{"id":792,"date":"2026-08-06T05:38:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T05:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792"},"modified":"2026-08-06T05:38:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T05:38:24","slug":"well-need-an-economic-program-to-make-blacklivesmatter-here-are-three-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas."},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div>\n<div>\n<article>\n<header>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Feature<\/li>\n<li>January 7, 2015<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas.<\/h1>\n<h1>We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas.<\/h1>\n<h2>In a country that has always used race to justify inequality, ending police brutality is just the start.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section>\n<time>January 7, 2015<\/time><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>We are in the midst of a movement to upend white supremacy. Thousands of people across the country, acting in response to the unpunished killings of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride, Michael Brown and so many more unarmed black people who have lost their lives to police or vigilante violence, have taken to the streets to proclaim that \u201cblack lives matter.\u201d While this is a powerful proclamation all its own, it can now be strengthened by a vision of what it will take to make those lives matter in America.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>In 1966, along with A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and other organizers and scholars, Martin Luther King Jr. released the now all-but-forgotten Freedom Budget for All Americans, which included full employment, universal healthcare and good housing for all. \u201cThe Freedom Budget is essential if the Negro people are to make further progress,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt is essential if we are to maintain social peace. It is a political necessity.\u201d Dr. King came to espouse this view toward the end of his life, acknowledging that civil and voting rights were a critical but merely partial victory in the struggle for complete equality.<\/p>\n<p>King\u2019s vision, needless to say, was never realized. This is why we propose that, in addition to calls for police reform, it is vital for the defeat of the racist system that the #BlackLivesMatter movement advance an economic program. We cannot undo racism in America without confronting our country\u2019s history of economically exploiting black Americans. Demands from Ferguson Action and other groups include full employment, and this foundational item is one that can and should be fleshed out, as we hope to do here.<\/p>\n<p>Before laying out our proposals, we should clarify why, historically, eliminating racism requires an economic program. America\u2019s story is one of economic exploitation driving the creation and maintenance of racism over time. The inception of our country\u2019s economic system condemned black people to an underclass for a practical rather than bigoted reason: the exploitation of African labor. Imported Africans were prevented by customs and language barriers from entering into contracts, and unlike the indigenous population, their lack of familiarity with the terrain prevented them from running away from their slavers. To morally justify an economy dependent on oppression, in a nation newly founded on the rights of men to freedom, it was necessary to socially construct a biological fiction called race, one that deemed some people subhuman, mere property. \u201cDuring the revolutionary era,\u201d Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields write in their book <em>Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life<\/em>, \u201cpeople who favored slavery and people who opposed it collaborated in identifying the racial incapacity of Afro-Americans as the explanation for enslavement.\u201d White citizens, making their fortunes and proving their social standing through the ownership of African persons, codified the idea of race into law. Those of African origin would come to form the lowest class of American life, while people of Western European origin were free to extract labor and wealth from their bodies. Material inequality, in other words, preceded the racist rationale.<\/p>\n<section>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h2>Popular<\/h2>\n<p><span><span>&#8220;swipe left below to view more authors&#8221;<\/span>Swipe \u2192<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>The Chilling Trump Order Threatening All Americans<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                The Chilling Trump Order Threatening All Americans<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nHannah Riley Fernandez <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>The Real Story Behind the Human Wave That Entered Ceuta<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                The Real Story Behind the Human Wave That Entered Ceuta<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nStephen Zunes <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>Thomson Reuters Employees Demand That ICE \u201cLeave Our Cities\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                Thomson Reuters Employees Demand That ICE \u201cLeave Our Cities\u201d<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nCarl Ginsburg <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>Abdul El-Sayed: \u201cThe Power of Our Many Is Greater Than the Power of Their Money\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                Abdul El-Sayed: \u201cThe Power of Our Many Is Greater Than the Power of Their Money\u201d<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nJohn Nichols <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p>This didn\u2019t change with Emancipation. The convict-leasing system, the lynching of black business owners, and the razing of economically independent black towns by White Citizens\u2019 Councils and the Ku Klux Klan made it impossible for the former slaves to flourish. After Reconstruction, the ideology of race that erected Jim Crow society was crucial for maintaining class divisions among whites. As the Fieldses write, \u201cOne group of white people outranked the other precisely because it was in a position to oppress and exploit black people.\u201d Thus, through the daily experience of this dynamic, \u201cthe creed of white supremacy\u201d was bolstered, in the words of the historian C. Vann Woodward, \u201cin the bosom of a white man working for a black man\u2019s wages.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a result, black Americans continued to experience racist violence, both physical and economic, and no corrective policy prescriptions were forthcoming. In his book <em>The Condemnation of Blackness<\/em>, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, notes that the progressive movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries advocated increased government resources for poor immigrant groups, while continuing to attribute black poverty to the alleged cultural and moral deficiencies of African-Americans. This legacy haunts us today in every new injunction that ending racism depends on young black people wearing belts. And it lives in the widespread rejection of the obvious fact that drug abuse, violence and educational failure don\u2019t breed poverty; poverty breeds <em>them<\/em>. The large-scale relegation of black Americans to poverty is the essential \u201crace\u201d problem.<\/p>\n<p>In the postwar boom, as Ta-Nehisi Coates details in \u201cThe Case for Reparations,\u201d his article for <em>The Atlantic<\/em>, black people were largely locked out of homeownership, the largest driver of the wealth gap in modern America, and further housing discrimination meant that black people were also not allowed to attend the schools offering the highest-quality education\u2014another factor in gaining well-paid jobs. The \u201cNew Jim Crow\u201d of mass incarceration via the \u201cwar on drugs\u201d has replaced vagrancy laws and convict leasing, but with similar results: robbing large numbers of black people of economic opportunities while also denying them access to federal programs aimed at alleviating poverty. A person with a felony record is denied access to food stamps, welfare and public housing. And with no wealth to speak of in a country where political participation is predicated on dollars and cents, black Americans continue to lack political representation; the repercussions include an absence of choice in who is speaking for them in Congress and in which mayor or police chief has jurisdiction over their neighborhood. Inadequate economic security is literally a life-and-death matter for black Americans.<\/p>\n<p>It is vital for the defeat of racism that the #BlackLivesMatter movement shut down the economic engines propelling the continuous reinforcement of white supremacy. Only through the redress of black America\u2019s economic grievances (the pronounced disparities in terms of income, wealth, and community resources like housing, healthcare and education) can we begin building a just society.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. True Full Employment<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nothing would do more to transform the current political economy than what is at the core of the Freedom Budget and mentioned in the Ferguson Action demands: a policy of full employment.<\/p>\n<p>What we mean by that phrase\u2014an \u201cinvoluntary unemployment rate\u201d of 0 percent\u2014differs from what mainstream economists mean, even those who nominally support it. By \u201cfull employment,\u201d they usually mean <em>nearly<\/em> full employment. During the most recent period of \u201cfull employment\u201d (the also dubiously named \u201cClinton economic boom\u201d), the unemployment rate never dipped below 3.8 percent. However powerful the boom, millions of people in certain corners of the economy were relegated to a permanent state of bust. The people deepest in those corners, the least employed people in the United States, are teenage black high-school dropouts from poor families, on whom is currently imposed the conscience-rattling unemployment rate of 95 percent.<\/p>\n<p>It is clear that we require more than the conventional policies for boosting job growth if we are to meet the demand for full employment. Luckily, there are two policies up to the task: a federally funded job guarantee and a universal basic income that is unattached to employment. By offering employment as a guaranteed right, the federal government could direct capital to the communities where it is most desperately needed, while employing those communities themselves to do the work needed to improve their own quality of life: cleaning and replacing those oft-decried broken windows, filling potholes, caring for the children of working parents and for the elderly, clearing slum housing and replacing it with decent housing. By paying a basic living wage and normal benefits for a federal employee, the program would effectively set a minimum wage and standard of treatment for private-sector employment. In boom times, when there is danger of inflation, the program and its budget would automatically shrink, and during downturns, when inflation is extremely unlikely, it would grow to fill the gap.<\/p>\n<p>This program could and should be paired with a universal basic income, which Dr. King called \u201cthe simplest\u2026and most effective\u201d approach to eliminating poverty, citing three essential virtues of the program. First, poor people, their consumption directly subsidized, will no longer want for basic comforts. Second, the political position of the marginalized would grow stronger: \u201cNegroes,\u201d King wrote, \u201cwill have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.\u201d Finally, King highlighted the \u201chost of positive psychological changes\u201d that universal material security would yield: \u201cThe dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands\u2026. Personal conflicts between husband, wife and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated.\u201d This psychological relaxation is the direct negation of the anxiety and terror that persistently accompany black American life.<\/p>\n<p>A twofold full-employment program would mightily advance the fight against mass incarceration and racist policing. Guaranteeing access to employment and income would also reduce prison recidivism. Employing people to handle \u201cbroken windows\u201d would transform the trappings of poverty from an excuse for police harassment to paid community work. And millions of people whose livelihoods are currently dependent on an ever-expanding prison-industrial complex would be able to secure employment and income elsewhere, allowing stronger working-class organizing for a rollback of the prison state. Currently, prison closures have devastating effects on the communities for which these institutions act as economic anchors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. A Tax Overhaul<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the current economy, we tax labor and industry, which suppresses employment and offshores profit, and we leave the real-estate sector mostly untaxed, encouraging the accumulation of real-estate fortunes. Real-estate property includes not just buildings but, crucially, the land upon which they\u2019re situated. The buildings themselves\u2014plumbing, woodwork, etc.\u2014deteriorate over time until they require refurbishing, so the speculative commodity in real estate, the investment that stands a chance of appreciating in value over time, is really just land. Speculation in the land market has instituted a great deal of the structural racism that characterizes white supremacy today.<\/p>\n<p><p>The postwar impetus to maintain segregationist housing policies was the protection of property value. When millions of Southern-born blacks swept into Northern cities, millions of whites fled for new suburban residential developments, taking their capital with them and driving down the land value in black areas. White home buyers (who make up the vast majority of home buyers nationally), with their wealth bound up in real estate, wouldn\u2019t have black people depreciating it with their proximity. Moreover, the Federal Housing Administration, in a policy designed to protect this access to landed wealth, was more likely to guarantee mortgages in communities that adopted racially exclusive charters. This policy \u201credlined\u201d neighborhoods with low \u201cresidential security,\u201d or land value, depriving black neighborhoods of access to financial \u00a0services for decades.<\/p>\n<p>The appreciation of land value was at the heart of Wall Street\u2019s recent mortgage bubble and its racist predatory lending, by which 53 percent of all black wealth was destroyed. \u201cMortgage investors,\u201d meaning land-market speculators, would buy up houses and sell them once the land value had increased, making off with the gain. To keep prices rising, the real-estate\/financial complex offloaded garbage loans on unsuspecting black families, who have suffered a massive wave of foreclosures in the years since the crash.<\/p>\n<p>Education is also linked to land value. Pegging school resources to property taxes undermines equality from two directions: well-to-do people are driven to move into ever more expensive neighborhoods for fear that their kids will be conscripted into inferior schools (thereby further concentrating education funding), while schools in poor areas degrade as wealth flees, driving down land value in the already underserved area.<\/p>\n<p>Keeping land untaxed also gives landowners an incentive not to develop properties in poor areas, since it\u2019s thereby free to hang onto an undeveloped plot until white people decide that the neighborhood is \u201cup-and-coming\u201d and bid up the land value. In the short term, this leads to abandoned buildings and vacant lots\u2014that is, to slums plagued with \u201cbroken windows.\u201d In the long term, it has a catastrophic effect on communities: while these plots of land remain undeveloped, our tax system holds down the housing supply at a time when a severe urban housing shortage has city land prices skyrocketing. And this, in turn, fuels a community-bulldozing wave of gentrification whose primary beneficiaries are the land-speculating interests.<\/p>\n<p>To stop those interests, we must shift from taxing labor and toward taxing monopoly and land rents. The American political economist Henry George, whom King cited in his economic advocacy, famously proposed a 100 percent land-value tax as the only tax capable of ensuring equality amid economic development. As the board game Monopoly (invented by George devotees) makes clear, even when everyone starts with equal money, private rent extraction inevitably directs all funds into a few hands. George saw taxing the full rental value of land as the only way to develop an economy equitably\u2014that is to say, without producing poverty constantly. And several local jurisdictions in George\u2019s native Pennsylvania tax land, albeit not at 100 percent. No human created the land, and so no one\u2014not an absentee slumlord, not Goldman Sachs\u2014should be extracting its value from the people who live on it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. Baby Bonds<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the end, black people in poor areas will always be vulnerable to disastrous community disruption as long as white people control the vast majority of wealth. It is wealth (the stock of overall resources someone controls), rather than income (the inflow someone receives over a year), that ensures true economic security\u2014waiving the income a job provides is less intimidating to a person with independent wealth. As bad as income inequality is in the United States, wealth inequality is even worse, as those born rich get richer and those born poor stay that way. As long as white people can take advantage of lopsided bargaining positions to outbid black people for land use, the land remains whites\u2019 to claim and distribute. The only true and permanent way to alleviate the many ills detailed here is to close the racial wealth gap.<\/p>\n<p>The political challenges to implementing a reparations program\u2014which we support\u2014were daunting from the outset and are now possibly prohibitive. To address this dilemma, Duke University\u2019s William A. Darity Jr. and the New School\u2019s Darrick Hamilton have proposed another innovative program that they estimate would close the wealth gap within a few generations. Even those who cannot concede our premise\u2014that black people have been condemned to poverty by public policy, not by their own lack of ambition and discipline\u2014will surely agree that no newborn child is to blame for his or her impoverished condition, and that each one deserves a fair chance at leading a fulfilling and comfortable life. Darity and Hamilton have thus suggested a \u201cBaby Bond\u201d program aimed at these newborns. Everyone born into a \u201cwealth-poor\u201d family (any family below the median net-wealth position) would be granted a trust fund at birth that would mature when the person reaches 18, whereupon the grantee would obtain access to the fund. The further below median the family is, the larger the fund the infant would receive, such that the lowest quartile would receive a $50,000 or $60,000 bond. Note that although this program is not limited to the descendants of black slaves, its effect is quite similar to the one desired from a reparations program: eliminating the wealth advantage that white Americans command over their black countrymen.<\/p>\n<p>* * *<\/p>\n<p>Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields highlight law professor Derrick Bell\u2019s 1990 essay \u201cAfter We\u2019re Gone: Prudent Speculations on America in a Post-Racial Epoch,\u201d in which the writer imagines space aliens purchasing all the black people from the United States, whereupon \u201cpost-racial America\u201d must truly confront, \u201cstraightforwardly, for the first time\u2026the problem of who gets what part of the nation\u2019s wealth, and why.\u201d With white supremacy gone as an organizing principle for social relations, it becomes clear that resource distribution was the question all along. Implementing a program of guaranteed employment and income, a taxation policy targeting monopoly and land rents, and a system of wealth-equalizing baby bonds would eliminate material insecurity for all people\u2014blacks, whites and others\u2014thereby eliminating white supremacy\u2019s reason for existence.<\/p>\n<p>These policies may seem like a long shot in the current political environment. But if the #BlackLivesMatter movement continues to increase its political power, it can channel support from Americans who already favor more equitable wealth distribution into a truly transformative program. It seems to us that the thrilling movement shutting down transit and commerce operations has the power not just to get more civil-rights reforms, but to transform the foundation of our society. It has the power to make black lives be treated as though they finally, truly matter.\n\t<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=788\">The Left Insurgence Is on the Rise\u2014and the DNC Is Flailing<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=790\">Thomson Reuters Employees Demand That ICE \u201cLeave Our Cities\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<footer>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>                Submit a correction<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Send a letter to the editor<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Reprints &amp; permissions<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<p><span> John Nichols<svg>\n<\/svg><br \/>\n<\/span>John Nichols is the executive editor of <em>The Nation<\/em>. He previously served as the magazine\u2019s national affairs correspondent and Washington correspondent. Nichols has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the <em>New York Times<\/em> bestseller <em>It\u2019s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=786\">Abdul El-Sayed: \u201cThe Power of Our Many Is Greater Than the Power of Their Money\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n<\/div>\n<p><input\/><br \/>\n<input\/><br \/>\n<\/footer>\n<\/article>\n<p>Ad Policy<br \/>\n<!-- <a class=\"inifiniteLoader\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/new_infi_loader.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a> -->\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas. - Atlas Living Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas. - Atlas Living Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Nation Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Atlas Living Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-06T05:38:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"15 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f6233854b1f92a6d21147fe5d5e58abc\"},\"headline\":\"We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas.\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-06T05:38:24+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792\"},\"wordCount\":3112,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/a515786090547a26e63689aa856ce9fc.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792\",\"name\":\"We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas. - Atlas Living Media\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/a515786090547a26e63689aa856ce9fc.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-06T05:38:24+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f6233854b1f92a6d21147fe5d5e58abc\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/a515786090547a26e63689aa856ce9fc.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/a515786090547a26e63689aa856ce9fc.jpg\",\"width\":1500,\"height\":975},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=792#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas.\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"Atlas Living Media\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f6233854b1f92a6d21147fe5d5e58abc\",\"name\":\"admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"admin\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?author=1\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas. - Atlas Living Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas. - Atlas Living Media","og_description":"The Nation Magazine","og_url":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792","og_site_name":"Atlas Living Media","article_published_time":"2026-08-06T05:38:24+00:00","author":"admin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"admin","Est. reading time":"15 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792"},"author":{"name":"admin","@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f6233854b1f92a6d21147fe5d5e58abc"},"headline":"We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas.","datePublished":"2026-08-06T05:38:24+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792"},"wordCount":3112,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/a515786090547a26e63689aa856ce9fc.jpg","articleSection":["News"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792","url":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792","name":"We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas. - Atlas Living Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/a515786090547a26e63689aa856ce9fc.jpg","datePublished":"2026-08-06T05:38:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f6233854b1f92a6d21147fe5d5e58abc"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/a515786090547a26e63689aa856ce9fc.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/a515786090547a26e63689aa856ce9fc.jpg","width":1500,"height":975},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=792#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"We\u2019ll Need an Economic Program to Make #BlackLivesMatter. Here Are Three Ideas."}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/","name":"Atlas Living Media","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f6233854b1f92a6d21147fe5d5e58abc","name":"admin","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"admin"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com"],"url":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?author=1"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}