A basic income helps to solve their alternate causes – it frees up activists to pursue a larger agenda.
Machin, et al, 2017 - director of community partnerships & programing at The Undercommons [Andres with Kate Kendall, director of development, and Hal Kuehn, general operations. The Undercommons is a freedom school that was started at UCLA to provide oppressed peoples' social movements with the resources housed at universities. May 3 “No Racial Justice Without Basic Income” https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/undercommons-no-racial-justice-without-basic-income/ Acc 3/22/23 TA] ***Note – Machin refers to UBI+ as supplement. His use is different from other authors.
A guaranteed income would also give activists and organizers within marginalized communities more space to work on the myriad problems a basic income would not solve. Many people working for a more just world get little to no pay for their work. In a world with basic income, activists would not have to work a day job or constantly hustle to get by, but would be able to give their lives to agitating for other causes without the anxiety that comes from being financially precarious. For these reasons the Movement for Black Lives—a coalition of more than fifty black-led organizations seeking “radical transformation, not reactionary reform” for racial justice—released a six-point platform that included reparations for slavery and the institutional exclusion and disenfranchisement that followed. UBI+ alone would go a long way to improving security for all marginalized individuals and families in the United States, but a UBI+ coupled with a broader social vision of cooperative security, such as the one advanced by the Movement for Black Lives, could change the game. This vision would, wherever possible, embrace radical forms of cooperative security, from universal health care coverage to the abolition of both police and prisons.