Dr. Carmen Rojas spoke about her lifetime spent fighting for the rights of working people in a keynote address to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management.
David Weil, dean of the Heller School, sat down with Rojas for a discussion on her work as a “radical” philanthropist.
Rojas started the talk by mentioning her parents, who immigrated from South America to the U.S. in a critical period of social change and workers’ rights activism. She has taken these ideals that surrounded her when she was growing up to enact real change.
Rojas created a new philanthropy model with her foundation, Worker’s Lab. Her company pushes for collective bargaining, employee stock ownership, cooperative and certifications. The Workers’ Lab is different from other philanthropic organizations because of the employees. According to Rojas, the Workers’ Lab is made up entirely of people of color, as well as majority LGBTQ+ and majority immigrants.
Rojas is using her platform to help minorities. She said she is utilizing “innovation as a way to close the gaps… to bring the people who have been left behind to the current moment,” said Rojas. The Lab puts out a call for new innovation projects twice a year. Currently they are seeking projects involving new ways of looking at capitalism.
With the money she is giving to innovators, Rojas hopes she can inspire creativity. She mentioned that in a capitalist society, money is what harvests imagination.
She continued this idea by saying that often, philanthropic organizations are afraid to invest in risks, and that they use a “bank” like logic when deciding where to send their money. She also mentioned that philanthropic organizations are often sitting on 95 percent of money, while only giving 5 percent away.
When asked about the most pressing issue to American society, Rojas said that it was the fact that working citizens could still exist in poverty. How someone could work 40+ hours a week, and still not have enough to pay bills. Many other problems, like lack of healthcare and large debt, stem from this issue, Rojas said. She believes that these struggling people think they’re poor because of a bad choice they made when they were younger, rather than due to the systems set up to make them fail.
Rojas went on to talk about the new national foundation she is joining, The Marguerite Casey Foundation. She described this as the “perfect next place” for her career. This foundation, based in Seattle, is also committed to helping people of color. According to Rojas, 98 percent of the employees are people of color, with only two white people on the staff.
At this foundation, Rojas hopes to be the person who brings up topics that are often overlooked by other philanthropic organizations. She says that this is the most radical thing she can do, rather than radically change the government.
She acknowledged that private organizations are helping people and creating jobs, but she questioned whether this is the private sector’s responsibility rather than the government’s.
“Even the best nonprofits are privatizing functions of the government,” Rojas said.
The discussion ended with a Q&A from the audience.
When asked about her usage of the word radical to describe herself and her actions, Rojas said that she takes radical to mean socially just. She mentioned how the term “socially just” has become diluted to signify any little action someone takes.
“For me, social justice is fighting white supremacy… fighting for climate change and our planet,” Rojas said. “Social justice is good, we just have to be radical.”
To finish off the presentation, Dean Weil asked Rojas who her “social justice hero” was, her biggest inspiration. Rojas replied with Brandeis alumna Angela Davis ’65, who taught her that she can be the “protagonist in shaping the future we want to see.”
