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social justice
Lessons from Past Activist Leaders for Today’s Fights for Health and Social Justice
As the Trump administration’s crusade against democracy and our nation’s public health and healthcare systems continue, we can learn from the lives of Denise Oliver-Velez and Walt Odets.
Jul 24, 2026
Two recent deaths highlighted the importance of earlier activist leaders to struggles for health and social justice. Denise Oliver-Velez, who died on July 15, was a founder of the Young Lords Party in New York, a group that mobilized Puerto Rican and other communities to fight for their health and dignity. She also helped set the stage for alignments between movements for the rights of people of color and those focused on the rights of women.
Walt Odets, a psychologist, died on July 5th in Berkeley where he had provided therapy for gay men for decades. His activism had focused on how best to prevent AIDS and ending the stigma that this country imposes on LGBTQI people.
Their stories remind us of the important role activists play in combating injustice and reversing cruel and harmful policies. As the Trump administration’s crusade against democracy and our nation’s public health and healthcare systems continue, we can learn from these two lives lessons for today’s activists who can bring the values and passions of Oliver-Velez and Odets into the present period.
Through the campaigns she helped to organize, Oliver-Velez brought to life an alternative vision of a healthcare system that put serving people first. In 1970, the Young Lords occupied Lincoln Hospital, an underfunded, understaffed public hospital with decaying facilities and low quality of care, known in the community as the Butcher Shop. The Young Lords sent members into the hospital lobby to collect complaints from patients, which they then presented to hospital administrators. When conditions did not improve, the group occupied the hospital, winning an agreement to hire more Puerto Rican doctors committed to serving their community and to support the Lords to set up new community health and substance use programs. At a time when the city was closing public hospitals to save money, Lincoln was rebuilt and a new modern hospital was opened, in part due to persistent pressure from the Young Lords and their healthcare worker allies.
Between them, these two very different activist leaders demonstrated some of the qualities today’s activists most need to fight current threats to health and social justice.
Oliver-Velez was attracted to the Lords because they were “a puente,” a “bridge between groups, the cultural/nationalists, the Marxists, the whites, the Black and the Asians.” She also wanted to overcome the machismo that divided so many radical groups. She wrote that she and other women in the Lords “made it very clear that we were not going to be just secretaries, that we were warriors too.” Oliver, Iris Morales, and other women leaders in the Young Lords organized a Women’s Caucus which moved the Young Lords Party to adopt feminist principles as central to their political agenda.
These women led campaigns on reproductive justice; against sterilization abuse; for safe, legal abortion; and raised awareness about the institutional oppression of women. Much of their work focused on health—breakfast programs for school children, a campaign to force the city to combat lead poisoning more aggressively, and the fights to improve Lincoln Hospital. Decades before “health for all” became an international rallying call, the Young Lords showed how ordinary people can force government to translate this aspiration into action.
Odets’ practice and tactics were different. He criticized the gay movement’s approach to AIDS prevention, arguing that its guidance on safe sex was ambiguous and failed to prevent infection. He insisted movements had to tell the truth about evidence. He also championed the needs of HIV-negative men, arguing that a movement seeking health for the gay community as a whole at had to consider the needs of these men, even if their lives were not in as imminent peril as those who were HIV+.
“For gay lives,” Odets wrote “the granting of legal rights and authentic acceptance are two different issues in a society steeped in phobic aversion to real diversity.” Odets distinguished between the legal fight for societal recognition, i.e., gay marriage, and the psychological fight for self-acceptance and the rejection of social stigma. He hoped to engage the gay community in addressing both the political and emotional requirement for building solidarity and to prepare gay men to both fight for their rights and insist on their self-worth. Rather than separating these two domains, he strove to integrate them.
Between them, these two very different activist leaders demonstrated some of the qualities today’s activists most need to fight current threats to health and social justice. Both found ways to connect their personal experience to their political beliefs, a prerequisite for authenticity in organizing others.
Oliver-Velez showed the power of bringing people together across the racial-ethnic and gender divides that characterize our society and enable those in power to divide us. Odets emphasized the importance of paying attention to both the political and the psychological dimensions of activism. Activists who appeal to the mind and the heart are more likely to build the long-term support needed to change policies and systems.
Both were willing to acknowledge differences among activists, then look for ways to bridge these divides . Neither Oliver-Velez nor Odets feared conflict, but they did not demonize fellow travelers who disagreed with them, leaving the door open to build bridges.
I have been studying, teaching, writing about, and participating in health activism for more than 50 years. Never have the threats to human and planetary health seemed starker. Never has the responsibility of government to protect health been under such concerted attack. Fortunately, thousands of young and old activists are organizing to combat today’s threats, showing the possibility of an alternative to the dark and cruel view of well-being coming from leaders in Washington. By applying the lessons learned from Oliver-Velez and Odets to today’s battles, we pay tribute to them by strengthening the fights for a healthier, more just world.
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Why the Anti-Data Center Movement Is Succeeding Where Others Have Struggled
By starting at the local and focusing on politics of material impact, the anti-data center movement has generated solidarity and success on a national scale unseen in recent movements for social justice.
Apr 23, 2026
Since November of last year, residents in Monterey Park, a city outside of Los Angeles, have been fighting against a multi-billion dollar investment firm to stop a massive data center from being built in their residential neighborhood. For months, residents have educated themselves, organized, reached out to the community, and showed up at local City Council meetings to urge municipal governors to reject the developer’s permit application.
The group, No Data Center Monterey Park, has been tremendously successful. Just this past week, the City Council passed three ordinances banning data center construction in the city and declaring them a public nuisance. The Council also created a ballot measure to be voted on during a special election on June 2, called Measure NDC (No Data Center), potentially adding a second set of protections in the city. This came after months of persistent and strategic organizing and action that is emblematic of what the strongest local democracy can look like.
This story has been unfolding in similar ways all across the country as data centers are pushed by the Trump administration and Big Tech. Counties across the nation—rural and metropolitan—are fighting back against data centers and having success. Data Center Watch reported in 2025 that from May 2024 to March 2025, $64 billion in data center projects had been blocked or delayed. It is a moment that few expected, but gives hope for the future of community organizing against corporate domination.
What is making these data center fights so successful? There is a lot we can learn from why this national movement is both so widespread as well as so effective—from high-level takeaways about winning fights for justice in this moment, as well as low-level nuts and bolts organizing strategies that communities are using successfully. Seeing it through these lenses, the anti-data center movement may in fact be a signal of a new direction for social justice organizing we have yet to tap into.
Data Centers Are an Unlikely, But Perfect Organizing Target
While data centers may seem an unlikely target for social justice movements, upon examining the features of the fights themselves, they reveal themselves to be a strong target for organized resistance. For one, data centers are an extremely local and tangible piece of infrastructure. Data Center Watch notes in their analysis of fights across the nation that the main concerns of residents are things like utility bills increasing, water usage and pollution, impacts on their property values, and noise and air pollution as well as the sicknesses they can cause.
The fact that local government has the power to stop infrastructure development that is supporting a national agenda is remarkable.
Tangibility and nondiscrimination are some of the strongest aspects of the fight—something that has been a thorn in the side of other movements in recent years. For example, the climate justice movement has frequently found difficulty with the fact that climatic changes are slow, long-term, and subject to local variation. Movements for racial justice are hampered by a consequence of the very problem they’re trying to solve: namely that people of different races and ethnicities have different experiences, creating extra work to move those whose privilege blinds them from oppression. Similarly, the movement for justice in Palestine is driven by empathy for those who are experiencing unimaginable violence, and much more rarely firsthand experiences of that genocidal violence.
In contrast, everyone in a locality breathes the same air, has to use the community’s water, and is subject to the electrical grid and its price fluctuations. This has brought a rare solidarity to the fight that has not been seen in many major social justice issues of the past handful of years. Focusing on the material dimension, in the manner than union organizing does, forces a politics of solidarity that cuts across partisanship, as everyone is suffering at the hands of the same financial oppressor.
Due to these local, tangible impacts, the composition of the anti-data center movement has also been noted as different from typical social justice movements—not falling only within the purview of the left or liberal center, but also including those who identify as Republicans. Data Center Watch reported that 55% of politicians taking stances against data centers are Republican, and 45% are Democrat. Those who lean left are concerned about environmental impacts. Those who lean right are widely opposed to tax abatements for developers. And issues of power consumption, grid strain, and prices increasing are cross cutting.
Add to this that the current push for data centers is intrinsically linked, materially and ideologically, to the Trump administration and Big Tech’s push for AI to pervade every aspect of society. Pew Research reported in September of last year that 50% of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI (50% Republican, 51% Democrat), and only 10% are more excited than concerned. Moreover, 61% of polled respondents wanted “more control… over how AI is used in their lives”—61% of Republicans polled and 63% of Democrats. Distaste for AI and how strongly it is being forced on society is also bipartisan, as it is becoming a material reality for people regardless of their politics.
These aspects of the fight help explain why the movement is so widespread and able to block tens of billions of dollars of proposed development. But they do not tell the entire story of the success. One other major factor contributing to widespread victories in the anti-data center movement is the fact that most of these proposed data centers are subject to municipal law.
The tactics that appear to be most widely used to stop data centers are through local legislation that bans development through ordinances and zoning, local moratoria, rejecting permits that need to pass through local legislature, or by voting projects down via referendum or ballot measure. The fact that local government has the power to stop infrastructure development that is supporting a national agenda is remarkable. It speaks to the power of local politics—when there are mechanisms in place for actually wielding that power. When they are able to organize effectively, residents are actually able to use the democratic mechanisms in place in their municipalities to exert a level of control over their lives and futures.
This combination of factors makes the anti-data center movement incredibly powerful and strategically sound from a change-making perspective. The tangibility of the infrastructure and universality of effects make a clear group of people who stand to be harmed and can be organized. The instruments of local governance allowing people to effectively wield power allows for straightforward calls to action that can yield immediate, tangible results. The tractability and clarity of this type of fight puts in perspective what effective campaigns can look like.
Can Social Justice Movements Focus on the Material?
There is much to learn from this movement against data centers in the US. It differs from other nationwide movements in the not-too-distant past and even the present, and those differences are worth examining critically.
The most notable takeaway is that focusing on material, local outcomes has generated decentralized, locally contextualized organizing spaces that have not been as present in some other recent major movements. For example, the youth climate movement in 2018 was legitimately critiqued for being too focused on the national scale, and began organizing without understanding the local politics. In my experience, this movement was constructed as local groups fighting for national issues, rather than local groups fighting for local issues. As a consequence, it was plagued by conflict when local groups expanded and bumped up against other long-time local organizers—who were often minoritized folks fighting environmental injustice.
Part of the power of the anti-data center movement is that it has the power of firsthand evidence because the effects are felt by everyone in the community. This stands in contrast to the movement to end the genocide in Palestine, which is often more about empathizing with the plight of people across the world—an absolutely worthy plight to organize around, as the genocide is unacceptable and should be stopped. But an issue across the world makes organizing difficult because the effect that moves people to action is mainly brought about via media or personal connection, and relies on empathy.
Acknowledging the reality of national and international issues, or systemic issues, but then being able to pinpoint their real manifestations and effects in your own life and the life of your community, should be the organizing paradigm we work within.
The nature of the anti-data center movement’s balance between the national and local scale appears better struck than what I experienced in the youth climate movement. People are fighting tangible infrastructure that poses harms to their immediate lives, but are simultaneously fueled by, and noting disdain for, the national push for AI and Big Tech’s greed. There is real power in this type of organizing, and it goes to show that national issues have local effects and targets that can be focused on.
These tactics could be applied to other national and international arenas, such as the climate crisis or the genocide in Palestine. The climate crisis has no shortage of local effects and targets. Organizers could rally around environmental injustices such as pollution from oil and gas, or around food justice to counter the power of Big Agriculture.
Or in the case of Palestine, focusing on the local effects of municipalities supporting the weapons and surveillance industries to the detriment of the local economy supporting life-giving jobs could be a valuable, material reframing. Inevitably, these militarized economies also come home, as the technologies and tactics used in Palestine are now being weaponized against local communities to fuel the deportation regime.
Acknowledging the reality of national and international issues, or systemic issues, but then being able to pinpoint their real manifestations and effects in your own life and the life of your community, should be the organizing paradigm we work within. Systems cannot function unless their local units act to fuel the system. Oil and gas relies on countless local offices, workplaces, university programs, and even gas stations or pipeline projects. Workers and infrastructure fuel the machine. The same is true for Big Tech, the military-industrial complex, Big Agriculture, and more.
Furthermore, the decisions to support local jobs and infrastructure that supports militarism or fossil fuels take away resources that could otherwise be put into community programs that truly generate prosperity. The anti-data center movement clearly identified that building data centers not only creates massive harms for the community, but also directs resources wastefully, which should otherwise be used to create schools, affordable housing, and community infrastructure. We need to learn to identify and challenge those local units so we dismantle the system in a way that is manageable.
Another benefit to applying this organizing paradigm is that targets and campaigns become much more manageable and concrete. When you fight a data center, you know that your goal is to cancel the contract, or enact a municipal ordinance banning construction of the infrastructure. Contrast this, for example, with the No Kings rallies, which are aiming at a lofty symbolic goal of “reject monarchy and authoritarianism,” without any clear tangible goals. I personally know local organizers who have struggled with this for Palestine solidarity as well, fighting for somewhat vague resolutions condemning genocide rather than dismantling of tangible projects supporting the violence.
Returning the Left to its Roots
If anything, this argument may be easily subject to the critique of, “This is always what the left has been about; this is nothing new.” That is a fair point, but a truth of ideas rather than a truth of reality.
The anti-data center movement is a strong example of anti-corporate, material politics that has been desperately missing from major movements in the US aside from the labor movement. It is a testament to the power of focusing on material circumstances, and evidently can bring together unlikely allies who have been wedged apart by other political fights.
None of this is to say, of course, that material politics should exist separately from focuses on race, gender, sexuality, Indigeneity, internationalism, or any other domain of social justice. We cannot properly understand the anti-data center movement without recognizing environmental justice, and the fact that many centers are being built in minoritized communities on purpose. We cannot understand Big Tech’s illegitimacy without understanding politics of patriarchy, neoliberalism, and colonial drives for extraction.
But it is to say that perhaps some social justice movements of the past decade have been too focused on fighting the world at scale without understanding how it manifests in their own neighborhood, or how it can be fought locally. There is power in fixing our own community. We should learn how to wield it.
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Remembering What Rev. Jesse Jackson Did for Palestinian Rights
Jackson was the first American political leader to recognize and incorporate into his movement my community of Arab Americans and our domestic and foreign policy concerns.
Feb 23, 2026
Rev. Jesse Jackson, who passed away last week, was a larger-than-life figure who made enormous and consequential contributions to American life. He registered millions of voters laying the groundwork for a substantial increase in the number of Black elected officials across the country. He also succeeded in pressing major corporations to increase economic opportunities for Black Americans thereby significantly increasing the Black middle class.
As part of the younger generation of Black leaders who had developed a global consciousness, his agenda moved beyond civil rights to make support for movements for social justice and liberation part of the mainstream of American politics. Because of this, he was the first American political leader to recognize and incorporate into his movement my community of Arab Americans and our domestic and foreign policy concerns.
I first began working with Rev. Jesse Jackson in the late 1970s. His staff approached me to discuss his plans for a visit to Palestine-Israel to see for himself the situation in the occupied lands. The injustices he witnessed left an indelible impression, leaving him committed to addressing the centrality of Palestinian rights to Middle East peace.
In 1979, when US Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young was removed from his post for speaking with the Palestine Liberation Organization’s United Nations representative, many Black leaders, Reverend Jackson included, were outraged. It wasn’t just that Andy Young had been a colleague in the civil rights movement. Jackson could not accept that the US had committed itself to a “no talk” policy with the Palestinian leaders.
In all the years I worked with Rev. Jackson, I witnessed not only his commitment to justice and courage in the face of challenges, but also the extent to which he recognized that his personal power could make a difference on the world stage.
He resolved to visit Beirut to meet directly with PLO chief Yasser Arafat and demonstrate that “a no talk policy is no policy at all.” Before leaving, he asked to address my Palestine Human Rights Campaign convention, taking place at that time. His presence and his remarks were electrifying and drew national and international media coverage.
In 1983 Rev. Jackson approached me at a dinner and asked me to leave what I was doing and join his campaign for president. When I replied, “I’ve been organizing my community of Arab Americans for the last four years and I’m not sure I can leave what I’m doing,” he said, “You will do more for your community in the next four months than you’ve done in the last four years.” He was right.
Up until that point, Arab Americans had never been welcomed in American politics as an ethnic constituency, mainly because of our support for Palestinian human rights. Candidates had rejected our contributions and endorsements. No campaign had ever included an Arab American committee. And no candidate had raised the issues about which our community cared deeply.
Rev. Jackson changed all that, and the response from Arab Americans was overwhelming. In fact, we were so moved by that 1984 campaign, that we launched the Arab American Institute to focus on lessons we’d learned: increasing voter registration, encouraging candidate engagement, and the importance of bringing our concerns into the electoral arena.
Because Rev. Jackson had made it possible to speak about Palestine, we built coalitions around the issue during the 1988 presidential campaign. We elected a record number of delegates across the country, and built coalitions with Black, Latino, progressive Jewish delegates, and others. We passed resolutions supporting Palestinian rights in 10 state Democratic conventions. And at the national convention in Atlanta, we’d earned enough delegates to call for a minority plank on Palestinian rights.
There had never been a discussion about Palestine at a Democratic convention. In negotiations with the presumptive winner Michael Dukakis’s campaign, they were adamant that the issue would not be raised. In fact, Madeleine Albright, representing the Dukakis people, said if the “P word” was even mentioned at the convention, “all hell would break loose.” I told them not to play “chicken little” with us and insisted that the issue be discussed. Rev. Jackson asked me to present our plank from the podium of the convention and I did. It was a heady experience to be able to address the National Convention calling for “mutual recognition, territorial compromise, and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians.” My speech was preceded by a floor demonstration of more than 1000 delegates carrying signs calling for Israeli-Palestinian peace and a two-state solution and waving Palestinian flags. It was the first (and unfortunately, the last) time that that issue was raised at a party convention.
The backlash was intense. While Rev. Jackson had secured a position for me on the Democratic National Committee, party leaders told me I should withdraw because my presence would make me a target for Republicans and for some Jewish Democrats, who would use an Arab American in a DNC leadership role to attack Dukakis. Incoming Party Chair Ron Brown thought it best that I withdraw but promised to make it up to us. And he did. He became the first party chair to host Arab Americans at party headquarters, to meet with Arab American Democrats around the country, and to address our national conventions. A few years into his term, he appointed me to fill a vacancy on the DNC where I’ve been ever since.
In 1994 in the months after Oslo Accords signing, Rev. Jackson accepted an invitation to be keynote speaker at an international peace conference the Palestinians were convening in Jerusalem. Once there, the Israelis said that we could not meet in Jerusalem or hold a political meeting with Palestinians. Rev. Jackson was determined to go forward. We spoke with Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Perez urging them to allow the event to go forward. Even though they were unrelenting, Jackson convened the meeting and then announced that we’d march from the hotel to the Orient House, the Jerusalem headquarters of the Palestinians. The Israeli military surrounded the hotel and told us we could not leave.
True to form, Rev. Jackson announced that we’d march anyway and so we left the hotel walking through the lines of Israeli soldiers. To be honest, I was frightened, but what happened surprised us. Because of the power of his personality and his work, Jackson’s presence was formidable on the world stage. Once the Israelis soldiers saw him leading this peaceful march right up to their blockade, they parted and not only allowed him through, but many gathered around, wanting to touch or shake his hand, asking to have their pictures taken with him. The Israeli commanders were furious and continued barking orders to their troops to back away. The soldiers ignored them. We marched to Orient House and had our meeting.
In all the years I worked with Rev. Jackson, I witnessed not only his commitment to justice and courage in the face of challenges, but also the extent to which he recognized that his personal power could make a difference on the world stage. He freed prisoners. He opened doors to negotiations. He gave hope to the hopeless and voice to the voiceless. He also challenged the Democratic Party to be principled and consistent in its commitment to human rights and justice. He will be missed, but his legacy lives on in the progressive movement for domestic and foreign policy change that he helped shape.
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The Fight for Academic Freedom Is a Fight for Justice
The right-wing effort to infringe on students' right to learn is an effort to hobble higher education as a force for creating a more just society.
Nov 27, 2025
We who believe in the value of academic freedom have been disheartened these past two years as quisling administrators at some of America’s once-great universities have caved to political pressure to quash protests, cancel courses, and limit professorial speech that is critical of inequalities in US society and US foreign policy.
These attacks on academic freedom are usually framed as threats to the freedom of faculty to conduct research, publish, speak, and teach, based on disciplinary expertise, without outside political interference. This portrayal of the threat, as true as it is, misses a key point: Also under attack are students’ rights to learn. The right-wing effort to infringe these rights is an effort to hobble higher education as a force for creating a more just society.
Long ago, as an undergrad in an introduction to physical anthropology course, I played a game we called stump the prof. It wasn’t a real game; it was just a few of us trying to liven things up by asking questions we thought would be hard or impossible to answer. The prof was young and upbeat, as I recall, and never seemed put out by our antics, though he no doubt saw what we were doing. I think he liked the energy. One time I asked if apes had orgasms. That got people’s attention.
In that class, taught 50 years ago at a public university, we as students felt free to ask whatever occurred to us (within the bounds of physical anthropology, of course). Our exercise of that freedom is part of what made the class memorable. We weren’t just amusing ourselves or bugging the prof. It might sound self-congratulatory, given that our motives weren’t entirely noble, but we were wringing a lot more knowledge out of the course than we might otherwise have gotten.
The worry is that students will develop the ability to question received truths, see through the ideologies that justify social and economic inequalities, and resist manipulative political rhetoric that bypasses rationality.
What was true back then is true today: How much students learn in college depends on the opportunities they’re given. When a course is scratched from the catalog, students miss out on the knowledge that would have been available to them in that course. Students lose out, too, when certain concepts are proscribed, or when faculty self-censor for fear that discussing those concepts and related topics might get them in trouble. That’s why interference with the ability of faculty to teach what they deem important infringes on the right to learn.
Suppose, for example, that students wanted to ask how conventional gender expectations constrain our humanity. That’s a serious question deserving a serious answer. It’s a question that might be asked in a sociology or gender studies course. But if no such course exists, or if an instructor feels compelled to say, “Sorry, a group of politicians has made it too risky to talk about such stuff,” students are kept from learning. That’s a betrayal of what higher education has promised them: freedom to ask questions, freedom to pursue their curiosity, freedom to grow through the acquisition of vetted knowledge.
Right-wing ideological warriors and politicians would like to leave students in the dark about many other troublesome things: institutional racism, white supremacy, the exploitation of labor, the global havoc wreaked by US imperialism, the domination of government by corporate capitalists and the very wealthy. In relation to these matters, there is much that needs to be faced up to and talked about if we hope to understand how our society works and how to make it work better. And, yes, some courage is required.
Suppose students asked how it is possible for racial disparities—in income, wealth, education, health status—to persist even when most people overtly disavow racism. That’s another question that deserves an answer. It’s also a question that can be answered based on decades of social science research. Students shouldn’t be denied the opportunity to ask these questions and get answers because the topic makes some people uncomfortable. We should not let discomfort be weaponized to protect ignorance.
Students might also want to know how it’s possible for some people to enjoy privilege and not know it. Or how racism has historically supercharged capitalism. Again, these are all legitimate matters for university-level inquiry. But they’re also threatening to politicians who, on the one hand, serve economic elites and, on the other hand, exploit popular prejudices to mobilize voters. That’s the real reason for right-wing attacks on the disciplines and courses where students can learn about our society’s inequalities, past and present.
Critics of intellectual spaces in which students can learn to think critically about US society often claim they want to protect students from liberal indoctrination. But it’s not really indoctrination they worry about. The worry is that students will develop the ability to question received truths, see through the ideologies that justify social and economic inequalities, and resist manipulative political rhetoric that bypasses rationality. Education that imparts these abilities is indeed “liberal,” in the classical sense of being liberating. Which is the opposite of indoctrination.
Universities are dangerous places—or they can be, when faculty are free to pursue the truth even if the results disturb political and economic elites; when faculty are free to teach what they have found through their research and scholarship; and when students are free to ask tough, even off-the-wall, questions. But of course the danger is not to those who want to inquire critically about social inequalities, or employ concepts that might upend common sense, or to teach and learn about these matters. The danger is not to those who seek in good faith to fulfill the promises of higher education. It is to those whose power and privilege depend on keeping these promises from being met.
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The Second World Summit for Social Development: Mind the (Equality) Gap
Putting wind in the sails of the flagging UN Sustainable Development Goals
Nov 05, 2025
Building on the legacy of the first summit held in Copenhagen in 1995, the primary goal of the second World Summit for Social Development is to advance global social development and bolster much-needed momentum for the Sustainable Development Goals set out in the 2030 Agenda. This high-stakes event will be held November 4-6, 2025 in Doha, Qatar, and Better World Info has carried out thorough research on the event.
With just five years to go, the recent United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Progress Report revealed that we are on track to meet only 35% of targets by 2030. Progress on 50% of the targets is weak, and 18% are actually in reverse.
The 2025 UN World Social Report revealed a "global social crisis" characterized by insecurity, inequality, crumbling social cohesion, and diminishing trust.
Recognizing this mammoth task, the Second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD2) is a vital opportunity to assess the biggest challenges; identify omissions; and recommit to inclusivity, equity, social protection, and sustainability. The event is organized by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), which will collaborate with various stakeholders to facilitate the crucial discussions. WSSD2 will attract over 8,000 participants.
This WSSD2, let's strengthen global partnerships, implement effective policies, foster international cooperation, set concrete proposals, and make it another historic leap for social development.
As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, "True development is not about prosperity for the few. It is about opportunities for the many, grounded in social justice, full employment, and human dignity.”
The WSSD2 takes place during the same month as the COP30 climate conference. Both summits share the common goals of creating a more just and sustainable world for everyone. Climate change threatens the foundations of our lives; without concrete action, our efforts to enhance social protections are futile. Progress in education, poverty reduction, and social justice will be undermined if we cannot bring global warming under control.
WSSD2: Three Decades in the Making
The first summit brought together 186 countries and was a landmark moment in global efforts to address critical social challenges, including poverty, unemployment, public health, and social exclusion.
Its ambitious agenda concluded with the adoption of the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action, which outlined several targets and initiatives, and became a foundation for future policies worldwide. Although the summit was, at the time, a historic moment for global progress, many of the hopes and expectations of the declaration were not realised.
More than 30 years have passed since the first summit. A lack of urgency and budget has left the WSSD2 long overdue, as the United Nations' attention has been diverted to Climate and Biodiversity summits (COP Conferences), of which there have been many.
This summit is an essential part of the United Nations' work in an area that has been overlooked for too long. Organized by civil society organisations, the World Social Forum is the only other event which addresses the planet's social needs and alternative visions of globalization.
As UN General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock said, "Without social justice there will never be long-lasting peace and security."
(Photo by Statista/CC BY-ND 4.0)
This year's summit will be co-facilitated by Philippe Kridelka, Belgium's permanent representative to the UN, and Omar Hilale, Morocco's permanent representative. With mounting global tensions and spiraling humanitarian crises worldwide, this conference must go beyond other United Nations summits.
The Doha Political Declaration, which was negotiated well in advance of the summit, does not contain any new or binding indicators, nor obligations for monitoring. This lack of concrete measures and quantifiable goals leaves implementation simply to the goodwill of nations. As we have seen with various climate and biodiversity goals, this does not work.
Even before the summit, the effectiveness of the WSSD2 has drawn sharp criticism from hundreds of NGOs, who have labelled the pre-negotiated declaration insufficient.
Increasing militarization, decreasing effectiveness of multilateralism, widening inequalities, the potential for future pandemics, and a right-wing shift in many influential nations have led to the redirection of vital resources away from our planet's most pressing societal needs.
Instead of ensuring the well-being, safety, and prospects of society, money is siphoned into the production of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear programs, military bases, and the promotion and justification of wars around the world.
The State of the Planet: WSSD2 Key Priorities
The WSSD2 will focus on the weakest performing Sustainable Development Goals.
No Poverty: Over 2.8 billion people, more than one-third of the world's population, live in extreme poverty. Since the last summit, 35% of the people who exited poverty have relapsed back into it.
Zero Hunger: Rates of hunger and food insecurity have increased alarmingly since 2015. Two billion people worldwide lack regular access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food. In 2024, 23% of children had stunted growth, and 6% of those under the age of 5 were affected by wasting.
Gender Equality: If the 2023 rate of progress remains, it would take an estimated 300 years to end child marriage, 286 years to remove discriminatory laws, 140 years for women to be represented equally in workplace leadership roles, and 47 years for equal representation in national politics.
Clean Water and Sanitation: In 2024, 2.2 billion people lacked access to safe drinking water, 3.4 billion people lacked safely managed sanitation, and 1.7 billion people did not have basic hygiene services at home.
Affordable and Clean Energy: In 2024, 645 million people lacked access to electricity. Almost 2 billion people are still using polluting fuels for cooking, exposing them to severe health risks.
Decent Work and Economic Growth: Informal employment remains stubbornly at an estimated 2 billion people, accounting for 58% of the world's employed population. Approximately 65% of the world's population lives in countries where income inequality is widening. There are still 160 million children involved in child labor.
Climate Action: The year 2024 was confirmed as the hottest year ever on record. A recent report by the UN revealed that current policies put the planet on track to reach a catastrophic 3.1°C warming by 2100. This scenario would expose 600 million people to flooding, reduce food yields by half, cause severe water shortages, lead to insurmountable habitat and biodiversity loss, create month-long brutal heatwaves and wildfires, heighten the risks of insect-borne diseases, and profoundly deepen inequalities.
Life Below Water: In 2019, 35% of global fish stocks were overfished. An estimated 5-12 million metric tons of plastic enters the ocean each year, costing the global economy $19 billion every single year. Record-breaking global coral bleaching began in 2023, affecting 84% of global reefs across more than 80 countries. Marine life populations have declined by 49% between 1970 and 2012. One-third of shark and ray species are now threatened with extinction. Goal 14 is the least funded of all the Sustainable Development Goals.
Life on Land: One million animal and plant species are currently threatened with extinction. Habitat loss and land degradation have led to a staggering 73% decline in wildlife populations between 1970 and 2020. Deforestation destroys around 10 million hectares of forest every single year. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aimed to protect 30% of land by 2030, but progress has stagnated since 2015.
Turning Summits into Action
We need to start building a society where people can thrive, rather than merely survive. With 60% of the planet struggling and 12% suffering, many, unsurprisingly, believe that life is worse now than it was 50 years ago.
Looking back at various climate, biodiversity, and economic summits, it is easy to imagine another lackluster fanfare of fake promises, greenwashing, and corporate lobbying. The stalled progress after the 1995 WSSD and the lack of other social development-focused initiatives puts huge pressure on this year's event in Doha to be a conference of action.
Social development progress has been seriously hindered by underinvestment, a lack of regulation and legality, greenwashing, outdated policies, and a lack of political will. Multiple global crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic, conflict, the climate crisis, and economic downturns, have exacerbated many existing global issues.
Ageing populations reshaping society, a right-wing shift in the political arena, increasing polarization, and international pressure to fund military alliances add additional challenges. The financing gap must be closed. Binding targets have to be set. Nations must be held accountable for inaction.
This WSSD2, let's strengthen global partnerships, implement effective policies, foster international cooperation, set concrete proposals, and make it another historic leap for social development.
As Baerbock said, "Social development is not only a matter of principle, it is also the smartest investment we can make."
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A Life Undone by War
There is a truth that many of those who think themselves untouched by war are unable or unwilling to understand. War never goes away.
Nov 03, 2025
Not long ago, I received a Facebook "friend" request from Jean, an individual I had known in grammar school. It was nice to hear from her, that she was in good health, and doing well. Over the subsequent weeks, we exchanged pleasantries, read each other's posts, and caught up somewhat with how our lives had progressed over the past 50 or so years.
The pleasantries were rather short-lived, however, as Jean rather quickly became disenchanted, perhaps annoyed is more accurate, with my "preoccupation" with politics, social issues, and the "fact" that my Facebook commentaries and analyses—"rants" she called them—were, in her opinion, "unhealthy, self-destructive, and downright anti-American." She expressed what I took to be a heartfelt concern for my well-being, that I was such a sad and angry man, unhappy with my life and my country, and obsessed with a war some 50 years gone. She knew I had been a Marine in Vietnam, had heard over the years that I had been affected by the experience, but only now realized the severity of my condition—a Facebook diagnosis.
"As a friend," she counseled me that I should stop with the politics, protests, and dissent, put the war behind me and go on with my life. None of this, of course, was new to me, and, I would guess, to many others who had participated in war. So, I politely thanked her for her concern and advice, and continued with my protests, dissent, and "rants" about politics, issues of social justice, and war.
Not long afterward, however, having grown frustrated, I guess, with my unwillingness to follow her advice and make the necessary "positive" changes in my life, she wished me well. After a final expression of concern for my well-being (she was aware of the 17.6 veterans who committed suicide each day), Jean terminated our interaction, “unfriended me” in Facebook jargon.
She was right, of course, at least about how the war had seriously impacted my life, how I had become both sad and angry. Sad that upon returning home to the "world," I no longer fit in. How I felt alone, alienated from friends and family members and how for the longest time, I was unable to maintain a relationship or keep a normal job. She was right as well about my being angry. Angry about how I felt used by my country, lied to about the necessity and justice of the cause for which so many lives were devastated. Angry that the hopes and dreams I had for my life were never realized, and, most tragic, angry that many of our leaders and fellow citizens learned nothing from the debacle... and we are doing it all again.
She was wrong, however, in her assumption that in a life amidst the chaos and unrest, I hadn't tried to achieve a sense of normalcy and well-being. Damn, I had tried a whole lot. Perhaps Jean was right, however, and my inability to heal was the result of a choice that I made, to recognize and accept responsibility and culpability for the crimes perpetrated upon the Vietnamese people. That I had no right to “come home” when so many others were never afforded the opportunity; the 3.8 million Vietnamese, the 58,281 fellow Americans whose names are inscribed on the Wall of Remembrance in D.C., and the over 50,000 Vietnam Veterans who died by their own hand.
Eventually, I realized a truth that many of those who think themselves untouched by war are unable or unwilling to understand. War never goes away.
Perhaps the best that can be hoped for, I think, is to continue the struggle to accommodate the trauma, the pain, and the suffering (the PTSD); the guilt, the sadness, and the anger (the Moral Injury); and to find a place for it in one’s being. Easier said than done, of course, a Sisyphean task I will struggle with for the rest of my life.
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Why It Matters That Male and Female Economists See the Economy Differently
In a significant new study published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Canadian economist Mohsen Javdani reveals that gender shapes views on power, equality, and inclusion in ways politics alone can’t explain.
Sep 14, 2025
Men and women might check the same box on election day, but they see the economy through different lenses. Just ask professional economists.
That’s the striking implication of a new study by Mohsen Javdani, associate professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, who surveyed over 2,400 economists across 19 countries. His research reveals that gender shapes how they understand economic issues in ways politics alone can’t explain—and warrants attention from policymakers and campaigns alike.
Javdani wasn’t just chasing numbers; he was looking for patterns in what economists believe and focus on. What he found: Women in the field (still underrepresented) are more likely to challenge traditional theories, promote equality and social justice, and push for a more inclusive economics. They tend to lean further left than their male colleagues, who are more often centrists or right leaning.
Probably no surprise there.
But here’s the twist: Even when the men and women shared the same political beliefs, they still interpreted economics differently. Right-leaning female economists, for example, were more likely than their male peers to question orthodox ideas and emphasize equality and inclusion. Javdani’s data suggests that as economists shift right politically, men abandon progressive views more quickly than women do.
Simply put, political labels often try to explain it all, but they miss a big piece: Gender is at work behind the scenes.
If right-leaning women are more receptive to progressive economic ideas than their male counterparts, then campaigns that speak directly to these women could unlock a powerful, untapped base for fairness and inclusion.
So, just pack the room with more women and expect the conversation to shift? Not so fast.
Javdani points to earlier research by Giulia Zacchia and others, showing that numbers alone don’t cut it, especially if the loudest voices still echo the same old male-dominated, market-centered dogma. Without structural changes and real efforts to open the field to new ideas, the issues women tend to bring to the table, like labor protections, inequality, and a more hands-on role for government, keep getting sidelined. New faces, same soundtrack. Female economists are out there pushing for redistribution, calling out bias, and demanding better, but if no one’s listening, the system stays stuck.
This isn’t just academic—what’s at stake is a real understanding of how the economy hits women, what they contribute, and why their labor keeps getting undervalued.
Javdani’s study breaks new ground by showing how politics can blur—but never erase—the gender gap in economic thinking. As he writes:
While moving rightward on the political spectrum is consistently associated with weaker support for progressive and equity-oriented positions, the decline is less steep among women. In several cases—particularly among right- and far-right-leaning economists—women remained more supportive of positions emphasizing inequality, structural disadvantage, and concern about corporate power.
For anyone trying to grasp how voters think about the economy, this research is very suggestive.
Javdani study samples only economists, but it is difficult to believe that the differences he documents do not extend far more broadly, and that if we want to understand economic opinions at the ballot box, we have to look beyond party lines and pay attention to gender.
A recent NBC News poll, for example, shows a wide gap between conservative young male voters and their liberal female counterparts on issues like financial independence, debt, and home ownership. And a new Gallup survey reveals meaningful differences in how male and female respondents view capitalism and socialism—with men viewing capitalism more positively than women, and the reverse for socialism.
But significantly, there are also large gaps among men and women in the same political categories. A March 2025 Pew analysis found Republican women were more than twice as likely as Republican men to see employer bias as a major cause of the gender wage gap (43% vs. 18%). Meanwhile, polling by Navigator Research shows American women are consistently more pessimistic about the economy than men, across race, income, and party lines. This stems from how women experience the economy day-to-day—focusing on costs like groceries, rent, and healthcare rather than abstract numbers like GDP or the stock market.
As a result, women tend to strongly support policies that directly ease these burdens, from paid family leave and the Child Tax Credit to cracking down on corporate price gouging.
Yet much economic messaging still treats the economy as gender-neutral—a costly oversight for anyone hoping to connect with voters. Javdani’s research points to a missed opportunity: If right-leaning women are more receptive to progressive economic ideas than their male counterparts, then campaigns that speak directly to these women could unlock a powerful, untapped base for fairness and inclusion.
Talking about economics like gender doesn’t matter is like playing checkers in a chess game. When you meet people where they actually are, not where your ideological playbook says they should be, you stop talking past each other, and start building something real, like an economy that works for everybody.
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Beware Rich Men Quoting the Bible to Punish the Poor
The Trump administration and its theological apologists are working overtime, using Jesus’ name and the Bible’s contents in even more devastating rounds of immoral biblical (mis)references.
Sep 10, 2025
It was a moment somewhat like this, 30 years ago, that turned me into a biblical scholar. In the lead-up to the passage of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, political and religious leaders quoted scripture to justify shutting down food programs and kicking mothers and their babies off public assistance. Those leaders, many of them self-described Christians, chose to ignore the majority of passages in the Bible that preached “good news” to the poor and promised freedom to those captive to injustice and oppression. Instead, they put forward unethical and ahistorical (mis)interpretations and (mis)appropriations of biblical texts to prop up American imperial power and punish the poor in the name of a warped morality.
Three decades later, the Trump administration and its theological apologists are working overtime, using Jesus’ name and the Bible’s contents in even more devastating rounds of immoral biblical (mis)references. In July, there was the viral video from the Department of Homeland Security, using the “Here I am, Lord. Send me” quotation from Isaiah—commonly cited when ordaining faith leaders and including explicit references to marginalized communities impacted by displacement and oppression—to recruit new agents for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, a job that now comes with a $50,000 signing bonus, thanks to US President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s former pastor went even further in marrying the Bible to anti-immigrant hatred by saying, “Is the Bible in favor of these ICE raids?… The answer is yes.” He then added: “The Bible does not require wealthy Christian nations to self-immolate for the horrible crime of having a flourishing economy and way of life, all right? The Bible does not permit the civil magistrate to steal money from its citizens to pay for foreign nationals to come destroy our culture.”
A month earlier, during a speech announcing the bombing of Iran, President Trump exhorted God to bless America’s bombs (being dropped on innocent families and children): “And in particular, God, I want to just say, we love you God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East, God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”
And in May, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Republican congressional representatives formed a prayer circle on the floor of the House as they prepared to codify the president’s Big Beautiful Bill. Of course, that very bill threatens to cut off millions of Americans from lifesaving food and healthcare. (Consider it a bizarre counterpoint to Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 and providing free healthcare to lepers.)
The Antichrist
And if that weren’t enough twisting of the Bible to bless the rich and admonish the poor, enter tech mogul Peter Thiel, cofounder of Palantir and the man behind the curtain of so much now going on in Washington. Though many Americans may be increasingly familiar with him, his various companies, and his political impact, many of us have missed the centrality of his version of Christianity and the enigmatic “religious” beliefs that go with it.
In Vanity Fair this spring, journalist Zoe Bernard emphasized the central role Thiel has already played in the Christianization of Silicon Valley: “I guarantee you,” one Christian entrepreneur told her, “there are people that are leveraging Christianity to get closer to Peter Thiel.”
Indeed, his theological beliefs grimly complement his political ones. “When you don’t have a transcendent religious belief,” he said, “you end up just looking around at other people. And that is the problem with our atheist liberal world. It is just the madness of crowds.” Remember, this is the same Thiel who, in a 2009 essay, openly questioned the compatibility of democracy and freedom, advocating for a system where power would be concentrated among those with the expertise to drive “progress”—a new version of the survival of the fittest in the information age. Such a worldview couldn’t contrast more strongly with the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus demonstrates his preferential option for the poor and his belief in bottom-up strategies rather than top down ones.
There is never a suggestion, of course, that the rich, who have functionally stolen people’s wages and engorged themselves by denying them healthcare, are in any way to blame.
More recently, Thiel has positioned himself “right” in the middle of the Republican Party. He served as Trump’s liaison to Silicon Valley in his first term. Since then, he has convened and supported a new cohort of conservatives (many of whom also claim a right-wing Christianity), including Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s Director of Policy Planning Michael Anton, AI and crypto czar billionaire David Sacks, and Elon Musk, who spent a quarter of a billion dollars getting Trump elected the second time around. Thiel is also close to Curtis Yarvin, the fellow who “jokingly” claimed that American society no longer needs poor people and believes they should instead be turned into biofuel. (A worldview that simply couldn’t be more incompatible with Christianity’s core tenets.)
Particularly relevant to recent political (and ideological) developments, especially the military occupation of Washington, DC, Thiel is also close to Joe Lonsdale, cofounder of Palantir and founder of the Cicero Institute, a right-wing think tank behind a coordinated attack on the homeless now sweeping the nation. That’s right, there’s a throughline from Peter Thiel to President Donald Trump’s demand that “the homeless have to move out immediately… FAR from the Capital.” In July, Trump produced an executive order facilitating the removal of housing encampments in Washington, a year after the Supreme Court upheld a law making it a crime, if you don’t have a home, to sleep or even breathe outside. And Thiel, Lonsdale, and the Cicero Institute aren’t just responsible for those attacks on unhoused people and “blue cities”; they also bear responsibility for faith leaders being arrested and fined for their support of unhoused communities and their opposition, on religious grounds, to the mistreatment of the poor.
On top of this troubling mix of Christianity and billionaires, however, I find myself particularly chagrined that Thiel is offering an oversold four-part lecture series on the “antichrist” through a nonprofit called ACTS 17 collective that is to start in September in San Francisco. News stories about the ACTS 17 collective tend to focus on Christians organizing in Silicon Valley and the desire to put salvation through Jesus above personal success or charity for the poor. That sounds all too ominous, especially for those of us who take seriously the biblical command to stop depriving the poor of rights, to end poverty on Earth (as it is in heaven), and defend the very people the Bible prioritizes.
For instance, Trae Stephens (who worked at Palantir and is partners with Thiel in a venture capital fund) is the husband of Michelle Stephens, the founder of the ACTS 17 collective. In an interview with Emma Goldberg of the New York Times, Michelle Stephens describes how “we are always taught as Christians to serve the meek, the lowly, the marginalized… I think we’ve realized that, if anything, the rich, the wealthy, the powerful need Jesus just as much.”
In an article at the Denison Forum, she’s even more specific about her biblical and theological interpretation of poverty and the need to care for those with more rather than the poor. She writes, “Those who see Christ’s message to the poor and needy as the central pillar of the gospel make a similar mistake. While social justice movements have done a great deal to point out our society’s longstanding sins and call believers to action, it can be tempting for that message to become more prominent than our innate need for Jesus to save us.” Such a statement reminds me of the decades-long theological pushback I lived through even before the passage of welfare reform and the continued juxtaposition of Jesus and justice since.
A Battle for the Bible
Of course, such a battle for the Bible is anything but new in America. It reaches back long before the rise of a new brand of Christianity in Silicon Valley. In the 1700s and 1800s, slaveholders quoted the book of Philemon and lines from St. Paul’s epistles to claim that slavery had been ordained by God, while ripping the pages of Exodus from bibles they gave to the enslaved. During the Gilded Age of the 19th century, churches and politicians alike preached what was called a “prosperity gospel” that extolled the virtues of industrial capitalism. Decades later, segregationists continued to use stray biblical verses to rubber-stamp Jim Crow practices, while the Moral Majority, founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell, Sr., helped mainstream a new generation of Christian extremists in national politics.
Over the past decades, the use of the Bible to justify what passes for “law and order” (and the punishing of the poor) has only intensified. In Donald Trump’s first term, Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their families at the border with a passage from the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Romans: “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders summed up the same idea soon after in this way: “It is very biblical to enforce the law.” And in his first speech as speaker of the House, Mike Johnson told his colleagues, “I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear: that God is the one who raises up those in authority,” an echo of the New Testament’s Epistle to the Romans, in which Paul writes that “the authorities that exist are appointed by God.”
We must build the strength to make a theological and spiritual vision of everybody-in-nobody-out a reality and create the capacity, powered by faith, to make it so.
Over the past several years, Republican politicians and religious leaders have continued to use biblical references to punish the poor, quoting texts to justify cutting people off from healthcare and food assistance. A galling example came when Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), rebutting a Jewish activist who referenced a commandment in Leviticus to feed the hungry, quoted 2 Thessalonians to justify increasing work requirements for people qualifying for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). And that was just one of many Republican attacks on the low-income food assistance program amid myriad attempts to shred the social welfare system in the lead-up to President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the largest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in American history and a crowning achievement of Russell Vought’s Project 2025. Arrington said: “But there’s also, you know, in the Scripture, tells us in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3:10 he says, uh, ‘For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: If a man will not work, he shall not eat.’ And then he goes on to say, ‘We hear that some among you are idle’… I think it’s a reasonable expectation that we have work requirements.”
And Arrington has been anything but alone. The same passage, in fact, had already been used by Reps Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Stephen Lee Fincher (R-Tenn.) to justify cutting food stamps during a debate over an earlier farm bill. And Representative Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) used similarly religious language, categorizing people as deserving and undeserving, to argue against a healthcare plan that protects those of us with preexisting conditions. He insisted that only “people who lead good lives” and “have done the things to keep their bodies healthy” should receive reduced costs for healthcare.
Such “Christian” politicians regularly misuse Biblical passages to blame the impoverished for their poverty. There is never a suggestion, of course, that the rich, who have functionally stolen people’s wages and engorged themselves by denying them healthcare, are in any way to blame.
A Theology of Liberation for a Time Like This
Such interpretations of biblical texts are damaging to everyone’s lives (except, of course, the superrich), but especially the poor. And—though you wouldn’t know it from such Republicans—they are counter to the main themes of the Bible’s texts. The whole of the Christian Bible, starting with Genesis and ending with the Book of Revelation, has an arc of justice to it. The historical equivalents of antipoverty programs run through it all.
That arc starts in the Book of Exodus with manna (bread) that shows up day after day, so no one has too much or too little. This is a likely response to the Egyptian Pharaoh setting up a system where a few religious and political leaders amassed great wealth at the expense of the people. God’s plan, on the other hand, was for society to be organized around meeting the needs of all people, including describing how political and religious leaders are supposed to release slaves, forgive debts, pay people what they deserve, and distribute funds to the needy. The biblical arc of justice then continues through the prophets who insist that the way to love and honor God is to promote programs that uplift the poor and marginalized, while decrying those with power who cloak oppression in religious terms and heretical versions of Christian theology.
My own political and moral roots are in the welfare rights and homeless union survival movements, efforts led by poor and dispossessed people organizing a “new underground railroad” and challenging Christianity to talk the talk and walk the walk of Christ. Such a conviction was captured by Reverend Yvonne Delk at the 1992 “Up and Out of Poverty Survival Summit,” when she declared that society, including the church, must move to the position that “poor people are not sinners, but poverty is a sin against God that could and should be ended.”
Delk’s words echo others from 20 years earlier. In 1972, Beulah Sanders, a leader of the National Welfare Rights Organization, the largest organization of poor people in the 1960s and 1970s, spoke to the National Council of Churches. “I represent all of those poor people who are on welfare and many who are not,” she said, “people who believe in the Christian way of life… people whose nickels and dimes and quarters have built the Christian churches of America. Because we believe in Christianity, we have continued to support the Christian churches… We call upon you… to join with us in the National Welfare Rights Organization. We ask for your moral, personal, and financial support in this battle for bread, dignity, and justice for all of our people. If we fail in our struggle, Christianity will have failed.”
In a Trumpian world, where Christian extremism is becoming the norm, we must not let the words of Beulah Sanders be forgotten or the worst fears of countless prophets and freedom fighters come true. Rather, we must build the strength to make a theological and spiritual vision of everybody-in-nobody-out a reality and create the capacity, powered by faith, to make it so. Now is the time. May we make it so.
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Finally, a Development Financial Institution Has a Policy for Remedying Harm
This milestone is not only a leap forward for International Finance Corporation but also a hopeful sign for communities harmed by development projects around the world.
May 31, 2025
In a historic moment, the International Finance Corporation became the first development finance institution, or DFI, to adopt an explicit policy on remedy. On April 15, IFC published its Remedial Action Framework, formalizing a commitment to address environmental and social harms caused by IFC-supported investment projects.
This milestone is not only a leap forward for IFC but also a hopeful sign for communities harmed by development projects around the world. The Remedial Action Framework (RAF) is a cornerstone in a broader shift at a moment when the World Bank Group is planning to undertake a major overhaul of the environmental and social accountability systems on the public and private sides of the institution. The RAF sets the stage for a profound institution-wide commitment to avoid and remedy harm at the entire World Bank. Whether the grievance mechanisms and accountability systems of the institution change, or amendments to the environmental and social policies occur as part of this overhaul, the principles and drive for this cultural shift at the institution must now be rooted in the notion that remedy is possible at the World Bank.
As project-affected communities have illustrated through the years, harm is harm—no matter what type of investment may have led to it.
The IFC/Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) framework is the result of years of advocacy, discussion, and perseverance by numerous stakeholders both outside and inside the institution, as recognized in the RAF itself. The strenuous efforts from civil society organizations (CSOs) and project-affected people from around the globe stemmed from firsthand experience of harm as well as technical recommendations and proposals to ensure that the remedy is centered on the rights and the needs of those who have been harmed.
The RAF is a fundamental part of an approach that will focus on remedy but will also make considerations about when and why to exit a project responsibly, as established in its Responsible Exit Approach issued in October 2024.
How the IFC/MIGA RAF Works
It is particularly meaningful that the RAF acknowledges that, like all development institutions, IFC and MIGA must play a role in the “remedial action ecosystem.” This recognition signals a full understanding of the core tenet of international law, namely that institutions should avoid infringing on the human rights of others and should address adverse human rights impacts when they have contributed to harm.
The RAF aims to provide a structured approach to address harm arising from the environmental and social (E&S) impacts of projects supported by IFC/MIGA. While the emphasis on the differentiated roles that IFC/MIGA and their clients play in providing remedy for harm remains, the support by IFC and MIGA for these remedial actions is a central part of the equation, focusing on:
- Prevention and Preparedness
- Access to Remedy
- Contribution to Remedial Action
The RAF will apply to all IFC-supported investment projects and all investment projects covered by MIGA political risk insurance guarantees. It makes distinctions for IFC/MIGA’s support for remedial actions, asserting they will vary depending on each case, stemming from factors such as the type of investment, proximity to harm, and other factors. Reaching an understanding of how these factors will be considered will require more detail than what is included presently in the RAF.
IFC/MIGA’s contribution to remedy will entail the use of influence and leverage to encourage clients to take remedial action, as well as providing support for enabling activities, such as fact-finding, technical assistance, and community development activities. Ultimately, the extent and effectiveness of these contributions will depend on the levels of engagement and participation from those seeking remedy.
While the RAF does contain references to institutional risks associated with providing direct funding for remedial actions by IFC/MIGA, it also acknowledges that the primary focus on enabling activities is meant to minimize these risks.
Notably, the RAF was approved on an interim basis, pointing to the importance of its three-year piloting phase to implement the approach. Practical application and enforcement of the RAF will certainly be the biggest challenge, but the inclusion of regular interactions with stakeholders, updates, and a final assessment to be conducted with the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) to incorporate lessons learned to perfect the final policy is positive.
Prevention and Preparedness
The RAF emphasizes sustainability frameworks and the value of strengthening prevention and preparedness and facilitating remedy through grievance mechanisms, echoing a long-standing demand from civil society that avoiding harm must be prioritized over managing its aftermath. It is admirable to finally have IFC recognize the crucial need to identify and manage E&S risks and potential impacts to avoid harm in the first place, but this too will require a change in operations and culture at IFC so that every aspect of IFC’s operations is seen through an environmental and social lens—a shift that aligns with a human rights-based approach.
Assessing a client’s preparedness and capacity to properly identify and mitigate environmental and social risks and to provide access to remedial actions in the event of harm is one of IFC/MIGA’s primary roles. If IFC/MIGA are committed to the complementary roles required for remedial action implementation, then this primary role becomes ever more salient and fixed to its new mandate.
The RAF should be praised. It has also created an opportunity to institute an approach to remedy within the entire World Bank Group at the perfect moment.
And as IFC begins the process of updating its Sustainability Framework, it is the perfect time to capture the principles and thrust of the Remedial Action Framework and Responsible Exit Approach in a manner that enhances broad adoption and integration of the approach to remedy at the entire institution.
Although the RAF does not mention the Responsible Exit Approach—including a reference to IFC/MIGA’s leverage over a “former client”—it nods to its relevance by recognizing the challenges faced when clients are not willing to address situations of harm. Planning with clients to ensure a responsible exit from all projects—and leveraging the role of IFC/MIGA in contributing to remedy through enabling activities—remains fundamental.
Accessing Remedy
Based on the background provided in the RAF, one would assume that the framework is the result of the 2018 external review of the E&S accountability of IFC and MIGA, including the role and effectiveness of the CAO. Yet, civil society organizations that have been advocating for accountability and remedy for decades would quickly point to problematic projects such as Alto Maipo, Titan Cement, and Tata Tea, recalling the numerous communities who filed complaints proving the inadequacy of the system. For many of them, the ultimate catalyst for the turnaround would be the Tata Mundra case. This case—and the landmark Jam v. IFC litigation by Indian fisherfolk—highlighted the gaps in accountability when IFC dismissed the CAO’s findings and recommendations to bring the project into compliance and to provide remedy for communities.
Considering this history with the CAO, it is all the more notable that IFC/MIGA has embraced access to remedy as part of the holistic approach to remedial action within the RAF. They recognize the vital necessity of putting in place effective, reliable, and independent grievance mechanisms to address complaints raised by project-affected people when things go wrong.
IFC/MIGA emphasizes the client’s creation of an effective project-level grievance mechanism while maintaining the existence of IFC’s internal grievance mechanism—the Stakeholder Engagement and Response office—and the CAO. Together, these mechanisms make up the diverse cadre of options with varied levels of outcomes and results. By acknowledging the opportunity to capture lessons from the RAF’s initial implementation to inform updates to IFC/MIGA Sustainability Frameworks and the upcoming CAO Policy review, IFC/MIGA notably endorses raising the level of engagement and usefulness of these mechanisms.
For some time, CSOs and project-affected communities have been advocating for improvements to the CAO and grievance mechanisms at DFIs worldwide. Years of experience and long-standing collaboration led to the creation of the Good Policy Paper Guiding Practice from the Policies of Independent Accountability Mechanisms. These recommendations have been useful for numerous institutions seeking to improve their accountability frameworks with the ultimate goal of facilitating access to effective remedy.
What Constitutes Remedial Action for IFC and MIGA?
As stated in the RAF, “IFC/MIGA as development institutions have a role to play in the context of the broader remedial action ecosystem and may contribute to remedial action in the following ways:
- Use of available financial, contractual, and/or relationship influence and leverage to encourage clients and other responsible parties to take remedial action to address harm […]
- Provide support for enabling activities, including fact-finding, technical assistance/capacity-building, and/or community development activities.”
Even though the role of the client vis-à-vis IFC/MIGA is permanently interlinked, IFC/MIGA has approved an approach to remedy that still puts the client at the forefront of managing E&S risks and impacts, as well as funding and implementing remedial actions.
The initial perception of what was possible for a World Bank institution has evolved, noting IFC/MIGA’s commitment to contribute to Remedial Action as set forth in the RAF. While restating their role in using financial and contractual leverage to encourage clients to take remedial actions to address harm, IFC/MIGA will also provide support for enabling activities that will allow clients to provide solutions to project-affected people.
The scope of enabling activities may potentially allow for a broad range of actions by IFC/MIGA. While this will require practical experiences from the piloting phase to test and perfect the framework, initial considerations of enabling activities as presented in the RAF are promising as a minimum starting point:
- Fact-Finding: To provide additional information that may inform the creation and design of remedial actions by a client, IFC/MIGA may contribute funding to hire third-party experts who can complement dispute resolution and compliance processes at the CAO. In past cases, the lack of funding for these fact-finding efforts has become an obstacle that may stall or even stop dispute resolution processes between community complainants and clients, resulting in fruitless efforts.
- Technical Assistance and Capacity Building: Communities that have been harmed are often the most willing to act, working collaboratively to rehabilitate their lands or recover their waterways and ways of life. By providing funding for technical assistance and training so project-affected communities can address environmental impacts such as contaminated water sources, IFC/MIGA will be respecting a community’s agency and rights to remedy in direct ways. IFC/MIGA’s clients may also receive this type of assistance and capacity building to aid in implementing and monitoring corrective and remedial actions.
- Community Development Activities: The resilience of communities that have lost their livelihoods due to environmental harm is often a measure of their dignity and cultural identity. By demonstrating that community opinions are received in the design, launch, and implementation of community development programs offered, IFC/MIGA will legitimize their role, encouraging ownership of these programs and activities.
Additionally, while IFC/MIGA expect that enabling activities will be the preferred mode of engagement in most cases where project-level remedial action is warranted, the RAF states that this does not prevent them from proposing other modalities for approval by the Board.
Cost of Remedial Actions and the Role of IFC/MIGA and Their Clients
A major question and point of contention over these last years has been the cost of providing remedy. Here, the matter of differentiated roles has a direct bearing on the question of cost when IFC’s client is responsible for managing E&S risks and impacts. Something worth noting is the fact that private sector clients who joined IFC/MIGA consultations on the approach to remedial action were never opposed to remedy, but mainly concerned with how this could be done. They acknowledged the role of a project developer in remedying harms resulting from project construction, operations, etc. Their main question was always how to implement such a policy and how the costs would be allocated.
The RAF is clear about the costs for remedy, stating that under IFC’s Sustainability Framework, clients are responsible for managing E&S risks and impacts as well as funding and implementing remedial actions. While this would seem straightforward, the purpose of DFIs and the implementation of their mandates are at the core of an often nebulous division of roles. Considering this, the detailed description of IFC’s Sustainability Frameworks within the RAF comes into focus, as it is precisely the issue of a client’s ability to comply with IFC’s E&S policies and standards that makes IFC’s adjacent role more obvious and essential.
As we face environmental and climate crises globally, and financial institutions join in multiplying funds available to address the growing need for solutions, we can now point to the first remedial action framework and concrete driver for ways of addressing harm and providing remedy.
For instance, if IFC’s E&S due diligence at project appraisal is done properly, and if supervision and regular monitoring during project implementation are carried out entirely, then IFC can be sure that its client has managed E&S risks and impacts. As a result, the client adhered to IFC’s Performance Standards, applying the mitigation hierarchy correctly by taking all measures necessary to prepare for and avoid or minimize adverse impacts to the environment and preventing harm to people. However, when IFC fails to supervise and monitor its client properly, or when initial due diligence is lacking, or it neglects to notice a low-capacity client, then the risks are likely to materialize, causing harm.
If IFC realizes these errors, it may request corrective actions and changes to E&S Action Plans, so its client brings the project into compliance, yet this is not guaranteed. These are precisely the types of errors that have led affected communities to file complaints at the CAO, and the issues IFC has been grappling with for many years, ultimately leading to internal shifts and restructuring in E&S governance at the institution after assessing the entire accountability system.
Funding for contributions to remedial action by IFC will be obtained through the project’s funding structure, donor trust funds, IFC’s administrative budget, or operational risk capital. At the same time, MIGA’s contribution to remedial action activities is limited to available trust funds or existing budgetary resources.
Ultimately, the fact that IFC/MIGA has incorporated the possibility of using its own financial resources to contribute to remedial actions in the RAF, while still mentioning their concern for the risk of doing so, points to a change in perceptions that will ideally continue to shift the mode of thinking at the entire institution. Simply said, remedy should be seen as the goal from now on and something that should color all decisions at development finance institutions.
Implementation and What’s Next
The RAF was approved by the Board of Directors of both IFC and the MIGA on April 3 on an interim basis for three years. Implementation of the RAF during the pilot phase will require IFC/MIGA’s regular engagement with stakeholders to receive input and share updates.
As an essential part of the initial six months of implementation, IFC and MIGA, in consultation with the CAO, will have to define and track key performance indicators related to efficiency and effectiveness to ensure proper monitoring of the interim approach. IFC/MIGA will also monitor implementation, providing the boards with briefings and annual monitoring reports.
A final assessment in consultation with the CAO will be carried out at the end of the three-year period. The final policy will incorporate lessons learned and proposed revisions for review by the boards.
Remedy or Bust
The RAF should be praised. It has also created an opportunity to institute an approach to remedy within the entire World Bank Group at the perfect moment. As project-affected communities have illustrated through the years, harm is harm—no matter what type of investment may have led to it. As we face environmental and climate crises globally, and financial institutions join in multiplying funds available to address the growing need for solutions, we can now point to the first remedial action framework and concrete driver for ways of addressing harm and providing remedy.
Other institutions are now following suit. The IDB Group has indicated for several years that internal discussions on Remedy and Responsible Exit were already underway. Most recently, IDB Invest has prepared a draft approach to Responsible Exit based on the IFC/MIGA model and has been engaging with civil society and project-affected communities to receive feedback, while also moving on internal discussions for a remedy framework.
In the days following the approval of the IFC/MIGA Remedial Action Framework, CSOs had the opportunity to meet with IFC. The conversations had an immediate change in tone. This was a different conversation with other approaches for new projects, new contracts, thinking through how to make this framework a reality, with a sense of pride.
This was not lost on anyone. It revealed the legitimacy of having a framework and accompanying Responsible Exit Approach set to paper, as approved by the boards of these institutions. It showed its significance, its weight as a standard to follow, as a directive to take, and as a way forward for an institution that has finally recognized that development can sometimes have negative impacts, and that those impacts can lead to harm for communities. But now there is a way to address these harms and provide remedy, the commitment to do so has been set, and many are ready to make this happen, as challenging as it will undoubtedly be.
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Social Justice and Eclipse: Predicting and Preparing For Change
It is best to approach social justice the same way the world prepares for an eclipse—with foresight, community, and coordination.
Apr 23, 2025
Millions of people across the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico recently witnessed a total solar eclipse—a rare and breathtaking alignment of the Earth, moon, and sun. Scientists had predicted its precise timing and path years in advance, with detailed maps showing where the event would be most visible.
Across the U.S., communities prepared—gathering in fields, schools, and rooftops with protective glasses and cameras in hand. They trusted science. They trusted preparation. They showed up.
In the same week one year later, over 600,000 people across all 50 states signed up to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump and his ongoing threat to democracy for the Hands Off Protests in 1,300 locations. These protests were not spontaneous—they were planned, anticipated, and powerfully aligned. Total estimates for the day’s peaceful protests are 3 million people.
It is not always possible to predict the exact moment of breakthrough, but one can prepare for the shift through mutual aid, political education, youth leadership, and conflict transformation training.
If it is possible to chart the movement of celestial bodies with such precision, then it is also possible to chart the social conditions that produce change. Responses to the conditions that cause criminality, injustice, or violence can also be charted and faced.
A crime can unfold in seconds, but its consequences—especially in marginalized communities—can last a lifetime. The root conditions that set the stage—poverty, childhood trauma, environmental injustice, disinvestment in education, and systemic racism—are all in place and can be addressed.
Knowing the precursors of injustice, it is prudent not to sit still and wait for tragedy before taking action. It is best to approach social justice the same way the world prepares for an eclipse—with foresight, community, and coordination.
Research from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) confirms that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)—like neglect, abuse, or household dysfunction—can have long-term impacts on health, behavior, and justice involvement. Communities with higher poverty rates have higher crime rates, not because of moral failure, but due to decades of disinvestment and inequality.
As someone who has spent decades working for criminal and social justice reform in communities and far beyond, I see that systems and practices can indeed seed meaningful social change.
The Theory of Change is a framework that maps how and why desired change is expected to happen in a particular context. It’s not magic. It’s modeling. And when used correctly, it helps communities anticipate outcomes and align resources toward justice.
Like eclipse chasers who travel to be in the “path of totality,” social justice organizers prepare to be where the change is coming. They build coalitions, train communities, and develop infrastructure so that when the time is right, they do not to miss the moment to act.
At this time in history when daily political efforts are aimed at reversing timeworn, proven paths to social justice, such as defunding financial assistance to federal programs, universities, associations, and individuals based on principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion, it is urgent to prepare and put into place ways to counter the effects.
This preparation involves policymakers, funders, nonprofits, communities, advocates, individuals, families, institutions, and faith-based organizations to work toward the goal of social change of equity, fairness, access, and justice.
You cannot stare directly at an eclipse without special tools. Similarly, you often can’t see the slow build of a movement until it’s in full swing. Yet humans can sense change—like animals do before an eclipse, like trees that darken and cool in response to a shadow overhead.
Similarly, social change is intangible yet deeply felt. It is not always possible to predict the exact moment of breakthrough, but one can prepare for the shift through mutual aid, political education, youth leadership, and conflict transformation training.
Preparation now is crucial. Facing funding cuts nationally to vital services, rollbacks of civil rights protections, and an increasing normalization of political violence, it is urgent to create needed structures that assess possibilities in order to anticipate and respond proactively.
Throughout history, research shows that Black women have sensed these shifts and led people and communities through them—not just during well-known moments—but in everyday resistance throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
For example, Rosa Parks didn’t just refuse to give up her seat one time; she was a seasoned organizer and a supporter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or the SNCC Legacy Project. Shirley Chisholm wasn’t just the first Black woman to run for president—she helped reframe what political leadership looks like.
Barbara Jordan called out President Richard Nixon with such clarity it redefined accountability in American politics. Tennis icon Serena Williams crip-walked across a tennis court and reclaimed joy on a global stage. First Lady Michelle Obama wore sleeveless dresses and shattered expectations of what dignity and leadership looked like in a Black woman’s body.
A 2021 Texas A&M University study reports, “Black women, through their inclusive, community-based activist endeavors, continue to carve out fugitive spaces and counterpublics where counternarratives are actively generated to fight for a more equitable and inclusive democracy that serves all.”
As a Black woman, I see that Black women are the eclipse, the unexpected alignment. They have known through history how to bring light through the dark.
Social change can happen in quiet corners—in small towns, church basements, classrooms, or in the act of mentoring one young person. It doesn’t have to be a massive protest or a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. It can be both.
But when those moments do arrive—like the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the LGBTQ+ rights movement—they are rarely surprises. They are the result of decades of work, layered with setbacks and strategy.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But that arc doesn’t bend on its own. It requires intention and action.
It is time not just to watch the changes happening, but to prepare and to make change, witnessing the outcomes together.
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