04 Restructure Design’s Relationship to Power, Capital & Our Labor

Design Justice demands we eliminate exploitative labor practices that perpetuate power and capital accumulation for the few and instead reorganize our workforce to produce value that is equitably and widely distributed among the many.

Capitalism is a system characterized by the tenets of individualism, accumulation of wealth, destructive resource extraction, and social alienation. This system reinforces a racialized class structure designed to disproportionately benefit white people through the exploitation of Black, Brown, Indigenous & Asian labor, and by preventing communities of color from exercising full political agency. We can and must design a system focused on ensuring the greatest number of people can live dignified lives in healthy communities while exercising collective autonomy. 

As workers in the design industries, we are committed to organizing our labor so that we are no longer contractually beholden the capitalist class. We demand that the means of production are democratized, and that we are collective owners and managers of our workplaces. This shift in the locus of power and valuation of labor must ripple out and manifest in design work that equitably redistributes power and wealth to historically marginalized Black, Brown, Indigenous & Asian communities and supports an economy of mutual aid, not exploitation and extraction.