Our Commitment
Americans for Financial Reform is dedicated to anti-racism and to the work of advancing racial justice. We believe this requires combating white supremacy, which continues to do unspeakable violence and harm to people who are Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian, and of color.
Our society was founded on racist institutions and systems. We recognize that unless we are intentionally making our work anti-racist, it is not. We cannot advance our vision–a world where the rules that govern the economy center human needs and contribute to shared prosperity for all families and communities–without pursuing racial justice. From Wall Street’s history of financing and profiting from enslavement to predatory financial rules, systems, and products that target, exclude, trap, and extract wealth from borrowers of color today, Wall Street and American capitalism have relied on and weaponized white supremacy to benefit a wealthy white elite. Issues of finance and the economy cannot be extricated from issues of race and racial justice.
AFR will carry out our commitment in several contexts, including: in the context of our specific issue-based advocacy and organizing; in the understanding that we are one part of a larger landscape of organizations and movements; in centering and uplifting voices from marginalized/directly impacted groups, and in the knowledge that becoming an anti-racist organization is a continuing process of learning and unlearning, and of reassessing and redesigning our own systems and structures, so that we may see the intentional transformation in ourselves that we seek in the world.
To these ends we are campaigning to expose and oppose the harm done by the current financial system and to drive policy change through our advocacy, research and popular education.
To learn more about the history of racialized wealth extraction, visit our interactive popular education experience, isoureconomyfair.org.
