David beats Goliath!: How the little guy beat the mega-corporation
With all the Republican obstructionism and Democratic spinelessness in Washington, not to mention the distractions of the Obamacare website, it can be hard to feel good about politics at all — let alone tap into the sort of optimism that inspires and motivates many of us in the first place. Here, then, is a story of a small statewide organization that brought a multi-billion-dollar, multinational corporation to heel.
Minnesota has the worst-in-the-nation racial jobs gap. In 2011, for instance, 18 percent of African Americans in the Twin Cities were unemployed — more than three times the unemployment rate for whites in the city. This stems from broader problems in the criminal justice system in which Minnesota has historically had one of most disproportionate rates of incarceration for African Americans as compared with whites. While, thanks to criminal justice reform, that rate has fallen — from 23:1 in the 1980s and 90s to 9:1 in 2005, that still means a lot of African Americans in Minnesota have a criminal record stemming not just from their past wrongdoings but from a skewed criminal justice system that convicted and sentenced African Americans more frequently and harshly than whites.
One step in unraveling these dynamics and helping close the racial jobs gap in Minnesota would be gaining equal access to jobs for those with criminal records. The statewide community organization TakeAction Minnesota wanted to pass a state law to “ban the box” on job applications that asks whether potential employees have a criminal history. Since the whole idea of prison supposedly incorporates our belief in redemption and a shot at a second chance, then discriminating against a disproportionately African American ex-convict population in employment opportunities is counterproductive in terms of criminal justice policy as well as economic development. And a group of TakeAction members with criminal records were passionate about making this change.
But, says TakeAction’s executive director Dan McGrath,“the problem with trying to change state policy is that when you walk into the state capitol, the lines on the playing field are already drawn.” So TakeAction worked outside of the capitol to try and open up some political space for change. And Target was the perfect, well, target.
