About United for a Fair Economy
United for a Fair Economy is a national, nonprofit organization founded in 1995 to raise awareness that concentrated wealth and power undermines the economy, corrupts democracy, deepens the racial wealth divide, and tears communities apart. In working to achieve a more broadly shared prosperity, UFE works to shape public dialogue, support grassroots movements, and directly effect policy change.
The heart of UFE’s work is its popular education workshops, which have been attended by tens of thousands of individuals, including its flagship workshop, The Growing Divide and the Roots of Economic Insecurity. UFE’s popular education methodology draws on participants’ own values and experiences of the economy. UFE works with partner organizations across the United States to train grassroots leaders to use this methodology to engage communities on issues of inequality.
UFE’s Racial Wealth Divide project explores the historical and contemporary barriers to wealth creation for people of color. From this work grows UFE’s State of the Dream report, released each year in conjunction with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. These reports bring national attention to pressing issues like predatory subprime lending and the disproportionate impact of the Great Recession on communities of color.
United for a Fair Economy supports progressive taxation at both the federal and state levels. Since 2000 UFE has been a leading advocate in the successful effort to preserve a strong estate tax, working with a number of national coalitions and state-level partners. UFE has also pushed for more-progressive federal income taxes, stronger corporate taxes, and ending special tax breaks for investment income, as an alternative to harmful budget cuts. UFE’s work on this front has been widely covered in the national media.
In 2004 UFE created the Tax Fairness Organizing Collaborative to act as the national network of groups organizing for progressive taxation at the state level. Since its founding, the TFOC has grown, with member groups now working in 24 states across the country. UFE provides training and support to the TFOC member organizations, organizes affinity groups around specific challenges (like states without an income tax), and brings the state groups together at national gatherings to share strategies.
UFE’s Responsible Wealth project organizes upper-income and wealthy individuals to use their voices to promote progressive taxation and corporate accountability. Through Responsible Wealth, UFE has built powerful cross-class alliances that have helped energize and strengthen their shared work toward a more fair economy (see “About Responsible Wealth” for more information).
Finally, UFE uses its communications capacity to provide a wealth of information and resources about economic inequality and the policy choices of our day. Interactive tools, videos, infographics, and more are available on UFE’s website at www.faireconomy.org.
Together UFE’s unique mix of movement support, popular education, media work, tax organizing, and mobilizing upper-income business leaders and investors make the organization an important part of the economic justice movement. For more information contact United for a Fair Economy at [email protected], visit www.faireconomy.org, or call (617) 423-2148.