If an organization is able to live up to its core values even in the busiest of times, you know they are doing something right. United for a Fair Economy (UFE) is doing something right. I couldn’t think of a softer landing into a 9-5 office job than my last two weeks. I flew into the organization at a busy time: it is the end of the fiscal year and the team had just held a training and retreat in the weeks before Zach, a fellow intern, and I began. Despite the hubbub, the office feels like a community. People care that others take time for themselves, they check in on each other, share stories about life outside the office, and the work that we do is done in collaboration.
This atmosphere is important because United for a Fair Economy is an organization built on a long-term vision of challenging the inequitable concentration of wealth in the US, with an eye to the race, gender, and power dynamics at the core of this inequality. UFE understands that this long-term vision can only be accomplished if the people at the forefront of these issues and movements care for themselves and each other. The organization does this by training community organizers in healing and transformative justice techniques, but it also does this by integrating these practices into the ethos of the organization. For me, this was a breath of fresh air.
Healing justice is a newer addition to the work of UFE, but in September, United for a Fair Economy will be celebrating 25 years of movement-building for economic justice. They do this work through popular economic education, training of movement leaders, creative communications such as infographics and accessible publications on the racial wealth divide, a Responsible Wealth program that mobilizes the wealthy to advocate for economic mobility, and more. I am excited to spend my summer with such a driven, value-based organization that has been successful in turning that vision into tangible skills and action to move efforts forward in a broad, long-listing way.
I was drawn to UFE because of my studies and movement work in the area of economic justice, not only because it aligned with my personal and academic interests, but because the economic analysis and the broader picture have been missing from much of the individual campaign work that I have been involved in. The work that I will be doing this summer will largely be development work: helping to process donations, preparing for the anniversary celebration, and doing grant research, among other things. I am learning a lot about how an organization like UFE functions, which comes with valuable skills that I will take with me into other work environments. By interning at United for a Fair Economy I am able to support the work of an organization that is invaluable in a national effort for economic justice, an organization that I believe in.