The ballot box is an economic instrument—and Black America is living the proof.
The numbers don’t lie, even when we wish they would. Black unemployment sits at 7.5 percent, the highest it’s been in years. More than 400,000 Black workers are out of a job. The Voting Rights Act, the crown jewel of the civil rights movement, is being systematically dismantled. In less than two years, the economic and political ground beneath Black America has shifted in ways that will take a generation to repair.
At the Global Black Economic Forum Business Summit at ESSENCE Festival, we are convening the nation’s top Black political and business leaders around that reality—because the systematic efforts to dismantle Black political and economic power demand more than discussion. They demand action. And they require a plan.
We did not get here by accident.
Yes, Republicans have waged open war on Black progress. But we cannot have an honest conversation about where we are without reckoning with the other side of this equation: the Democratic Party’s quiet, sustained disinvestment from the people who have kept it alive. Black voters helped build this Party and deliver its victories cycle after cycle. Yet we do not share proportionately in its power, resources, or ownership.
I have spent 25 years at the highest levels of Democratic politics—inside presidential campaigns, the White House, and Congress. And in every cycle, I have watched the same scene play out. Black operatives, organizers, and strategists are begging, in the final 30 days, for the resources to turn out Black voters that the Party cannot win without. We are treated not as partners, but as a tool. Useful at the finish line. Forgotten at the table.
The Democratic Party’s own autopsy of the 2024 presidential election confirms what many of us have known for years. Eight billion dollars flowed across the Democratic ecosystem—and Black communities and Black-owned firms received approximately one percent. That money was concentrated among a handful of firms and decision-makers whose strategy was self-preservation and enrichment, not victory. Black people are now living in the wreckage of those choices.
The consequences of this system are measurable. Since 2012, Black voter support for the Democratic Party has eroded in direct correlation to where the money has not gone. The trust gap widens every cycle. Thirty-five percent of Black women now say neither party represents their interests. That is not apathy. That is a verdict. And it forces us to ask ourselves: why do we keep investing in a system that refuses to invest in us?
This is not just an electoral problem. It threatens Black economic and political power. Every dollar that flows through the Democratic Party ecosystem is an opportunity to build Black infrastructure, Black firms, Black media, Black organizing capacity. Power compounds when it is invested. It atrophies when it is extracted. We have been on the wrong end of that equation for too long.
So, what do we do?
First, we demand equitable investment—codified, not promised. The Congressional Black Caucus recently sent letters rightly demanding answers from corporations about abandoning diversity commitments. That same energy must be applied to the Party itself and every entity in its ecosystem. Black voters bear the heaviest burden of Democratic failures. We are entitled to a commensurate share of Democratic resources. This must be a condition agreed to by the Democratic ecosystem and the next presidential nominee before we organize a single precinct.
Second, we demand power sharing with authority, not just a seat at the table. In every state where Black voters are the margin of victory, we must control budgets and strategy, not just execute it. No more gatekeepers whose financial interests are driving decisions and determining who becomes a line item.
Third, and this is where Black elites must lead, we need to fund what the Party refuses to build. Every cycle, Democrats spend millions studying suburban swing voters and white persuasion targets. There is no comparable investment in understanding the community that forms the backbone of the entire coalition. We have the wealth and influence to change that.
The moment calls for a Black Innovation Lab, a well-resourced initiative that brings together the sharpest minds across politics, technology, economics, marketing, and culture. Its mandate: to understand Black communities with the rigor campaigns apply to battleground suburbs. To identify emerging trends. To test new approaches to mobilization. To build a governing agenda that reflects Black priorities and to develop the next generation of Black political leadership.
This is not about saving the Democratic Party. It’s about building and securing Black power for Black people.
The Democratic Party cannot win the most competitive state and national elections without Black voters. But Black voters can no longer afford a relationship built on loyalty without investment, representation without authority, and promises without accountability.
To every Black American who has shown up, voted, organized, and invested in this democracy, the question is no longer whether the Party will fix this on its own. It will not. The question is whether we are prepared to demand more, invest in ourselves, and build the infrastructure that turns Black political power from a campaign asset into something permanent.
The bill has come due. It’s time we collected.
Ashley Etienne is the CEO of Etienne & Saint, a strategic communications firm. She was the Communications Director for Vice President Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a Special Assistant to President Barack Obama.
