Pursuing Justice, Power and Property for the Voiceless, Hopeless and Despair.

Welcome to the new website and knowledge center of The Descendants of American Slaves for Economic and Social Justice at www.DAS4ESJ.org. DAS4ESJ is a non-profit educational organization and community-focused social action catalyst.

DAS4ESJ was formed in 2019 to promote and educate all citizens on the fundamental principles of Economic Justice and Social Justice. Our mission is to encourage participatory systemic change based on the philosophy of “Personalism”, based on the dignity and empowerment of each human person.

We are dedicated to an equal opportunity, free enterprise growth model that targets the roots of poverty, racism, greed and other violations of fundamental human rights. Our initiatives will be designed to benefit not only Descendants of American Slaves but every child, woman and man, including Descendants of Native Americans, Descendants of Immigrants, and Descendants of American Slave Owners.

Our motto is “Own or Be Owned.”

Equality of economic opportunity means more than simply having jobs and welfare. It means that every person should have the equal right and opportunity to be both a worker (owning one’s own labor) and a capital owner (owning one’s own wealth-producing land, advanced productive technologies and other productive assets).

Being an owner means being able to contribute through both your labor and your capital to — and receive your share of earnings from — the production of marketable goods and services sold within a just, free and non-monopolistic market system.

However, to achieve a more participatory and just market economy we must lift artificial barriers in the Monetary, Political and Legal Systems that prevent most people in the world from access to private property (the rights of ownership) in productive capital.

DAS4ESJ is committed to lifting barriers to universal and equal access to future ownership opportunities. If we don’t lift these barriers the rich will simply become richer, and the rest of us will remain trapped as wage slaves, welfare slaves, charity slaves and consumer debt slaves.

Change the system, spread the power.

There is a way out of this trap, a way that doesn’t require taking income and wealth from the “haves” and giving to the “have-nots.” People without savings can and have become owners through equal personal access to insured capital credit through tax-sheltered trusts repayable with the full pretax stream of future profits.

This can be achieved without government redistribution or taxpayer money. Through major monetary, financial, tax, inheritance, education and labor law reforms America (and all nations) could encourage faster, non-inflationary and environmentally sound rates of growth at all local, national, regional and global levels with radically reduced needs for ever-increasing government deficits. We call our program for economically empowering every citizen, the “Economic Democracy Act.”

What Makes Us Different

DAS4ESJ is more than just an organization delivering programs to relieve the symptoms of a defective and corrupt system that divides Americans today. We at DAS4ESJ are dedicated to working together with every person and organization willing to attack underlying causes and change the unjust status quo.

DAS4ESJ will promote and implement principles of “Justice” to enable all social institutions to become more participatory and more effective. These will include the family; academia; organized religions; national and regional central banks; national, state, and local political systems; business, financial, and insurance corporations; labor unions; citizen ownership unions; the criminal justice system; and all other social justice institutions.

DAS4ESJ will promote peaceful “people power” to help shape new policies and systems. We will speak truth to those in power. We will challenge social and economic institutions that systematically exploit the poor, concentrate power, capital ownership and incomes in a few people, while blocking the majority of citizens from equal future economic opportunities.

Addressing a 21st Century Reality

As robots, artificial intelligence and other technologies eliminate many jobs, we must enable every person to own and receive the profits from the new technologies that are generating faster rates of economic growth. This will free every person to shift from economic (subsistence) work to work he or she would love to do for the common good, the unlimited “creative work of civilization.”

DAS4ESJ is committed to turning our vision into reality, guided by:

** The words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed in his letter written while sitting in a Birmingham jail cell; “Injustice anywhere, is a threat to Justice everywhere.”

** The vision of Louis O. Kelso’s binary economic theory; principles of Economic Justice; advanced monetary, financing, and tax and inheritance concepts— as applied in DAS4ESJ’s “Economic Democracy Act” and ownership democratization vehicles for community, regional, national and global development;

** The insights on “Social Justice” and Justice-Based Leadership, Governance and Management concepts for building bottom-up organizational cultures of ownership, servant-teacher leadership, and justice.

Getting Back on Track

In 1820, more than 30 years after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, statesman Daniel Webster declared: “Power naturally and necessarily follows property.” Today, both property (especially in income-producing wealth) and power are becoming more and more concentrated.

The “Poor Peoples Campaign” of the 1960s was a model of Social Justice in mobilizing non-violent people power to end racist segregation laws and gain universal access to the vote. Unfortunately, the Campaign never demanded universal access to capital ownership and the power that comes with private property.

With the vote in hand, the civil rights movement limited its economic demands to increased “government-created jobs and welfare,” ignoring the ever-increasing control over money power by a tiny elite. Today the richest 1% of Americans own more income-producing property than the bottom 90% of the American people. Globally, eight of the richest world citizens own more income-producing assets than over 3.5 billion world citizens.

It’s time we use our votes and people power to demand equal opportunity and access to the means for every person to become an owner of productive capital.

NEWS & MEDIA