The real breach in the system will occur when we have an active and ongoing collaboration between organized community advocates and elected officials that are recruited directly out of our movements, with the mission of unassailable accountability. The construction of effective state and national majorities presupposes alliances with progressive white allies. The cost of a contested political race has risen so dramatically that candidates can not accumulate a viable campaign treasury without the support of very large donors, who marginalize, ignore, or crush candidates who put people before profits. Elected officials who depend on the rich to fund political campaigns in today's campaign finance arms race, simply can not be expected to fight for the interests of working and poor communities. The ruling sector that finances the electoral system benefits from informal and formal racism in myriad ways.
Poverty holds down labor costs, increasing profits.
Black communities are hugely over-represented in poverty figures. Racism has been a powerful weapon in breaking unions in the South, again protecting profit margins. Contributors also benefit from regressive tax structures, government expenditures for infrastructure for development, corporate tax incentives, privatized prisons and schools, weakened worker and environmental protections, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera-all to the detriment of the rest of the population, regardless of race. Last year, Public Campaign, a national non-profit working to end the private funding of political campaigns, conducted a detailed study of campaign contributions from every zip code in the United States. They then compared contribution totals from top contributing zip codes with zip codes for the highest concentrations of people of color.