People over Programs: Alum Promotes Guaranteed Income.

People over Programs: Alum Promotes Guaranteed Income
As East Coast partnership director at the national nonprofit UpTogether, alum Jessica (Taubner) Ridge engages philanthropic and government partners to make direct cash investments in individuals and families facing financial hardship.
If there was a silver lining to COVID, Jessica Ridge (SPH’07) says, it was the increased awareness stimulus checks brought to the concept of giving people cash as both an efficient and effective alternative to traditional social assistance programs.
The federal government moved a lot of dollars to make it possible for local governments to provide people financial assistance, first, through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and then through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), she says. According to the Internal Revenue Service, between March 2020 and March 2021, the government distributed more than 476 million payments totaling $814 billion to US households.
“Something about the worldwide impact of the pandemic thrust inequities into the spotlight, and, especially in the US, created this opening where more philanthropic entities and more governments were able to see cash as a possible solution to the devastating economic experiences of families,” says Ridge (formerly Taubner), who witnessed the shift firsthand as East Coast partnership director for the national anti-poverty organization UpTogether.
Prior to COVID, UpTogether (previously Family Independence Initiative), operated in 12 cities, including Boston, Ridge says. She began volunteering with the nonprofit around the same time she began working in local politics in 2010. After nearly eight years supporting former City Councilor At-Large Ayanna Pressley, first as her policy director, then as her campaign manager, and finally as her chief of staff, Ridge took a full-time position as UpTogether’s Greater Boston Site Director in 2018. The scope of the organization’s work has since expanded to other cities and states across the country, she says, leading to the evolution of her current role.
As a partnership director, Ridge helps promote and facilitate direct financial investment in historically undervalued communities. For a long time, she says, the welfare system has operated based on paternalistic, racist stereotypes of the people it is intended to serve. UpTogether aims to change the system with its focus on three pillars: community, capital, and choice.
Anyone can join the UpTogether community; the nonprofit provides an online platform for its members to connect, learn from one another, and share their stories. UpTogether then partners with philanthropies, local government agencies, and other funders to lead and support direct financial assistance projects, enabling eligible individuals and families to receive unrestricted cash.
Rather than giving out food stamps or housing vouchers, UpTogether dispenses cash payments via direct deposit, gift card, Venmo, PayPal, Apple Pay, or Google Pay, says Ridge. Recipients are then free to spend the money however they choose. The idea, she says, is that people living in poverty are the experts, and they know best what they need.
“This is not a new concept—in the late 60s, both the Black Panthers and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for guaranteed income,” says Ridge. But while UpTogether has dabbled in providing various forms of unconditional cash assistance since it was founded in 2001, the idea did not receive national attention until 2020 when Andrew Yang ran for president on the promise that he would give $1,000 monthly checks to every American adult.
Around the same time that Yang’s universal basic income proposal was gaining traction, a few seminal studies were beginning to pilot guaranteed income, a targeted form of direct financial assistance. Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT) in Jackson, Mississippi gave twenty low-income Black mothers $1,000 a month for a year beginning in December 2018. Intended to disrupt generational poverty by targeting one of society’s most marginalized communities, MMT has since become the longest running guaranteed income program in the country after four cycles.
Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, California used his city’s successful guaranteed income pilot in 2019 to launch the initiative Mayors for Guaranteed Income. Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui joined the network in 2021 and subsequently announced Cambridge RISE (Recurring Income for Success and Empowerment), a $22 million commitment to address a growing economic divide and racial inequities. The first city-wide program of its kind, RISE offered 130 low-income Cambridge households $500 per month, no-strings-attached, for 18 months. The payments were handled by UpTogether.
By and large, data shows funds from guaranteed income go towards basic needs first and foremost, says Ridge, who assisted on RISE and is currently collaborating on similar pilots in Boston and Connecticut. “And then, often what we see is [recipients] are utilizing it to further whatever their dreams are. So, in some cases, that is accessing education. Sometimes, it is completing a degree. It may be supporting their children in their education. In some cases, it is sharing with their community.”
Ridge looks forward to harnessing the findings of UpTogether’s various guaranteed income pilots to promote policy change. She is especially keen to follow-up with participants and gather qualitative data about their experiences. As an MPH student at the School of Public Health, Ridge recalls discussing with her advisor Eugene DeClercq how statistical evidence does not always hold sway in the political arena.
“Sometimes when we come from a place of means, it’s easy to forget what cash enables us to do,” says Ridge. She hopes that by including people with lived experience in the development of future cash assistance pilots and elevating their personal stories, UpTogether can change both hearts and minds.
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