The Society for the Study of Social Problems inaugurated the first Agenda for Social Justice (Agenda) in 2004, with the vision of presenting sociologically informed solutions for persistent social problems, to policy makers and the general public. While this fifth version of the Agenda is the first to emphasize global social problems, global issues and global actions for social justice have been a growing part of each Agenda publication.

The 2004 Agenda was written during a period which saw many contentious, large-scale global justice demonstrations at meetings of the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other gatherings, in primarily wealthy nations, that were expanding neoliberalism to benefit wealthy countries, corporations, and individuals at the detriment of the poor and the planet. Dr. Jon Shefner reminded readers of the first Agenda, in a chapter on global economics and protest, that “Legislation to improve civil rights, labor rights, and widen political participation all had antecedents in citizen protest.”

In addition to protests against neoliberalism during the first decade of the 21st century, the World Social Forum (Forum) was expanding support, at its own annual meetings, for an alternative vision of a globalized world. The Forum sponsored open discussions and debates about solutions—enshrined in its founding Charter of Principles— to “the problems of exclusion and social inequality that the process of capitalist globalization with its racist, sexist and environmentally destructive dimensions is creating internationally and within countries.”

The first section of the 2008 Agenda was titled “Global Issues” and featured a four-chapter section addressing the vulnerabilities of immigrant children, migrant workers, and low-income communities to global injustices and climate change disasters. An additional chapter addressed the opening for global policies advancing social justice in Latin America, due to what some scholars called the “pink tide” of citizens electing more liberal or leftist governments.

Our 2012 Agenda included chapters about the challenges of immigrant women and the need for immigration reform. By the time of its August publication, Latin America’s pink tide began to recede to more conservative leaders that were less interested in challenging the orthodoxy of neoliberal globalization, and more interested in rolling back social programs addressing inequalities, as well as increasing authoritarian control.

Four years ago, in the 2012 edition of Agenda for Social Justice, I wrote about citizens’ frustration with Federal policy-making, their “growing anger around bipartisan decisions that go against the grain of public desire,” and their increasing support for policies advancing social justice. When I wrote that, many of the encampments of the Occupy Wall Street movement (OWS) had already been dismantled, but their calls for the country to address economic inequality had an impact on the 2012 election. President Obama was asked about OWS in a news conference of October 6, 2011. His response was, “I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel—that we had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country, all across Main Street.… the protestors are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.”

We continue to see this manifested in this year’s Presidential election cycle, where anti-establishment campaigns in both dominant political parties have garnered much popular support. Analysts say that the message of political and economic inequality has resonated with many voters on the left and the right who feel they have been left out and left behind in the economic recovery from the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. Thus, many Americans believe that establishment politicians no longer represent the interests of the people. Most 2015 studies show that income and wealth inequality, indeed, have risen over the last few decades, and have continued to rise since the 2012 publication of Agenda for Social Justice, by some measures, to record levels.

Times when Federal policies have decreased social inequality

There are two historical periods where economic inequality and/ or poverty were significantly reduced in the United States due to an expansion of federal policies, programs, and funds investing in a social safety net: the first being in the years following Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) ‘New Deal’ programs implemented from 1933 to 1938 to stave off the Great Depression, and the second, in the years following Lyndon Baines Johnson’s (LBJ) Great Society programs of 1964 to 1969.