Action Now! Black Progress and the Call for a Human Rights Economy

They are coming for everything we’ve built—our rights, our businesses, our power. This isn’t just about policy—it’s about erasing us from the fabric of this nation.

Roland Martin, US journalist and broadcaster

This is a moment of reckoning—a moment to rise together, not just to resist but to reimagine and rebuild.

For Black America, the time is now. President Donald Trump’s administration has unleashed a calculated assault on civil rights, racial equity, and economic opportunity. With executive orders and policy rollbacks, the Trump administration and its allies are dismantling decades of progress—progress that was never enough to begin with.

While Black Americans have fought tirelessly to carve out space in a system rigged against us, the truth is that the foundation itself has always been broken. This is not just about defending what exists—it’s about demanding more. It’s about building a society rooted in human rights and dignity, where people come before profits, and justice is not an aspiration but a reality.

As economist Darrick Hamilton told The New School News, “The structural impediments associated with group membership…how race, gender, and class interact…determine economic outcomes.” These impediments are not accidents; they are deliberate systems designed to exclude and oppress. The Trump administration’s policies are not just targeting individuals—they are attacking the very systems that have allowed Black Americans to make even incremental progress. This is a moment of reckoning—a moment to rise together, not just to resist but to reimagine and rebuild.

The Trump Administration’s Assault on Justice

Since returning to power in January 2025, Trump has wasted no time advancing policies designed to erase racial equity and entrench systemic inequality. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order to eliminate all federal diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs—programs that attempted to chip away at centuries of exclusion from opportunities. Their elimination sends a clear message: Black progress is expendable.

Trump has also reversed executive orders from the Joe Biden administration, which had sharply limited the use of chokeholds and no-knock warrants by the police—reforms enacted after years of advocacy against police brutality. These rollbacks have emboldened law enforcement to act with impunity, while Black lives remain disproportionately at risk. At the same time, Trump’s administration has escalated efforts to suppress Black voters turnout through criminalizing voter registration errors, purging voter rolls, and cutting access to early voting. These actions echo Jim Crow–era tactics designed to silence our voices and strip us of political power.

Perhaps most devastatingly, Trump’s administration has targeted federal procurement programs that prioritize contracts for socially disadvantaged businesses. These programs have been critical for Black entrepreneurs seeking opportunities in industries historically closed to them. In 2023 alone, small disadvantaged businesses received $76 billion in federal contracts—a record-breaking achievement that was set to grow further under prior commitments. Now those opportunities are being erased by design, threatening billions of dollars in losses for Black-owned businesses annually.

This is not just policy—it is a blueprint for erasure. The Trump administration’s playbook, known as Project 2025, lays out a roadmap for rewriting federal laws and regulations, by removing all references to race, gender, reproductive rights, gender identity and sexual orientation. It seeks nothing less than the wholesale dismantling of civil rights protections, while codifying systemic inequality into every facet of American life.

Corporate Betrayal: Profits over People

As the Trump administration wages its war on civil rights, corporations that once stood with the Black population are retreating into complicity. In 2020, as protests swept the globe following George Floyd’s murder, companies like Amazon, Walmart, Meta, Citigroup, and Target rushed to pledge billions of dollars toward racial equity. They issued glowing statements about justice and solidarity, but now those promises ring hollow.

We don’t just want to restore what’s been taken—we want more. We want an economy built on human rights.

Target ended its diversity initiatives, designed to support Black employees and shoppers, while abandoning its Racial Equity Action and Change program—a commitment that had promised $2 billion in investments in Black-owned businesses by 2025. Citigroup has dropped its diversity hiring goals under pressure from political extremists. Meta has abandoned supplier diversity commitments that once prioritized minority-owned businesses. Walmart spent $8.5 billion on Black and people-of-color-owned suppliers in 2021—but now even those investments are at risk as corporations abandon their commitments.

Their solidarity was never about justice—it was about optics. When the spotlight faded and political pressure mounted, they folded without hesitation. This betrayal reveals what we already knew: Profits matter more than people in their calculus.

The Vision: A Human Rights Economy

This moment demands more than resistance—it demands transformation. The current retrenchment exposes what we have always known: This system was never designed for us. Even at its best moments of reform or progress, the US economy has left far too many behind—those struggling under poverty wages, those excluded from wealth building opportunities, those silenced by systemic racism.

We don’t just want to restore what’s been taken—we want more. We want an economy built on human rights, a system that prioritizes people over profits and equity over exploitation.

Imagine an economy where every person has access to fair wages, affordable housing, quality healthcare, and education—not as privileges but as fundamental rights.

Picture a system where workers have the power to unionize without fear of retaliation, where wealth is distributed equitably so no child grows up in poverty while billionaires hoard unimaginable riches, where democracy thrives because every vote counts equally, and where leaders serve the people instead of corporate interests.

This is what justice looks like when it moves beyond rhetoric into action.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

We are here today because our ancestors refused to accept the chains of slavery, the cruelty of segregation, and the weight of systemic oppression as their destiny. They fought, bled, and sacrificed so that we could stand taller, dream bigger, and demand more. Their struggle was not for incremental change—it was for liberation. And now we owe it to them—and to future generations—not to let this moment pass without action.

The dismantling of DEIA programs, the rollbacks of voting rights, the betrayal by corporations, and the reversal of police accountability measures are not isolated events. They are part of a calculated, coordinated effort to strip us of our power and erase our progress. But if history has taught us anything, it is this: We are not powerless. Time and again, we have proven that when we organize, strategize, and act collectively, we can overcome even the most entrenched systems of oppression.

Our ancestors showed us the way. They endured the unendurable so we could rise. Now it is our turn to carry their legacy forward—not just to preserve what they built but to create something greater. This is not a moment for complacency or despair; it’s a moment for courage and action.

A Closing Charge

Let us remember the words of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”:

Stony the road we trod,

Bitter the chastening rod…

Yet with a steady beat,

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We stand at another defining moment in history—a moment where silence equals surrender and complacency equals complicity. But surrender has never been in our DNA. From slavery to segregation to systemic racism today, we have always risen above every attempt to break us down.

Now it is time for us to rise again—not just in protest but in power—to demand justice once and for all. Let us march forward with courage in our hearts and with fire in our souls, united as one people, determined not just to defend progress but to demand transformation.

Let us honor those who came before us by fighting for those who will come after us. Let us take this moment—this opportunity—to build something greater than what exists today: a society rooted in human dignity, equity, and justice for all.

This is our charge. This is our time. The fight begins today—and it begins with you. Will you rise?