CBH Talk | Natalie Foster and Tressie McMillan Cottom Discuss “The Guarantee”
The Guarantee asks us to imagine an America where housing, health care, a college education, dignified work, family care, an inheritance, and an income floor are not only attainable by all but guaranteed, by our government, for everyone.
But isn’t this pie-in-the-sky thinking? Not by a long shot, as this provocative new book reveals. Our current economic system is chock full of government-backed guarantees, from bailouts to bankruptcy protection, to keep the private sector in business. So why can’t the same be true for the rest of us?
Author Natalie Foster, co-founder of the Economic Security Project, has had a front-row seat to the dramatic leaps forward in government guarantees over the past decade, from student debt relief to the child tax credit expansion. Her brilliantly sketched vision for a new American Guarantee is rooted in real life experience, collaborations with some of today’s most important activists and visionaries, and a concrete sense of the policies that are possible—and ready to implement—in twenty-first-century America. Join her in conversation with NYTimes Opinion columnist, MacArthur Award-Winner, and professor at University of North Carolina, Tressie McMillan Cottom.
Participants
Natalie Foster is a leading architect of the movement to build an inclusive and resilient economy that works for all. President and co-founder of Economic Security Project and Aspen Institute Fellow, her work and writing has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, TIME, Business Insider, CNN, and The Guardian. Natalie speaks regularly on economic security, the future of work and the new political economy. An unstoppable builder, Natalie previously founded the sharing economy community Peers and co-founded Rebuild the Dream with Van Jones. She served as Digital Director for President Obama's Organizing for America, a leading partner in winning transformative healthcare reform. A daughter of a preacher from Kansas, Natalie draws on the values of community, dignity, and optimism to build a better America. She lives in Oakland, California. The Guarantee is her first book.
Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom is a professor in the School of Information and Library Science and Principal Investigator in the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, NY Times opinion columnist, and 2020 MacArthur Fellow. Recent accolades include being named the 2023 winner of the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize by Brandeis University for her “critical perspective and analysis to some of the greatest social challenges we face today.” McMillan Cottom’s most recent book, THICK: And Other Essays won the Brooklyn Public Library’s 2019 Literary Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction.
The Guarantee asks us to imagine an America where housing, health care, a college education, dignified work, family care, an inheritance, and an income floor are not only attainable by all but guaranteed, by our government, for everyone.
But isn’t this pie-in-the-sky thinking? Not by a long shot, as this provocative new book reveals. Our current economic system is chock full of government-backed guarantees, from bailouts to bankruptcy protection, to keep the private sector in business. So why can’t the same be true for the rest of us?
Author Natalie Foster, co-founder of the Economic Security Project, has had a front-row seat to the dramatic leaps forward in government guarantees over the past decade, from student debt relief to the child tax credit expansion. Her brilliantly sketched vision for a new American Guarantee is rooted in real life experience, collaborations with some of today’s most important activists and visionaries, and a concrete sense of the policies that are possible—and ready to implement—in twenty-first-century America. Join her in conversation with NYTimes Opinion columnist, MacArthur Award-Winner, and professor at University of North Carolina, Tressie McMillan Cottom.
Participants
Natalie Foster is a leading architect of the movement to build an inclusive and resilient economy that works for all. President and co-founder of Economic Security Project and Aspen Institute Fellow, her work and writing has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, TIME, Business Insider, CNN, and The Guardian. Natalie speaks regularly on economic security, the future of work and the new political economy. An unstoppable builder, Natalie previously founded the sharing economy community Peers and co-founded Rebuild the Dream with Van Jones. She served as Digital Director for President Obama's Organizing for America, a leading partner in winning transformative healthcare reform. A daughter of a preacher from Kansas, Natalie draws on the values of community, dignity, and optimism to build a better America. She lives in Oakland, California. The Guarantee is her first book.
Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom is a professor in the School of Information and Library Science and Principal Investigator in the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, NY Times opinion columnist, and 2020 MacArthur Fellow. Recent accolades include being named the 2023 winner of the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize by Brandeis University for her “critical perspective and analysis to some of the greatest social challenges we face today.” McMillan Cottom’s most recent book, THICK: And Other Essays won the Brooklyn Public Library’s 2019 Literary Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction.
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