Economic Security
Working to identify equitable and fair approaches to improve the economic security of families and communities
Just like electricity and telephone service before it, access to communications and technology in the 21st century has moved from being a luxury to a necessity.
The availability of these services are determined by our nation’s media, telecommunications, and technology policies — policies that must promote equity in a free, plural, and democratic society. When these policies fail, equal opportunity and democratic participation are compromised.
The Education Fund works to ensure that new technologies further civil rights protections and expand media diversity and access to broadband. Technological progress should bring greater safety, economic opportunity, and convenience to everyone. At the same time, as new technologies allow companies and government to gain greater insight into our lives, it is vitally important that technologies be designed and used in ways that respect the values of fairness and equal justice.
Latest News
The Leadership Conference Education Fund Announces Its “Center for Civil Rights and Technology,” a First of Its Kind Research and Advocacy Hub
WASHINGTON DC — Today, The Leadership Conference Education Fund launched an unprecedented initiative to create a fair, just, opportunity-rich, and rights-advancing future for all in the face of artificial intelligence with the creation of The Center for Civil Rights and Technology. The Center will serve as a convener, collaborator, and communicator on policy issues, ideas, and potential innovations that can advance, as well as protect, equity in society. Dr. Alondra Nelson — who served as deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy — will serve as a senior advisor on Civil Rights and Technology to the president and CEO, Maya Wiley.
The Leadership Conference, The Education Fund Welcome Managing Director of Communications, Media and Tech Counsel
WASHINGTON – The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and its sister organization, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, welcomed Shin Inouye as managing director of communications and Bertram Lee Jr. as media and tech counsel.
Civil Rights Groups Call for Strong Guardrails in Hiring Assessment Technologies
WASHINGTON – The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, The Leadership Conference Education Fund and more than 24 civil rights, employment, and privacy organizations today introduced principles to guide the development, use, auditing, and oversight of hiring assessment technologies. The groups urge policymakers, vendors, and employers to protect the civil rights of working people by ensuring new assessment tools that rely on algorithms and artificial intelligence do not further entrench decades of discrimination. Without guardrails in place, new assessments threaten to perpetuate unjust hiring practices based on race, ethnicity, sex, disability, age, and other factors.
The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom envisioned economic security as a prerequisite to fulfilling our nation’s promise — proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence — that every person has an unalienable right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Many of the march’s demands were economic, including a national minimum wage, job training and placement, and stronger labor and employment anti-discrimination laws.
Civil and human rights are inextricably linked to economic security.
While the nation has seen progress over the years, today the fight continues to build a society that truly embraces equality and economic opportunity. We work to inform key stakeholders about economic security policy solutions that will help close gaps and increase opportunities for communities facing persistent disadvantage, including vulnerable children and families of color.
In an America as good as its ideals, every person should have the right to fully contribute to, and benefit from, the economy to live and work with dignity.
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Learn more about our work to promote economic security for all people in America by contacting our team.