About Us

Begun in 2004, The Opportunity Agenda works to ensure that the United States lives up to its promise as the land of opportunity for every person who lives here.  To offer true opportunity, we believe our nation must acknowledge and address the barriers that keep people from achieving their full potential.  When we find these barriers—such as limited access to health care, over-reliance on prisons, racial or gender bias—we must work together as a society to eliminate them.  Accordingly, The Opportunity Agenda, through an integrated strategy of communications, research, and advocacy, works with social justice organizations and leaders to connect with core American values and expand the constituency for opportunity in the United States.

The Opportunity Agenda works across social justice issues to build public support for greater opportunity in America.  With a growing community of partners that spans diverse issues and constituencies—human rights, racial equality, immigration, health care, labor rights, education, criminal justice, and others—we work to move hearts and minds as well as public policy and political discourse.  Over time, our activities will achieve: (1) measurably better media coverage that shifts the public debate; (2) visibly improved public support for social justice values and policies; and (3) greater capacity within social justice organizations and movements to communicate our shared values and vision for America. 

Over the last year, we have worked to increase public support for a just rebuilding of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, policies that integrate immigrants into the fabric of American life, diversity in public schools under threat by the Supreme Court, and other aspects of opportunity for all.  In addition to those efforts, The Opportunity Agenda is now working to promote social justice values and solutions leading up to the 2008 presidential elections.  You can find more information about our current programs here. 

The Opportunity Agenda is a project of the Tides Center.