By Lulit Shewan
Pride is a time of celebration and acknowledging the resilience and societal contributions of LGBTQ+ individuals, including in the workplace. Historically, queer individuals have significantly advanced workers’ rights and pushed for greater workplace inclusivity. LGBTQ+ employees have long navigated the intersection between queer struggles and the shortcomings of labor law. Labor unions have been instrumental in securing workplace rights for LGBTQ+ individuals and offering essential protection that has often been overlooked. Before state and federal anti-discrimination laws, unions negotiated fair practices within their contracts, paving the way for broader societal and workplace equality.
The contributions of queer activists to the labor movement are ongoing. Today, queer labor activists fight for comprehensive anti-discrimination protections, health care benefits that include gender-affirming care, and fair wages. These practices have led to significant legislative victories and improved workplace policies, demonstrating the importance of intersectional advocacy.
Before the 1969 Stonewall rebellion, the union movement largely ignored issues facing the queer community. Without legal protections, employer discrimination based on sexual orientation was rampant, silently victimizing union members and weakening collective power. As the queer liberation movement gained momentum, organized labor began recognizing the urgency of addressing these injustices.
In 1974, San Francisco’s queer community joined forces with the Teamsters to support a boycott against Coors Brewing Company, which was non-union. This partnership expanded into a national boycott, compelling Coors to abandon its discriminatory policies against union supporters and LGBTQ+ community members. The American Federation of Teachers also took a stand, passing a resolution opposing discrimination based on sexual orientation.
The stories of queer workers, both historical and contemporary, illustrate the abundant contributions of LGBTQ+ struggle to the labor movement. In the past decade, the community has seen a surge of cultural support and significant milestones such as the landmark Supreme Court decision affirming the marriage rights of same-sex couples. Yet, despite these advancements, LGBTQ+ individuals continue to encounter obstacles, particularly in the realm of economic equity and stability, while enduring the imminent nature of prejudice and oppression.
Research indicates that nearly half of LGBTQ+ workers have faced job discrimination, including being passed over for jobs, harassed, denied promotions, and even fired. Economic disparities significantly impact LGBTQ+ populations. Studies show LGBTQ+ adults are more likely to experience financial instability, with higher rates of food and economic insecurity compared to non-LGBTQ+ Americans. About 13.1 percent of LGBTQ+ adults live in households experiencing food insecurity, compared to 7.2 percent of non-LGBTQ+ adults. These economic challenges are compounded by discrimination in employment, housing, and health care, which leads to joblessness and underemployment. Income variability and wealth gaps between LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ adults are also significant.
Within the LGBTQ+ community, these challenges are more pronounced in the transgender community. A 2021 survey found that 21 percent of transgender individuals experience poverty, a 14 percent higher rate than their cisgender counterparts.
Economic discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community is a glaring symptom of our system’s reliance on corporate greed and the exploitation of the working class, compounded by insufficient anti-discrimination laws and weak enforcement. Despite diversity and inclusion initiatives, nearly half of LGBTQ+ workers remain closeted at work due to fear of discrimination, reflecting the systematic exclusion of queer people in corporate policies.
Addressing the systemic barriers faced by queer workers means dismantling workplace structures perpetuating discrimination and inequality. The path forward lies in the examples set by intersectional queer labor activists, whose pioneering efforts offer a blueprint for achieving transformative policy reform.
Employers must ensure health care plans are inclusive, covering gender-affirming surgeries, hormone therapy, IVF, and other reproductive health care for LGBTQ+ couples, as well as comprehensive mental health services. Health care providers should be trained on LGBTQ+ issues to ensure respectful and competent care. Inclusive paid family leave policies are essential to support LGBTQ+ employees in diverse family and caregiving situations.
Systemic policies that perpetuate occupational segregation of queer workers and bolster economic policies must be changed to meaningfully tackle financial instability within the LGBTQ+ community. This includes living wage laws, pay equity standards, and robust public benefit programs supporting those facing unemployment or underemployment. Programs to reduce food insecurity and provide housing assistance are vital to address the significant percentage of LGBTQ+ individuals lacking stable housing or guaranteed meals.
Unions focused on supporting queer workers can advocate for pro-union policies that explicitly address LGBTQ+ inclusion in collective bargaining agreements. This includes provisions for paid family leave for chosen family members, child care subsidies for LGBTQ+ parents, and gender-neutral bathrooms in workplaces covered by union contracts. Fostering a union culture that explicitly addresses LGBTQ+ issues in their agendas is crucial. This means creating pathways for queer voices to be heard and represented in leadership roles and decision-making processes.
From these achievements and struggles, we learn the critical importance of solidarity. Queer activists have shown that forming alliances across different movements can lead to significant social change. Their stories remind us that the fight for workers’ rights is inherently linked to the broader struggle for queer liberation.
By Alycia Hardy, Stephanie Schmit, and Rachel Wilensky
This report analyzes variations in eligibility and access to Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) subsidies in 2020. State decisions on implementation within the CCDBG program, along with historically insufficient federal and state funding, limit parents’ access to child care assistance. We analyze state-level Administration for Children and Families CCDBG participation data by state, race, and ethnicity, with analysis on both state and federal income eligibility limits. As an update to our previous report with 2019 CCDBG data on inequitable access, this iteration includes a new analysis of data on potentially eligible children, or children who qualify for receiving CCDBG assistance based on the outlined eligibility requirements.
This fact sheet outlines CCDGB subsidy eligibility and receipt for children ages 0-13 across the country, analyzing national totals including variations by race and ethnicity, based on state income eligibility.
Inequitable Access to Child Care Subsidies by State in 2020
These fact sheets outline CCDBG subsidy eligibility and receipt for children ages 0-13 in each state, including variations by race and ethnicity. (See note below about states marked with *, indicating data limitations.)
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‘New Jim Code’: Federal officials have failed to deter the civil rights harms that artificial intelligence in schools poses to students of color, a new report argues. | The Center for Law and Social Policy
CLASP submitted this statement for the record on June 4, 2024, to the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce’s Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education for a hearing titled, “The Consequences of Biden’s Border Chaos for K-12 Schools.” The statement makes the case for the need to support schools in meeting their legal obligations to equitably serve immigrant students, including newcomer students. It also addresses the importance of protecting the constitutional right for all children in the United States to receive a public K-12 education regardless of immigration status.
CLASP Media Contact: Archana Pyati apyati@clasp.org
TYP Collaborative Media Contact: Nia West-Bey, nwestbey@typcollaborative.org
Washington, D.C., June 3, 2024—CLASP is pleased to announce the spinoff and launch of a new youth-focused nonprofit that builds upon two decades of youth policy work. The National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy (TYP Collaborative) is a new independent organization that will translate young people’s radical imagination and aspirations into transformative policy and systems change by building power with young people and their communities.
The TYP Collaborative will officially begin operating on July 1, 2024 and will be led by CLASP’s current director of youth policy, Dr. Nia West-Bey, who will be the new entity’s executive director.
“We are excited to carry forward our 20-year legacy at CLASP by bringing together policy, advocacy, and activism under one roof in service of transformational change,” said West-Bey. “We look forward to conducting policy analysis and advocacy in close collaborative partnership with young people and integrating organizing principles and strategies into policy work.”
The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) has a proud history as an incubator for several prominent nonprofits. These include the National Women’s Law Center and Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, both of which are leaders in their fields of advocacy.
The TYP Collaborative will focus its work on the needs and leadership of young people who have been most impacted by oppressive systems of power, historic and on-going policy violence, and systemic marginalization. “By centering the experiences of young people, we will achieve more just systems and better outcomes for all young people,” said West-Bey.
“I’m proud to help Nia launch the TYP Collaborative, a new organization led by a Black woman with deep passion and commitment to organizing the next generation of youth advocates and community leaders to drive policy change,” said CLASP President and Executive Director Indivar Dutta-Gupta. “CLASP looks forward to working side-by-side with the TYP Collaborative. Partnering with groups who organize on the ground is core to our theory of change. And youth and young adults—especially many young people of color—continue to be sidelined in much of our nation’s public policies and will continue to be a focus of CLASP’s work toward economic justice.”
Kisha Bird, a former director of the youth policy team at CLASP and founding board member of the TYP Collaborative said: “I am very proud of over two decades of work by the youth policy team at CLASP. It is an honor to serve as a founding board member for the National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy. I am confident that launching the TYP Collaborative is an essential next step on the journey to realizing youth justice in our communities.”
The CLASP youth team’s projects, A New Deal for Youth (ND4Y) and Communities Collaborating to Reconnect Youth Network (CCRY), will also be moved as initiatives within the TYP Collaborative, which will also continue existing work on youth mental health and youth economic justice.
For more information, please visit www.typcollaborative.org.
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2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the War on Poverty, an ambitious package of social welfare legislation introduced under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Today, as we continue the fight to end poverty, we face both long-standing and more recent structural, systemic, political, and economic challenges that impede this urgent goal.
Our nation has made meaningful gains in the last few decades to bring economic security and opportunity to millions. However, the reality is clear—we remain far from achieving the equitable, inclusionary, and transformative changes needed to end poverty and advance a multiracial democracy. In 2023, CLASP redoubled our strategic advocacy, implementation and technical assistance, research and analysis, and narrative change work at the national, state, and local levels.
Our 2023 Impact Report highlights just some of the ways CLASP has worked to limit the harm of poverty in America through a multitude of strategies and collaborations. The COVID public health emergency may be behind us, but the profound economic insecurity experienced every day by millions of children, working people, families, and communities of color is an epidemic that requires immediate attention with substantial public investments.
I often say that poverty is a choice—one made by policymakers, not by people who experience it. CLASP offers policymakers the information, ideas, insights, and inspiration to shrink poverty and help move our country toward equity, justice, and inclusive democracy.
Thank you for being a partner in our mission and vision for a world where children, families, youth and young adults, immigrants, and individuals across all lived experiences and identities can live a healthy, economically secure, and civically engaged life now and for generations to come.
Indi Dutta-Gupta
President and Executive Director
By Tatiana Villegas
“I feel like when talking to somebody you don’t know, you sort of have that feeling that they might judge you or not, like not believe something that you’re saying” – Youth focus group participant, Colorado, 2023
Rates of youth depression and anxiety have been on the rise for years and continue to increase. A recent report found that rates of anxiety and depression remained high in July 2023, with three in four young adults reporting some level of these challenges. A 2023 report by Mental Health in America found that 60 percent of youth with major depression are not receiving mental health treatment. Young people aren’t seeking help from mental health professionals for several reasons, one of which is that youth don’t trust them. Young people’s distrust of and fear in the mental health system is well-founded. This system has historically harmed Black and brown communities, LGBTQIA+ communities, people with disabilities, and other individuals living at the margins. Many of these harms are ongoing, including through the continued use of forced treatment.
Over the past six years, our team has spoken with numerous young people. Many discussed a lack of trust in and relatability to mental health professionals and the system at large, and a desire to change the current mental health system. As the crisis escalates, it’s time we listen to what those most affected want and invest in their mental health and future.
“For me, I don’t really like, like for example if I go to a counselor, I don’t know this person. Like, I don’t know them, they don’t know me. So I have this feeling of like, why should I tell them everything about me, everything that I’m going through if I don’t know them deeply and I don’t know what their true intentions are with the information they’re going to get and how I can really trust them. Like, how do I know if they’re not going to go turn my back, maybe tell another student, tell a teacher, or even, like, tell someone that could possibly make me go into a let’s say…I don’t know, I don’t know. But just a place where I don’t want to be in because I’m just, it’s just scary to talk about your feelings with someone that you don’t know or trust.” – Youth focus group participant, Colorado, 2023
Discussing mental health concerns with a stranger is challenging. One issue is the inherent distrust youth, especially youth of color and LGBTQ+ youth, feel toward people they don’t know. This distrust stems from the lack of meaningful, bi-directional relationships between mental health professionals, who are often adults, and youth seeking help. The distrust also stems from the power dynamic between clinicians and patients; many young people we’ve spoken to question what therapists will do with the information they share, doubt the confidentiality of their sessions, and sometimes feel judged by these professionals. In a therapeutic relationship that relies on vulnerability, this lack of trust significantly hinders the effectiveness of mental health support.
Rather than persisting with a failing system, policymakers, mental health professionals, teachers, and school counselors must listen to what works for youth and incorporate their feedback to improve mental health access.
“I feel like it is better to talk to our peers like we doing now. ‘Cause the way our generation set up, we all have somewhat of a similar lifestyle. And I feel like this somethin’ we should do, like, every now and then.” – Youth focus group participant, Southeastern United States, 2017
“To be honest with you, I would rather talk to somebody that went to prison or came through here because they know the lifestyle. They know how it was. And they understand you.” – Youth focus group participant, Southeastern United States, 2017
In our conversations with youth, a consistent theme emerged: they turn to their peers, family members, or community members for support during times of emotional distress. Peers are a common source of comfort because youth can relate to them. They share similar life challenges and experiences, making the support feel genuine and validating. Likewise, many youth confide in family members, believing that their loved ones have their best interests at heart and deeply understand them. Both peer and family support are characterized by pre-existing deep relationships and a sense of relatability, fostering a caring bond that extends beyond professional obligations.
Not all young people have a safe community to rely on, making it crucial for them to have access to affirming mental health support. This underscores the need to reframe the mental health system to ensure all youth have this option. Young people who distrust or have been harmed by the mental health system often prefer non-clinical mental health supports, like youth peer support. Peer support is an equitable and effective mental health intervention rooted in trust and mutuality; however, policy barriers make it inaccessible to too many young people.
Relatability is especially crucial for youth of color and LGBTQ+ youth, as these populations typically experience higher rates of mental health conditions. Young people seek support from individuals who can genuinely empathize with their experiences and understand them. For queer or BIPOC youth, this may mean connecting with professionals or peers who share their identities or backgrounds, which can foster a sense of cultural resonance and understanding. For these communities, having a mental health professional who does not look like them or understand such an important part of their identity can make therapy inefficient and, in some cases, harmful. Therapists who do not share similar identities may struggle to provide effective guidance and could inadvertently perpetrate microaggressions against those they’re counseling. Additionally, 75 percent of mental health professionals are white, while 25 percent are BIPOC, which is not representative of the U.S. population. Racial inequalities and systematic discrimination are at fault for the historic and current underrepresentation of BIPOC mental health professionals in workforce pipelines and the system. This lack of representation has perpetuated inequities in mental health diagnoses and treatments, especially for BIPOC individuals.
We’re falling short in providing youth, particularly those from diverse backgrounds, with mental health care that meets their needs. Addressing the issue of youth distrust toward the mental health system and providers hinges on prioritizing their voices and preferences. To improve mental health care, we must enhance diversity in both identity and credentials among providers. This means increasing representation of people of color, queer individuals, and others with lived experiences relevant to the communities they serve. By offering scholarships and fostering peer support networks, we can encourage more individuals from diverse backgrounds to pursue careers in mental health. Having providers who share identities with the communities they serve is crucial for effectively engaging youth with the health care system. Additionally, young people deserve a choice of mental health supports beyond talk therapy and Western models of care, particularly young people who have been harmed by the mental health system. Above all, those with decision-making power have a responsibility to actively seek and integrate feedback from youth to improve the mental health system. By genuinely listening to the experiences and needs of young people, they can better tailor services and policies to ensure effective support for mental well-being.
“Certain things, you don’t want to talk to people about. Especially, I’m gonna just be honest, I ain’t too kindly with, you know, I ain’t fittin’ to have no white man sit in front of me and ask me questions about my life. What about ‘What your life about?’ Like, it’s stuff like that, because I feel like they really coming at you a certain type of way because people may think you got an issue, but you really don’t, you feel me? I just, I don’t know, it just suddenly everybody make you snap off or make you just blink off. Everybody is just different.” – Youth focus group participant, Southeastern United States, 2017
Innovations in Youth Mental Health
By Nia West-Bey
As we near the end of Mental Health Awareness Month, we have an opportunity to reflect on the state of youth mental health in 2024 and highlight transformative solutions aligned with our core principles to reframe mental health. Our 2023 youth data portrait indicated that levels of anxiety and depression among young people remained essentially unchanged from the year prior. For LGBTQ+ young people, these levels remained staggering. Our inability to move the needle on these outcomes is perhaps unsurprising given our failure to address the root causes of youth mental health challenges, including poverty; racism and other forms of discrimination; and community violence. This collective failure is even more frustrating given the unprecedented attention on youth mental health since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although the scope of the challenge is great, we continue to see innovative approaches in youth mental health that meet the moment and have the potential to transform access to care. Last year, we uplifted local initiatives that recognized young people’s interest in and ability to heal each other through youth peer support in Los Angeles and a community mental health worker program in New Orleans Both approaches recognize young people’s long-expressed preference to receive support from other youth who share context, identity, and experiences. They are also responsive to young people’s strong desire to access career pathways in the mental health field, the importance of expanding the number and types of providers addressing young people’s mental health needs, and the need to diversify the providers in our systems to deliver equitable, culturally responsive care.
This year, we look to a newly launched state-level program that has the potential to significantly expand young people’s access to mental health care while launching a new cadre of young people into careers in behavioral health. The Youth Mental Health Corps is a multi-sector partnership between the Schultz Family Foundation, Pinterest, and AmeriCorps. In its inaugural year, the Youth Mental Health Corps awarded implementation grants to Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and Texas to launch a statewide Youth Mental Health Service Corps in Fall 2024. Corps members will be young people ages 18-24 (or 18-29 in the case of peer support/recovery navigators) in one of three service pathways: school-based mental health navigator, peer support/recovery navigator, or community mental health navigator. Awards prioritized states with an existing state certification for peer support/recovery specialists or community mental health workers that allow Medicaid reimbursable services after the certification is earned or where a service-to-career pathway in the behavioral health field through school-based service can be developed. Through the first four states, the program plans to have over 500 members serving their communities. Seven other states were awarded planning grants, with hopes that they will launch Youth Mental Health Corps programs in 2025.
In addition to receiving a certification that can serve as an on-ramp to careers in behavioral health, Youth Mental Health Corps members will have access to AmeriCorps benefits including a living allowance, housing, transportation, health insurance, and an education award. Philanthropic dollars are supporting states to increase the amount of the living allowance and ensure that there is wraparound support, especially for Corps members with lived experience of mental health and substance abuse challenges. There are two policy pre-conditions that make this program feasible and sustainable with public dollars:
AmeriCorps State Service Programs: In the 200,000 Americans serve in communities to support natural disaster relief, provide critical education and social services to youth with low incomes and the elderly, and help local communities solve pressing issues like hunger and poverty. State Service Commissions provide an existing infrastructure to support, fund, and structure the Youth Mental Health Corps programs. Many of these state commissions are tapping slots in existing AmeriCorps State and National programs, including Public Health AmeriCorps for the Youth Mental Health Corps.
Medicaid Reimbursable Credentials: Youth peer support and recovery coaching are proven, equitable approaches to meeting young people’s mental health needs where young people with lived experience of mental health or substance abuse challenges are trained to support other youth. Community health workers are public health workers who provide culturally appropriate health promotion and education, assistance in accessing medical and non-medical services, translation services, care coordination, and social support. Eighteen states currently have Medicaid-reimbursable youth peer support, and 24 states currently have Medicaid-reimbursable community health workers. By channeling Corps members into Medicaid reimbursable provider types, the program ensures the sustainability of the positions beyond the period of service and that Corps members are obtaining a credential that is marketable outside of the program.
The Youth Mental Health Corps program expands the available provider types in alignment with young people’s preferences and increases access to providers who share identity, community, and experiences with young people. Scaling these programs nationwide will require prioritizing mental health in AmeriCorps funding opportunities, expanded state funding for service programs, and providing technical assistance to support cross-sector collaborations between national service, mental health, education, and youth-serving sectors. By drawing on learnings from the implementation of the Youth Mental Health Corps in early adopter states, we have an opportunity to bring a transformational strategy to addressing youth mental health nationwide.
Public and private actors are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) and other big data technologies to engineer new futures for structural racism and social inequality in the United States, a phenomenon that the sociologist Ruha Benjamin has termed the “New Jim Code.”
These technologies are upending decades of civil and human rights legal standards, expanding mass criminalization, restricting access to social services, and enabling systemic discrimination in housing, employment, and health care, among other areas.3 The New Jim Code carries unique threats to youth and young adults of color, especially in the context of K-12 public schools.
In recent years, federal policymakers have taken steps to address the societal implications of AI and big data technologies, including the White House Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, President Biden’s Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence, and the U.S. Department of Education’s guidance on AI in schools. However, these efforts have largely failed to address the specific harms that these technologies raise for youth and young adults of color and youth from other historically marginalized communities.
As the infrastructure of police surveillance grows in public schools, communities must be prepared to safeguard the rights and freedoms of students and families. This report is designed to help youth justice advocates, youth leaders, educators, caregivers, and policymakers understand and challenge the impact of school surveillance, data criminalization, and police surveillance technologies in schools.
By Lulit Shewan
An exploitative labor economy exists within the confines of this nation’s prisons. This is a fundamental pillar of the criminal justice system, yet it is largely concealed from public view. In the United States, all state and federal prisons allow some form of involuntary labor as part of various correctional work programs. Even when prison labor is ostensibly voluntary, the combination of meager pay (often less than $1/hour) and the presence of harsh alternatives creates an inherently exploitative system that depends on the labor of those behind bars and perpetuates a cycle of exploitation and marginalization. Prison labor amplifies deep-seated issues within the criminal justice system and casts a stark light on the intersection of labor rights, social justice, and the ethics of incarceration
Incarcerated men and women toil in workshops, kitchens, and fields, producing goods and services that reach far beyond their confinement. From manufacturing furniture and processing food to fighting fires and working in call centers, their labor fuels supply chains, corporate profits, and consumer markets. Yet these workers remain invisible, their contributions often overlooked or dismissed. The commodification of their labor perpetuates a cycle of vulnerability, where meager wages and limited rights prevail. In the intricate tapestry of the prison industrial complex, we confront a profound challenge that transcends temporary reforms. The only holistic and ethical approach calls for a paradigm shift, a reimagining of justice itself. Within this context, we fiercely advocate for granting incarcerated individuals fundamental rights: the right to choose voluntary work and earn fair wages, and the freedom to join unions. These rights are not concessions; they are affirmations of human dignity and agency, and are necessary to improving the
material conditions of incarcerated people.