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Welcome
“Access to Capital and Technology, the Unfinished
Movement.”
Dear Friends:
Within American business
there exists not a talent gap, but an opportunity gap. To
unite talent and opportunity for a business benefit, we established
the Rainbow/Push Wall Street Project, an outgrowth of
a social justice movement working to secure both equal opportunity
and protection under the law for all Americans. The Project
was founded on January 15, 1996, the anniversary of the birth of
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to coincide symbolically
with the beginning of the first quarter of the business year.
The
Project’s organizational origin rests with the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference’s Operation Breadbasket, established
by Dr. King in 1966 to work toward a more inclusive America by
combining theology with the struggle for economic justice.
The
spirit of Dr. King and Operation breadbasket live on in the Wall
Street Project, which through research, education, and partnership
encourages companies to form mutually beneficial business relationships
that embrace inclusion as a means of growth. The Wall Street
Project educates corporate “trading partners” and their
leaders to encourage equal opportunity.
Justice is fair trade.
Justice is balanced trade. On behalf of those left out of
the marketplace, we seek economic justice. Those sitting
on the sidelines of American economic growth have suffered too
long from one-way trade. Justice for everyone will only be
achieved when two-away trade is a reality.
Today, as in 1966, underserved
communities represent unrealized money, market, talent, and location.
Corporations, on the other hand, represent money, expertise, and
infrastructure. Corporate leaders who do not expand their
marketplace by capturing undeveloped markets are negligent in their
fiduciary responsibility to investors. The Wall Street
Project allows corporations to do well by their bottom line
while simultaneously doing good by tapping underserved markets.
Let
me put this another way: if the struggle for the American Dream
were a symphony it would contain four movements: First Movement,
abolition of slavery; Second Movement, end of legal segregation;
Third Movement, voting rights for all; and the Fourth Movement-in
which we currently live – is access to capital and technology. This
is the unfinished movement.
In the best tradition of its predecessor, Operation
Breadbasket, the Wall Street Project was organized
with eight bureaus across the nation. Each bureau is research-based
and industry-focused, one each in the areas of financial services,
information technology, energy, entertainment, automotive, public
policy and telecommunications, international affairs, and food
services.
Research, education, negotiation, and demonstration (if
necessary) are the Project’s methodology of corporate engagement.
The quantifiable near-absence of people of color in corporate procurement
budget, supplier lists, and on board of directors exemplify the
imperative for the ongoing struggle for inclusion.
Since 1996,
the Wall Street Project has shifted the paradigm on how
business is conducted in America. Underserved communities,
historically locked out of business opportunity and considered
merely a philanthropic beneficiary by the Corporate America, are
now more and more viewed as “value added,” and potential
growth markets. The Wall Street Project is changing
how America does business.
Rev.
Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
Founder/President, Rainbow/Push Coalition Inc.
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