Livestream: The Racist Roots of Work Requirements: Where Do We Go from Here? [cssp.org]

From Center for the Study of Social Policy, February 2021

The Biden Administration has indicated that it plans to take a new direction in social and economic policy, and it has taken initial steps to roll back work requirements. Over the last four years, one way that the Trump administration sought to limit access to Medicaid, SNAP, and other basic needs programs was by promoting new and more stringent work requirements, which require people to report participation in work activities for a certain number of hours per week, or lose their assistance. As the Center for the Study of Social Policy explained in a report released last year, work requirements are rooted in a long history of anti-Black racism, going back to slavery. To this day, racist myths underlie assumptions that people do not want to work, and need to be forced to work by public policy.

Join us on Thursday, March 4, 2021 from 2PM – 3PM ET, for a virtual, livestreamed conversation about the history of work requirements, the reality of labor force participation, and where we should go from here.

Panelists include:

• Indivar Dutta-Gupta
  Co-Executive Director, Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality
• Mark Greenberg
  Senior Fellow and Director, Human Services Initiative Migration Policy Institute
• Elisa Minoff
  Senior Policy Analyst, CSSP
• Valerie Wilson
  Director, Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, Economic Policy Institute
• Megan Martin, moderator
  Executive Vice President, CSSP

[Please click here to access the livestreamed event.]