Last Thursday, only three weeks before a monumental interest rate decision by the Fed, CPD and Fed Up activists went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to make sure that the voices of working families and communities of color play a central role in the deliberations of our nation’s central bank. The campaign delivered 119,000 signatures to Fed officials, calling on them to prioritize wage growth and job creation.

While Fed officials held their annual policy symposium, over 100 low-wage workers, organizers, and economists from every one of the Fed’s 12 regions around the country joined CPD and Fed Up for our own alternative policy conference called Whose Recovery? A National Convening on Inequality, Race, and the Federal Reserve. As the Huffington Post put it, “the size of Fed Up’s delegation of activists and presence of prominent economists—including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz—attests to the rapid growth of a once-unlikely campaign that began just a year ago.” 

The Federal Reserve is the nation’s most important economic policymaking body. But for too long, only the voices of Wall Street bankers and corporate executives have reached inside its marble walls. Over the past 12 months, that has finally begun to change. In November, Fed Up met with Fed Chair Janet Yellin, Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, and Governors Lael Brainard and Jerombe Powell. Since then, Fed Up coalition partners and their members have sat down for extensive meetings with six of the Fed’s 12 regional presidents—in Boston, New York, Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City, and San Francisco. On Friday, the new presidents of the Philadelphia and Cleveland Feds also agreed to meet as well, and we’re in discussions with the remaining four. Meetings, of course, are only the first step: after that, we need to see the Fed adopt policies that create genuine full employment for all. 

You can view more photos from this year’s convening on our Flickr page.