Matt Watkins

The Future of Work Must Belong to Workers ​A call for a new labor Bill of Rights in the age of automation.

We can build a new social contract for the automated age—a Labor Bill of Rights that reclaims the meaning of work and the purpose of progress.

That contract should rest on three pillars: profit sharing, a national transition fund, and public oversight, says @mattwatkinspolicy.bsky.social.

"Poverty can seem like an abstract concept in the philanthropic world — something to analyze rather than experience."
https://phlnthrp.com/3LBtdlt

The US Has Become a Democracy of Insufficient Funds ​We achieved universal political rights at the exact historical moment when we dismantled the material conditions that make those rights real.

Unlike a liquidated bank, democracy can be rebuilt. The question is whether we will choose to rebuild it on foundations that can actually support what we claim to value, says @mattwatkinspolicy.bsky.social.

Why Philanthropy’s Democracy Talk Turns People Off Here are the words that leave average Americans cold — and the language that could connect them to the billion-dollar fight to strengthen the country.

Opinion: What democracy's defenders gets wrong about "democracy" — a guide to words that put off average Americans and the language that will renew their faith and connect them to the billion-dollar fight to strengthen our country.
https://phlnthrp.com/474WVYq

The No Kings Protests Proved That Seeing and Naming the Problem Is Not Enough ​What do we do when 7 million people can see clearly and it changes nothing? When recognition is no longer power but only knowledge of the condition we are trapped inside?

We are not living in a failure of awareness. We are living in the space after awareness, in the gap between recognition and power, and that gap is where the system has learned to thrive, says @mattwatkinspolicy.bsky.social.

The Quiet Shuttering of a Main Street Lending Program Will Make Inequality Worse What looks like administrative housekeeping represents the dismantling of one of the most effective tools the federal government ever created to help working people and local economies build wealth.

If the CDFI Fund stays dead, we will have chosen a particular vision of what government is for, and it is a grim one. Government becomes landlord and cop, the entity that collects and enforces but does not build, says @mattwatkinspolicy.bsky.social.

My new column at @chronphilanthropy.bsky.social

Why Male Suicide Prevention Requires Policy, Not Just Awareness | Common Dreams ​On this Suicide Prevention Day, the question is whether we will stop treating male suicide as a seasonal headline and start treating it as a preventable epidemic.

Suicide is not inevitable. It rises when supports are stripped and stigma is reinforced, writes @mattwatkinspolicy.bsky.social: www.commondreams.org/opinion/male...

Our September issue is live! Amid the chaos of 2025, nonprofits are reinventing themselves to survive. Some are looking to partnerships as a lifeline. This month's magazine details how charities are adapting and innovating.

Dive into the issue: www.philanthropy.com/issue/current

Sneak peek at the cover of the September issue! Amid the chaos of 2025, nonprofits are reinventing themselves to survive. Some are looking to partnerships as a lifeline. This month's magazine details how charities are adapting and innovating. The issue drops on Tuesday, September 9.

Every day of delay bleeds value. A retrofit not installed means another summer of unbearable bills. A pump not delivered means another year of hauling water. A roof not secured means another tarp, another moldy wall, another child growing up in a house that never dries. A dollar spent today prevents five dollars in damage tomorrow. A dollar withheld compounds harm. The storm does not wait for petitions. The fire does not wait for oral arguments. The flood does not wait for a court’s sense of timing.

As Matt Watkins writes in @commondreams.org, the delay isn't just about @climateunited.bsky.social or federal contracts or even appeals courts. It's about the EPA gaslighting us about the crisis we're facing, and Trump Administration executive overreach.

www.commondreams.org/opinion/cour...

By Keeping Climate Funds on Ice, the DC Circuit Is Complicit in Trump’s Overreach | Common Dreams By refusing to act, the DC Circuit has turned oversight into obstruction, procedure into punishment, as it helps the executive hollow out Congress’ most basic power.

But history will record something else. The money was there. The need was there. The chance was there. And power chose not to use it. That is not oversight. That is abdication, writes @mattwatkinspolicy.bsky.social:
www.commondreams.org/opinion/cour...

My most recent article @slate.com

Trump Is Threatening to Send the Troops to Another Blue City. It’s Clear What This Is Really About. These deployments are political theater—but the stakes are still incredibly high.

This is not the work of government, but a choreography of fear. slate.trib.al/lBGZ5bB

This is the way.

Hey - I agree with you completely. My argument is that we have to learn to communicate outside our echo chambers.

I did my best to acknowledge that in the article - if that did not come across, that's on me. However, if you read it in good faith I think you'll find I do acknowledge that.

The Most Urgent Lesson for Democrats to Take From Trump’s D.C. Deployment Democrats keep making the same mistake—and they need to learn from it before Trump sends the National Guard into another city.

My latest article in @slate.com : The lesson from D.C. is clear — creeping authoritarianism isn’t stopped by warning the water’s rising. It’s stopped by fixing the leak, by making people so secure in their daily lives they never look to the strongman in the first place.

slate.com/news-and-pol...

Housing in America Has Always Been a Moral Test. We Keep Failing. There was a time—at least in the telling—when to be American meant to come home.

Quick overview of Trump executive order & how it lines with our housing policy history

The Not-So-Great Society: Disappearing the Poor in the Name of Order In January 1964, President Lyndon B.

Thoughts on #Trump inhumane executive order on #homelessness.

Philanthropy’s Trigger Words — and How to Make Your Message Clear You say ‘equity.’ They hear ‘exclusion.’ Strategies for getting everyone on the same page.

Opinion: Philanthropy has more than its share of trigger words. Thanks to polarization, the strategic plans of nonprofits and philanthropy routinely collapse over a single word or phrase like "equity" or "civility."
phlnthrp.com/44yqK29
#TheCommons

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