Taking another look at "New Progressive Voices," a collection of essays outlining a new long-term, progressive vision for America, today we turn to our Executive Director, Alan Jenkins’, contribution.
The piece paints a bleak picture. Alan outlines many of the problems facing regular Americans today. Many people are having trouble getting a job that pays a living wage, paying for health care, and getting their children into quality schools. Tying this together with the present high rates of incarceration, all signs point to a general lack of opportunity in America.
In keeping with goals of this essay collection Alan’s essay, "The Promise of Opportunity," strives to give concrete solutions to these communal ills. Alan’s essay suggests making "opportunity" a metric by which to consider the viability of federal programs:
As with the environmental impact statements currently required under the National Environmental Policy Act, the relevant agency would require the submission of information and collect and analyze relevant data to determine the positive and negative impacts of the proposed federally funded project. Here, however, the inquiry would focus on the ways in which the project would expand or constrict opportunity in affected geographic areas and whether the project would promote equal opportunity or deepen patterns of inequality.
While the measures of opportunity would differ in different circumstances, the inquiry would typically include whether the project would create or eliminate jobs, expand or constrict access to health care services, schools, and nutritious food stores, foster or extinguish affordable housing and small business development. At the same time, [these Opportunity Impact Statements (OIS)] would assess the equity of the project’s burdens and benefits, such as whether it would serve a diversity of underserved populations, create jobs accessible to the affected regions, serve diverse linguistic and cultural communities, balance necessary health and safety burdens fairly across neighborhoods, and foster integration over segregation.
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