In Solidarity

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Welcome to the launch of In Solidarity: Connecting Power, Place and Health. In this debut episode, hosts Ericka Burroughs-Girardi and Beth Silver introduce themselves and the theme for the podcast: social solidarity. Burroughs-Girardi and Silver explore how our lives and fates are interconnected, whether obvious or not. And they discuss how the two of them discovered a connection that shaped their lives before they were even born.

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The idea of collective action for the common good has slowly given way in this country to private and for-profit … by design. If we’re going to improve health and health equity for everyone, we have to understand the shift away from the things once considered sacred public goods (i.e., public schools, transportation, infrastructure, and investment in all communities). In this episode, we talk with author Donald Cohen, who recently published The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back, to find out how we got here and how we can return to a mindset of social solidarity.

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It started with the enslavement of human beings and persists today. Wealth influences opportunities for employment, housing, health care, and education, all of which contribute to health inequities. In this episode, we welcome our colleague, Dr. Christine Muganda, a scientist with County Health Rankings, to shed light on what the research says about wealth inequality. One of the most staggering statistics: Black families in this country have just one-tenth of the wealth of white families. Racial differences are far more pronounced in wealth than in income. Ultimately, the differences in wealth and the ability to build it can impact health and well-being for generations.

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The 20th century is full of deliberate acts to restrict Black families from building wealth in this country. In this episode we’re joined by Dr. Dalton Conley, a Princeton University professor and author of Being Black, Living in the Red. Conley traces the massive wealth divide to the enslavement of human beings and follows it through Reconstruction, the New Deal, redlining, the G.I. Bill, and beyond. Conley suggests a race-neutral solution may be the most effective way to close the wealth divide.

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In this episode, we explore reparations as a possible solution to bridging the racial wealth divide. We're joined by Dr. Andre Perry, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution and a scholar-in-residence at American University. Perry has authored the book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities and co-authored a Brookings policy brief: “Why we need reparations for Black Americans.” Perry argues that reparations are not only the solution, but they’re also the morally right thing to do.

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Researchers are starting to understand ways to close the racial wealth gap. In this episode, we explore several evidence-informed solutions to support wealth building. The strategies are part of a curated list from What Works for Health and are rated for their effectiveness on closing disparities, or the differences between groups. We’re joined by our colleague, Michael Stevenson, the team leader for Evidence and Policy Analysis at County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, to discuss a range of strategies his team has studied and rated.

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The Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative reimagines economic realities in communities of color through community wealth building strategies that leverage ideas, people and capital. On the final episode of our six-part mini-series on the racial wealth divide, we talk about how Atlanta’s tackling the issue with the executive director of the wealth building initiative, Latresa McLawhorn Ryan.