California oligarch index

The California Oligarch Index is a first-of-its-kind analysis of the wildly disproportionate impact that a small number of billionaires, corporations, and allied organizations have had on state and local politics over the past two decades. The dashboards and report available at CaliforniaOligarchs.com allow users to explore a wealth of data, including:

  • California’s 99 Problems: Profiles of the 99 billionaires, corporations, corporate advocacy groups, and law enforcement organizations that exert enormous influence over the lives of California residents, undermine democracy, and are the primary opponents to creating healthier, safer, and more equitable communities across the state

  • The Local Scene: Details on the top local political spenders from over 20 cities and counties across the state

  • Policymaker Profile: Analysis of oligarch spending on all state-level executive officials and current members of the California Senate and State Assembly

  • Issue Deep-Dives: Detailed timelines in which users can explore how, if not for oligarchs and their allies, California residents could have universal healthcare, more jobs providing livable wages, higher-quality schools, more affordable housing, substantially improved community safety, and meaningful climate solutions

A Roadmap to police-free safety

All across the U.S., and particularly within Black, Latine/x, and Indigenous communities, we have now made the police the first responders to an incredibly broad set of community problems. They have become our first option, and often our only option, when something goes wrong.

Nevertheless, there is a fundamental mismatch between the police skill set—which is centered around the use of violence—and what is needed to effectively address the problems they are often tasked to address. Thus, by having the police respond to issues that they are not well-suited to handle, our public safety and crisis responses are frequently ineffective at meeting residents’ urgent needs and addressing root causes in order to break cycles of crime and violence.  

The report Alternatives to Policing: How U.S. Cities Are Advancing Community Safety by Taking a Multidisciplinary Approach by Communities United, Movimiento Poder, Reimagine Richmond, and the Social Movement Support Lab is intended to support efforts to replace our current systems of mass criminalization and incarceration with “systems of community care” that advance authentic forms of safety and healthier, more equitable communities.

criminalization vs. care

In Criminalization vs. Care: How the 20 Largest U.S. Cities Invest Their Resources, Communities United, Movimiento Poder, Reimagine Richmond, and the Social Movement Support Lab examine the budgets of the 20 largest U.S. cities and their respective counties to determine whether their investments prioritize the “mass criminalization system” or “systems of community care.” We analyze the size of these public investments, the ratio between them, the cost to local residents, how that translates into the city personnel that residents encounter on a daily basis, and how these dynamics have shifted over time.

By examining the public investments being made into criminal legal systems that have been wildly ineffective at creating truly safe communities—while also actively causing enormous harm—this report raises numerous exciting possibilities for reimagining public safety and ensuring that city and county budgets are aligned with community needs and values.

student bill of rights

Social Movement Support Lab partnered with the youth of Movimiento Poder to create a Student Bill of Rights. This document lays out their inspiring vision for education justice, including that every child and youth should be entitled to:

  1. Safe, clean, comfortable, and welcoming facilities

  2. An affirming and inclusive learning environment

  3. Supportive schools that address barriers to learning and other community needs

  4. High-quality learning conditions in schools

  5. A well-rounded, engaging, culturally relevant, and community-based curriculum that emphasizes real-world learning and community problem-solving

  6. Effective teaching provided by qualified, well-trained, and well-supported teachers

  7. A high-quality assessment system

  8. Supportive school discipline that supports healthy learning environments

  9. Community control over the education process

  10. Meaningful school accountability and transparency

rich thanks to racism

Rich Thanks to Racism details how the driving force behind the public policies that continue to devastate communities of color across the United States are Corporate America and Wall Street executives who profit mightily from racial inequities. It dissects the cruel and deeply harmful policies within the education, criminal justice, and immigration systems to discover their origins, why they persist, and the hidden strategy behind them. It uncovers billions of dollars in aligned investments by Bill Gates, Charles Koch, Mark Zuckerberg, and a handful of other billionaires that are dismantling public school systems across the United States. It exposes how the greed of prominent U.S. corporations and big banks was instrumental in creating the world’s largest prison population and our many anti-immigrant policies. It also demonstrates how “racism profiteers” defend these injustices by pitting white communities against communities of color, obscuring the fact that the struggles they face are deeply interconnected.

Rich Thanks to Racism is an invaluable roadmap for all those who recognize that the key to unlocking the United States’ full potential is for more people of all races and ethnicities to join together in finally ending systemic racism once and for all.