Equity and Transformation (EAT)

Richard Wallace, Founder & Executive Director

Economic Mobility

EAT team

Equity and Transformation (EAT) aims to achieve social and economic equity for Black Workers engaged in the informal economy.

Year Founded: 2018

Equity and Transformation (EAT) aims to achieve a world free from anti-Black racism, mass incarceration, and other intersecting forms of oppression. Collectively, their mission and vision bond us to the Black working class, and in the belief that the road to economic equity will be led by those furthest from the formal economy due to their intimate knowledge of how the formal economy isn’t working for them.

Eat is establishing the foundation for the alternatives that they’re trying to build and apply a structured organizing model – consisting of Organizing/Base-Building, Advocacy, Communications, Policy & Research activities – to effect social change, build local power, and support Black informal workers in playing an essential role in Illinois’ decision-making processes and ultimately demonstrate the efficacy of those alternatives. EAT has aligned its work around four central pillars and has developed distinct strategies to inform our praxis and they are:

BUILD alternatives that address the immediate needs of Black informal workers

EMPOWER Black informal workers to advocate for themselves and their communities by investing in their leadership development and providing political education

GROW power through base-building and chapter development to fight for racial equity and against racism in Illinois

INFORM the communities we serve – constituents and allies – through policy, advocacy, communications and research

Over the past five years, EAT has built a base of 3000 Black informal workers and allies across the state of Illinois, introduced and passed legislation, supported workers in increasing their physical and emotional safety in informal occupations, produced ground-breaking research, developed community-led alternatives to harmful state solutions, earned media on numerous outlets that is helping to transform the narrative of Black informality from criminality to survivability, and finally provided a political home for historically unemployed Black informal workers to advocate for themselves and their communities. EAT also  launched the first targeted guaranteed income (GI) pilot for post-incarcerated people in the nation (the Chicago Future Fund), which provided direct cash payments to more than 130 families in CHicago, totalling approximately $870,000.00. The impact of this program can be seen in the City of Chicago’s recently announced Upward Mobility GI pilot that EAT helped design, which specifically targets formerly incarcerated people in the same communities served by our Chicago Future Fund initiative – $31.5M will be earmarked for this program.

Richard Wallace

Richard Wallace

Founder and Executive Director

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