United for a Fair Economy (UFE) is a national Boston, Massachusetts-based movement support organization that highlights the detriments of uneven wealth distribution. UFE was co-founded by Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel in 1995. It describes itself as "raising awareness that concentrated wealth and power undermine the economy, corrupts democracy, deepen the racial divide, and tear communities apart...supporting and helping build social movements for greater equality." UFE is a national, non-partisan 501(c)3 nonprofit and as a group is tax-exempt. The current executive director is Brian Miller.
Their main missions, actions and goals include:
- Fair Taxation - Working for fair and progressive taxes at State and Federal levels, which includes efforts to preserve and strengthen the Estate Tax.
- Racial Wealth Divide - Working to raise awareness about the historical and contemporary barriers to upward economic mobility among people of color, and to promote a policy agenda that addresses the root causes.
- Responsible Wealth - A network of over 700 business leaders and wealthy individuals in the top 5% of wealth and/or income in the US who use their surprising voice to advocate for fair taxes and corporate accountability.
- Popular Economics Education - Using Popular Education workshops and techniques to transform dry economic issues into valuable knowledge. UFE's workshops enable participants to relate to the material, empowers them to take political action, and encourages them to build the movement for social and economic justice in their communities.
- Shareholder Activism - Raising awareness about the need for corporations to take into account the needs of stakeholders beyond those in board room.
- CEO Pay - They believe that the lack of pay equity in the US can be addressed by changing the rules.
- Humane Immigration Reform - Working to reveal the push and pull factors leading to migration into the U.S., and to elevate a plan for humane immigration reform as part of broader labor and international trade policy reforms.
Famous quotes containing the words united, fair and/or economy:
“Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet this is his very being.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
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—Louisa Parsons Hopkins, U.S. scientist and author. As quoted in The Fair Women, ch. 16, by Jeanne Madeline Weimann (1981)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
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