By Shafeka Hashash
Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: What does a guaranteed income mean to you?
Shafeka: For me, a guaranteed income is about everyday people, not billionaires, getting the equity they deserve after having been deprioritised in the economy for so long. It’s about enabling people to put food on the table for their families, as well as supporting them to go beyond that and achieve the things they’ve been dreaming about.
BTS: What motivates you to work towards a guaranteed income in the US?
Shafeka: I’m blind, am from an immigrant family, and have worked with immigrants, refugees, and domestic violence survivors. It’s so clear to me that underpinning all these inequities is the need for greater access to direct cash, so people can make the choices that are best for them.
Maybe that choice is to move house. Maybe that choice is to help their kids get into extracurricular activities. Maybe it’s to start a new business. It doesn’t really matter. The point is that people don’t have the ability to make choices about their lives when they don’t have the cash. And some people in our society have endless opportunity and choice, simply because they have greater access to money.
BTS: Can you give us an overview of where the guaranteed income movement is right now in the US?
Shafeka: The guaranteed income movement has exploded in the US over the last six years. It started with just two pilots: one in Jackson, Mississippi, and one in Stockton, California. Now we’re at 150 and counting, and I find out about new ones all the time.
Guaranteed income has been informing policy too. These are policies focusing on foster youth, or on children and the family care system. Even policies on housing are being affected by guaranteed income. This is because guaranteed income experiments are giving us so many lessons learned about how people make choices for their families, and about how to have a system that gives people dignity and that doesn’t force them to jump through hoops.
The pandemic gave way to the greatest experiment for guaranteed income, which was the expanded child tax credit
BTS: As an outsider to the US, it’s really remarkable how quickly the movement has taken off. What explains the rapid rise of the guaranteed income movement?
Shafeka: I think there are two factors that led to the movement’s huge expansion over the last six or seven years. The first is the fact that people can actually easily understand that guaranteed income works. They inherently understand it, because we all have unique circumstances that just a bit of extra cash can support with: for some it’s taking care of their aging parents, for others it’s that broken down car, for others it’s therapy appointments, the dentist, or for the kids to play a sport or get some tutoring. We have so much research to show that people intuitively understand why access to a guaranteed income improves outcomes in so many different areas.
The second factor is the pandemic. Here in the US, the pandemic gave way to the greatest experiment for guaranteed income, which was the expanded child tax credit. Through it, a huge proportion of Americans suddenly had access to a bit of extra cash – around $450 a month. And it opened up so many possibilities for people: they started small businesses, and poverty rates for children were at the lowest they’d been in recent history.
It showed policymakers that access to just a bit of extra cash really does make a difference. And it opened the floodgates not only for pilots, but for rethinking policy.
BTS: It also seems like there has been a pretty strong backlash against the guaranteed income movement in the US. Can you tell us about some of the opposition you’ve faced?
Shafeka: That’s exactly right. The movement’s been so successful – there are pilots taking place in 35 different states – and it’s being run by all sorts of different people: government policy folks, grassroots folks, families, the participants receiving guaranteed income, etc. That’s brought some strong opposition.
We’ve seen a really well-funded attack. There are groups of the extremely wealthy – many of them billionaires – who see guaranteed income, and the real choice and flexibility it’s giving people, as a threat to them.
For them, guaranteed income means that people have greater freedom to make better choices. Some of those choices include not taking a job that isn’t paying a fair wage, or working one good quality job instead of three bad ones. And these folks are getting scared of it, because it threatens to give freedom to an exploited workforce that they rely on.
So they’re helicoptering into states and trying to ban guaranteed income through lawsuits and by lobbying for legislation. They’re doing this by having neighbourhoods fear families down the block instead of families coming together to understand that they deserve better.
It’s not just guaranteed income that they’re opposing. Many of them also oppose basic labour protections. They’re often the ones rolling back civil rights and rolling back access to health care for women. They don’t have a movement, but they do have a billionaire-backed set of actors who are trying to dismantle gains for everyday people.
You know what though? It’s a compliment. It’s a compliment that they’re doing this because it means the movement isn’t being ignored. It’s now being seen as something that can actually change the whole economic system for families in the US. And that’s amazing, and that’s also why supporting guaranteed income is more important now than ever before.
BTS: What is the guaranteed income movement doing to resist these attacks?
Shafeka: These attacks are being resisted all the time in different states. People are coming together to share their stories to each other and to their politicians about what guaranteed income has done for them. People are fighting for policies like the child tax credit, and other policies that remove barriers to economic prosperity. People are doing that all the time, and we’re going to have to keep doing it. We’re seeing people come together from food access, healthcare access, and other movements, because they know that those opposing them are the same actors opposing guaranteed income.
This is a movement that comes from the hearts, minds, and values of people. It’s a movement that says that people deserve more than what they have now. I think this movement of people is going to be what takes down this opposition, because people are not taking this lying down.
Guaranteed income is a truly bipartisan issue
BTS: It’s very inspiring to hear. Can you tell me about how the movement is investing strategically in its growth, and not just in its defensive capabilities?
Shafeka: Strategic investments are going to be so crucial. We have to be honest and reckon with the fact that we are up against an extremely well-funded set of actors who oppose this plan. Even a people-powered movement needs investment in things like communications so it can reach audiences.
Strategic investment has already helped us a great deal. For example, we were able to fund some research that told us that guaranteed income isn’t a partisan issue. It’s actually well liked by people across the entire political spectrum. Such findings wouldn’t have been possible without those investments.
We’re also going to need new investments to support grassroots folks to get out and mobilise. It takes resources to keep making sure that happens. And it takes resources to keep innovating our pilots and campaign policies so we can keep the momentum going. We also know it takes funding and resources in the most vulnerable of places, where people of colour live and work, and where people so often already have reduced voice in government. Those areas not only need support in sharing stories, but also in driving away the fear that these attacks have created.
BTS: Does your organisation have a strategy for making progress on guaranteed income?
Shafeka: The Economic Security Project developed a ten-year blueprint to achieve a guaranteed income. We’re working to that. Guaranteed income isn’t just an idea for us, it’s something that is possible and very achievable. We’re working on three main parts.
First is winning continued state cash policies, like child tax credit and state and city funding for guaranteed income pilots. It’s maintaining the government’s momentum and opportunities for distributing guaranteed income.
Second is working at the administrative and governmental levels on policies that don’t necessarily require legislation, but can make our public systems much easier to access.
Third part is federal advocacy. We have legislators across the nation – from Kentucky and Michigan to Massachusetts and California – who are introducing federal legislation on guaranteed income, laying those early seeds for permanency in the future.
BTS: What’s your prognosis for the future of a guaranteed income? Do you think this policy could ever be achieved on a national level in the US?
Shafeka: I genuinely hold a tremendous amount of optimism for this. And part of that is because guaranteed income is a truly bipartisan issue as far as the voters are concerned. Families around the country are asking for the expanded child tax credit to come back. They want it to return and be improved. People are fighting for that extra bit of money in their pockets. And lawmakers are actively trying to make policies to give that to families because they know it’s the right thing to do.
This shows us there’s a lot to be hopeful for. Despite what happens in elections, despite all this opposition, the work continues on. Folks have innovated on the state level, and then we’ve seen those policies catch up on the federal level. Every day there’s a new example of those innovations being taken up by the federal government.
