inclusive stories that center marginalized communities while building understanding about how inequality persists. Intersectionality is an important tool to help us tell great stories that help us understand systemic issues. Five guiding principles to telling intersectional stories: Show, don’t tell; Provide historical context; Uplift the voices of marginalized people; Tell whole stories; and, Radically reimagine the world.
  

A significant portion of Americans are effectively politically invisible because their names aren’t on any major voter registration or consumer files that political professionals and scholars rely on. At least 11% of all Americans are unlisted, and an additional 12% are listed with incorrect addresses. Unsurprisingly, these groups of Americans report being contacted by political campaigns far less often. Further, by racial/ethnic breakdown, roughly 40% of Black and Latino Americans are “unreachable” (i.e., unlisted or mislisted), but only 18% of white Americans are. This unreachable group, as a whole, is much lower-income than other voters, is significantly Democratic in party identification, and holds more pro-welfare spending policy opinions. Overall, the over-reliance on voter and consumer file lists may perpetuate political inequality, but there may also be a political opportunity to engage with this “unreachable” group.             

We celebrate Pride at the end of June to remember the Stonewall rebellion/riot to fight police oppression. I joined the LGBTQ movement and the climate movement because I want to end suffering and protect beautiful places and people. Both these movements are about health, justice, resilience, and liberation. As a queer climate advocate, I think it’s important to draw direct connections across liberation struggles, the fight for queer liberation and the climate justice movement, so we can build solidarity and sharpen our political analysis on how to win and expand a social base of power that sees our common interest.

This report looks at this process of power building for just transition in four states: California, Kentucky, Louisiana, and New York. We combine an analysis of the pillars of just transition – strong governmental support, dedicated funding streams, diverse coalitions, and economic diversification – with an analysis of how to change power at a state level that focuses on the conditions that impact possibilities, the community-level capabilities that facilitate effective voice, and the arenas in which power is contested.