Jodeen Olguín-Tayler
Jodeen Olguín-Tayler, a Southwest born Chicana, is recognized for leading innovative social-change strategies, cross-sector strategic partnerships and advancing values-based campaigns. Jodeen is currently the Director of Advocacy at Demos, where she drives a campaign-oriented, movement building approach to the work and expansion of strategic partnerships. She’s served as the Campaigns Director for the National Domestic Workers’ Alliance, Deputy Field-Director at MoveOn.org, and spent many years in the labor movement.
Whether it’s through building national field infrastructure, running civic engagement programs, online campaigning, or organizing and advocacy, Jodeen brings tremendous focus to integrating normative and cultural change work with policy solutions and structural transformation.
Presentations from Facing Race 2014
How Big Money Politics Holds Back Racial Justice
The drive for racial equity in America faces a serious headwind: the role of private wealth and big business in our political system. While the undemocratic role of big money hurts us all, its consequences are particularly dire for communities of color, who are severely underrepresented in the “donor class” whose large contributions fuel campaigns and therefore set the agendas in Washington and state capitals across the country. A Princeton University scholar recently investigated average voters' and wealthy Americans’ influence on policy, with results suggesting the United States is an oligarchy. How can articulating the connections between big money politics and racial justice help us win on all fronts? This panel and breakout discussion will explore the specific ways in which the role of big money in politics undermines racial equality, and investigate how highlighting these connections can expand the constituency for change nationally by motivating voters and more deeply connecting “good government reformers” and communities and leaders of color.
Speakers: john powell, Jodeen Olguín-Tayler