Part 1 of 2. For Part 2, which includes full videos from the summit, click here.

On Friday, 14 May 2021, the ILR Buffalo Co-Lab hosted its first annual High Road Policy Summit to explore policies and strategies for a fair and just economy that benefits all New Yorkers. What follows are excerpts from the opening remarks of the event, which aimed to answer the question: What is a “High Road” economy?

“…What is a “High Road” economy? To start, we can contrast it with some things we know to be true about our current economy. It’s no secret that our existing political and economic systems aren’t built to create equal outcomes for all people and places. In the U.S., Black families are twice as likely as white families to have zero wealth. Women earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by men – a gap that isn’t on track to close until at least 2059. Compared to white men, Black and Indigenous women are three times more likely, and Latina women are two-and-a-half times more likely, to live in poverty. And, prior to COVID-19, just under half of Black workers and only about two in five Latinx workers had employer-sponsored health insurance…compared to two-thirds of white workers.

Taken together, these statistics – which barely scratch the surface of the persistent, intersecting forms of inequality in society – are evidence of policy failures. That factors like race, ethnicity, and gender have as much power as they do to predict whether someone earns poverty wages, works in a job without health or other benefits, pays too much for low quality housing, has a chronic health issue – you name it…the fact that individual characteristics can be systematically linked to these and other poor life outcomes means that we haven’t carried out our nation’s mission to build a society in which all people are created equal.

Rather, we’ve built a society, and an economic system, where profits tend to come before people and the planet. We give away public dollars to firms who pay sub-living wages, in the name of development – even as the firm’s workers might struggle to survive, and its practices might pollute surrounding communities. That’s just one example – one that you’re likely to hear more about in our second session – but it’s a representative example of why we’re here.

When we as a society, through the policies that we adopt and the institutions we create, prioritize profits and development over people and communities, we’re taking the Low Road. We’re putting self-interest ahead of the common good. If we’re serious about wanting to address persistent forms of inequality and the injustices that emanate from them, then we need new policies and institutions to replace the ones responsible for creating the problems.

In short, we need policies and institutions that can build a “High Road”. That term, the “High Road”, was coined for use with respect to community and economic development by a social scientist named Joel Rogers back in the 1990s. To Rogers and his colleagues, a High Road society is one that’s constantly progressing toward (1) shared property, (2) environmental sustainability and ecological integrity, and (3) participatory democracy.

We’re not here today to debate these three ends. That’s not to say that they’re perfect articulations of what a society should look like. Rather, they give us a serviceable starting point for thinking about what we might aim for as we design new policies and institutions that explicitly attack our systemic problems. From that perspective, shared prosperity, environmental sustainability, and participatory democracy are arguably as fitting ends for today as they were in the 90s.

What we want to be clearer about today, however – where, by ‘today’ I mean both this summit and the present political moment – are the means for achieving these ends or ends like them. For decades, we’ve watched as well-intentioned policies pass in one year only for the same underlying problems to strike again, frequently in some mutated, more extreme form down the road. One reason for the recurrent nature of our social problems is that most of the means we use to pursue better ends aren’t calibrated toward those ends. They’re reforms, or patches placed on a Low Road system that’s built to produce Low Road outcomes. To break free from that cycle, we need means – we need High Road policies and institutions – that directly engage, dismantle, and replace the inequitable structures of our Low Road system. Such policies and institutions will be actively anti-racist, reparative of past and present systemic harms, designed to bridge divides and build solidarity, and, above all, innovative.

That we might have the same social goals today as we did in the 1990s (and for decades if not centuries before) suggests that by staying inside-the-box in our policy thinking, we’ve been depriving ourselves of the oxygen we need to reenergize our bodies and live well with one another. The goal of High Road policy is to punch airholes into that box, both to get a glimpse of the possibilities that lie beyond it, and to take in much needed oxygen in the here and now.

Today, we have the privilege of welcoming stakeholders from government, community-based organizations, labor, academia, and the private sector to explore concrete High Road policies and practices for right here, right now. We will hear from three panels of experts who engage in conversations about (1) racial equity in policymaking and at work, (2) economic development subsidies, and (3) worker ownership and control of workplaces…Thank you.”

For Part 2 of this post, which includes full videos from the summit, click here.