Simply put, citizen wealth means income security.
We live and work in precarious times, so income security is hard to accomplish.
For low and moderate income families if we have citizen wealth it is often translated as the home where we live, especially if we are homeowners or trying to be. Citizen wealth also means the fruit of our labor, the strength of our hands, and the power of our minds.
The Citizen Wealth Centers are designed to make sure that we are creating citizen wealth and achieving the security that we need for our families.
The Vision that Drives the Citizen Wealth Centers
Everything has become too complex.
Too many services and vital information can only be accessed through the internet, yet there is a huge digital divide for low-and-moderate income families and even when we have access, we often don’t have the time or energy to slough through the maze to find the information we need to protect ourselves, much less advice our citizen wealth.
Our community and labor organizations are vital, but they are strained to capacity in fighting the big campaigns, so we need a way to get full representation on the myriad issues, big to us, but perhaps smaller in the grand scheme of things, that confront us and our families in daily life. The Citizen Wealth Centers are designed to empower us as individuals and give us the representation and assistance we need in navigating all of these diverse, complex, and bureaucratic systems. Furthermore through their connections to peoples’ organizations at work and in the community, we will also have the advocacy and action that we need when that is what it takes to win.
There’s a saying about “Justice Being Just Us,” and that is a watchword for our development of the Citizen Wealth Centers as well. No one is going to make sure we get the services and representation we need, unless we put it together and pay for it ourselves. Government, churches, charities, and the rich could all pay for this if they wanted to, but there’s every evidence that they are all invested in the system staying the same and are not committed to financing something that will turn the apple cart upside down. Our services will be paid for by the people who receive them. We will be the your representative, and even though we will be providing these tools at cut rate prices, they will be top of tine and they will be permanently accessible because they will not be dependent of the ups and downs of someone else’s good will who lacks the commitment to citizen wealth that we have for ourselves and our families. To guarantee that we have to be self-sufficient and sustainable. Simply put, we’re in this together, sink or swim.
A recent study in the United Kingdom found that most government agencies and nonprofits add endless hours and countless dollars onto even the simplest problems because they are all passing the buck to another office, another agency, another somebody somewhere, rather than acting immediately to solve the problem. The Citizen Wealth Centers will be where the buck stops, but it also will be a place where the bucks that propel the services are also your investment in representation and advocacy from the organization. The buck will stop here, and it will be your bucks making sure of it.
This is exciting, so thanks for joining us in making a difference!