When people think of hotbeds of political creativity and cutting-edge progressive policy ideas, Mississippi is not often the place that comes to mind. But last week, 16 women in public housing in Jackson, Mississippi, each received a check for $1,000—the first of 12 monthly payments they’ll receive through a guaranteed-income pilot project called the Magnolia Mothers Trust. The project is a direct refutation of America’s punitive approach to welfare policy and the racialized narratives that created and sustain it.
Jackson is also home to Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who, following his election in June 2017, famously promised to take on oppression in ways that will make Jackson “the most radical city on the planet.” In a city that is more than 80 percent African-American, with a poverty rate near 30 percent as well as a shrunken tax base and limited state support, Lumumba has his work cut out for him.
Last week I was in the city to meet the participants in the pilot project, and to speak with the mayor. We discussed his views on guaranteed income, poverty, race, and his assessment of his job a year and a half into his first term. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Greg Kaufmann:
In discussing the new guaranteed income pilot in Jackson, you recently told Essencemagazine that “poverty is the worst form of violence” and “we cannot afford to recycle the same economies of humiliation.” Can you talk a little bit about these two ideas?
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba:
Poverty being the worst form of violence is ultimately the place that Martin Luther King Jr. came to when he saw that a lot of his efforts towards addressing social issues were limited in that we weren’t talking about how people share goods, resources, and power. If you can’t really get to that place, then ultimately [solutions are going to come up short]. On issues of race, for example, it’s more than a question of color—it’s a question of ideas. What are the worst ideas and what are the best ideas? And one of the worst ideas is that you can be exploitative of anyone. The result is that we have mothers, for example, who can’t accommodate their and their children’s basic needs, and this leads to these cycles of humiliation where you see poverty, you see blighted communities, you see a high crime rate, poor-performing education—you see all of these things that stack one on top of another and lead to depressed communities.
Greg Kaufmann:
In contrast to economies of humiliation, you’ve talked about building a “dignity economy.” What is a dignity economy?
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba:
A “dignity economy” is an economy that focuses on the inherent dignity of everyone. This discussion about guaranteed income is not new to me, and I was delighted to see that Springboard to Opportunities was bringing it to [Jackson]. It is something that has been explored in other countries, and there has been some demonstrated success, and where we see glaring inequity in our society we would be foolish not to find every possible mechanism to address it. But this is just one mechanism, and I am not ignorant of the limitations that exist there. Ultimately, we want people to be able to live the self-determined lives that they want and need. How do we become more self-determined, more self-sufficient? How can we control our education, control the infrastructure problems in our community, support our parents and our mothers and children in every possible way?









