DESCRIPTION: Economic Justice Coordinator

The Philadelphia Reparations Task Force seeks an Economic Justice Coordinator to lead community cohorts and an economic justice committee to develop reparations proposals that address and resolve the issues of economic disparity and poverty among Black Philadelphians who descend from Africans enslaved in the United States. The coordinator must have the capacity to provide pro bono professional expertise, be excellent coordinators, and work very well with others. Applicants should have experience in the sector, and experience in activism, social justice, grassroots community organizing, or reparatory justice. Task Force members will be generally expected to: 

  • Develop, read, review, and write reports.
  • Coordinate meetings, dates, and timelines.
  • Build and maintain partnerships in their sector.
  • Conduct surveys and co-create related reports.
  • Advocate for the descendant group’s self-determination.
  • Develop and manage committees, subcommittees, and stakeholder relationships.
  • Participate in and lead courses, conferences, convenings, fundraising efforts, media and community forums, and public events.

Responsibilities
The Economics Justice Expert will examine economic inequities, historical and current structural racism within our economy and how it drives the racial wealth gap, redlining, the G.I. Bill, and current economic policies including but not limited to analyzing the job market, wages and benefits, worker protections and unionization, banking and predatory finance, lending practices, inequitable housing policies, homeownership and access to other quality affordable housing, the tax system, the relationship between homeownership and racial inequalities in wealth, confiscation of land and other forms of wealth, and discrimination in employment and housing. The Economic Justice Coordinator will lead teams and cohorts to study, survey and research how chattel slavery, Jim Crow and humanitarian rights violations have disrupted the wealth of Black Philadelphians. That research will include how various state sanctioned actions and defacto laws restricted or eliminated Black wealth, and profited from Black labor and poverty.

Reports will provide the legislature and Black Philadelphians with a guide on ways to:

  • Fortify the descendant group’s local businesses, markets, and economic mobility by advocating for grants, capital resources, and reparative capital from the public, private and philanthropic sectors.
  • Evaluate the scale, quality, and effectiveness of City efforts to stimulate the economy and its impact on the descendant group.
  • Provide policy recommendations to the legislature that provide solutions to the economic challenges facing the descendant group.
  • Coordinate and enhance the efforts of federal, state, and local entities that support the descendant group’s effective economic participation and advancement in their societies. 
  • Promote how best to enforce and provide for the Slavery Era Business/Corporate Insurance Disclosure and Financial Reparations laws, Bills No. 040133-A and 050615. 
  • Develop long-lasting, multidimensional remedies and solutions to the issues of poverty facing the descendant group.
  • Return stolen inheritances and wealth to descendant communities, and pay debts owed from slavery and its afterlives.
  • Ensure descendant group access to economic security.
  • Create real-time applicable methods to increase descendant:
    • Entrepreneurship and business ownership
    • Jobs, employment, and career opportunities with sustainable and scaling pay, net worth and assets
    • Financial education, literacy, and generational wealth
    • Cooperative economics and collective enterprising, employment, building and inheriting legacy businesses and intergenerational wealth transfer, descendant owned banks and co-ops, vocational education, and unionization.
  • Eliminate unemployment and underemployment.
  • Support the acquisition of required and proper licensing and certifications for descendants to enter into various sectors.
  • Pilot educational and training programs in international trade via Philadelphia’s ports.
  • Explore financial tools and models to eliminate the racial wealth gap.
  • Redefine and ensure a living wage for descendant communities.
  • Ensure descendant job benefits including overtime pay, paid sick leave, paid time off, balanced work shifts and hours, and employee protections.
  • Support new, and duplicate existing, collective models and cooperatives in descendant communities, including descendant consumer cooperatives, produce cooperatives, worker cooperatives, purchasing cooperatives, and multi-stakeholder and hybrid cooperatives.
  • Provide tax abatements, incentives, and reductions.
  • Evaluate and recommend the redistribution of capital.
  • Study the history of the Freedmen’s Bank in Philadelphia and simulate the impacts of a future Bureau of Freedmen Affairs for Philadelphia.

Necessary Skills and Required Responsibilities

  • Ability to keep an accurate and organized account of the financial and necessary historical records.
  • Knowledge of, and ability to review, various financial regulations and policies.
  • Ability to prepare balance sheets.
  • Prepare monthly, quarterly, and annual financial audits of various sectors and co-create reports of data with committee members.
  • Display adept organizational abilities in managing the committee’s research efforts.
  • Attend internal Philadelphia Reparations Task Force meetings, committee meetings, and public community sessions.
  • Coordinate with Task Force Members to ensure seamless integration of policy research with public comments.
  • Assist with the integration of the Task Force’s policy goals, public education, and targeted campaigns.
  • Proven work experience as a finance officer or similar role.
  • Experience using financial software.
  • Advanced MS Excel skills.
  • Excellent analytical and numerical skills.
  • Sharp time management skills.
  • Strong ethics, with an ability to manage confidential data.
  • Professional qualification as a CFA/CPA is considered a plus.
  • Oversee the preparation and planning of budgets.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Complete applications by January 15th, 2024 via the form
Please send all questions to info@ncobraphl.org.