New Social Contract in the Time of COVID-19

Addressing Our Real Deficits: Democracy and Human Rights

What is essential? The COVID-19 pandemic has been clarifying in that regard. Health care, food, housing, income support, education, water, and energy surely are among the items that top the list. But in a system where so many essential human needs are commodified, this point is so often hidden from view…

Read More in Nonprofit Quarterly


To Fight COVID–19, We Need to Build Worker Power and Worker Safety

We can’t take COVID–19 prevention seriously if we fail to address the millions of workers who are forced to work without proper protection from exposure. To do that, we need both worker organizing and pro-worker legislative reforms right now. The number of COVID-19 cases seems to be flattening, for now, and states are moving to open nonessential businesses…

Read More in Jacobin Magazine


Just Transition and Viral Superhighways

On the Next World podcast: Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan & Mateo Nube of Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project join host Max Rameau to discuss viral superhighways, land & capitalism, and environmental justice.

Movement Generation inspires and engages in transformative action towards the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture. Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan has worked for the last 25 years building movement vehicles for frontline communities to move a shared vision and strategy. Mateo Nube is one of the co-founders of the Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project and has worked in the labor, environmental justice and international solidarity movements.

Listen Now:


COVID-19: A Human Rights Response

On the Next World podcast: Cathy Albisa, co-founder and executive director of Partners for Dignity & Rights, and Ben Palmquist, Program Director for Health Care and Economic Democracy at Partners for Dignity & Rights. Cathy and Ben join host Max Rameau to discuss a human rights response to COVID-19, focusing on housing, healthcare, dignity in schools, and workers’ rights.

Listen Now:

Download Podcast


How to Make This Year’s Eviction Crisis Our Last

Our housing affordability crisis was well documented long before COVID-19 hit. It is about to get much, much worse. Incomes have dropped to zero for many renters, and the moratorium on evictions in a number of states is expiring. Tenants are facing balloon rental arrearages with little ability to pay. Widespread evictions are the inevitable outcome, resulting in lives uprooted and, in too many cases, destroyed. Read the full article in Nonprofit Quarterly.


Can We Learn From COVID-19?

We look around us, and we know that we need trillions of dollars in disaster spending, free and easy access to health care and testing, and protection from losing our homes because of a pandemic. Can we mobilize on this common sense and build a narrative framework that we can use as an onramp to radical democratic change down the road?

Read the full article by Partners for Dignity & Rights fellow Philippa Rizopoulos at NonProfit Quarterly.


Healthcare is a Human Right

Healthcare by the Numbers

Nationwide hospital closures, brought on by a for-profit system, have resulted in a lack of hospital beds during the COVID-19 crisis. A spate of research compiled for the first time reveals that this crisis was intensified by a for-profit system that has seen rapid closures of hospitals, especially in rural areas and urban communities of color. Forty-six U.S. hospitals were closed last year, plus at least 12 more in just the first three months of 2020, as COVID-19 was beginning its journey across the globe.

Read More


Beaumont Hospital Closing

Beaumont Hospital Closings & For-Profit Healthcare: Putting Us All in Danger

Beaumont Healthy Systems, the largest hospital company in Michigan, recently shut down Beaumont Hospital Wayne before partially reopening it. This is happening across the country. At least 147 hospitals have been shut down by hospital companies in the last 5 years, and there’s a clear reason why.

Watch the video


Calls to Action for COVID-19

Calls to Action in Response to COVID-19

Partners for Dignity & Rights joins with our partners and allies in calling for government action to address this crisis. Read about the recent demands we support.

Read More


essential workers, essential needs webinar

Essential Workers to Essential Needs: Conversations from the Frontlines

Partners for Dignity & Rights hosted an online webinar addressing ‘Essential Workers to Essential Needs: Conversations from the Frontlines’ on Thursday, April 30. Cathy Albisa facilitated a conversation with organizations of essential workers and impacted communities.

Watch Now


No Turning Back: How the Pandemic Opens the Door to a New Economy for People and the Planet

A quarter million people dead, trillion dollar economic losses per year — the cost of doing too little too late. This is the projected impact of the global climate crisis, not the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the virus is on track to inflict a comparable toll, expedited by the same disregard for human lives at the frontline of the crisis. While the gradual but momentous impact of climate change has yet to fully register with people, the pandemic’s horrific effects are with us now, nearly unparalleled in their instant magnitude.

Read More


5 Questions for New Green Deal

Five Questions (and Some Suggestions) for a Green New Deal

Learn why a Green New Deal is essential to building a just and resilient economy and society in the age of climate change. Considering five key strategic questions, this white paper explores why a Green New Deal must center equity and justice, democratic community control, public financing and people’s fundamental needs and human rights.

Read More



List of Others’ COVID-19 Demands, Messaging Guides, and Victories

This is a rough and evolving list of progressive and radical policy demands, messaging guides, and policy and organizing victories to address the COVID-19 pandemic and the many pre-existing inequities and injustices it has helped expose.

Read More