For decades, the Open Society Foundations have worked to advance justice and human rights in Africa, the Middle East and trouble spots around the world. But the OSF’s latest major investment is aimed at a crisis closer to home.
On Tuesday, the organisation, founded by the billionaire philanthropist George Soros and headquartered in New York, announced a $300m spend aimed at boosting economic security and defending civil liberties in the US.
The drastic commitment comes 16 months into Donald Trump’s second term as president, with millions of Americans suffering an affordability crisis and activists warning of an extraordinary attack on the rule of law.
“We certainly believe that civil society is essential and must stay on the playing field,” said Laleh Ispahani, managing director for the US at the OSF. “We’ve had experience in other countries, unfortunately, where civil society has been targeted by autocratic administrations. It does matter that we still are funding in most parts of the world and are very much in communication with one another as things are happening in the US.”
Soros has given more than $32bn of his personal fortune to causes around the world. He is also a longtime Democratic donor and favourite bogeyman for the right. The attacks frequently rely on antisemitic tropes, framing Soros – a Jewish survivor of the Nazi occupation in Hungary – as a “globalist” puppet master.
Asked whether the foundation was prepared for an inevitable backlash accusing Soros of meddling in US democracy, Ispahani sounded unfazed, saying: “We fully expect that. We wouldn’t expect anything less.
“But we also won’t be intimidated into silence. We think our work has never mattered more. It matters most in places when democracy is under attack, when rights are being rolled back and peaceful dissent is being criminalised. We expect it, we’re prepared for it and we will keep at it.”
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For decades, reformers have often operated in silos, focusing their energies either squarely on democratic rights or exclusively on economic justice. OSF’s new initiative is designed to break down those barriers.
Ispahani explained: “What’s new and different and perhaps most distinct about this is that it’s a unified and focused effort. We want to fund this integrated strategy to improve our democracy by both modernising our rights and freedoms and reforming our economy as things that are two sides of the same coin, because when one suffers, inevitably the other does, too.”
The approach builds on a long tradition, from Franklin Roosevelt to Martin Luther King Jr, that links liberty to livelihood. “The thought is not necessarily a new one because proponents of the civil rights movement and Roosevelt-era New Deal understood that these things go hand in hand. We certainly need a new social compact today,” Ispahani added.
The urgency is driven by what the OSF perceives as an alarming reversal of fundamental protections, spearheaded by a rightwing majority on the supreme court. The 1950s and 1960s produced historic gains that transformed US society, according to Ispahani, but now the tide is turning rapidly.
“It’s pretty clear to us that today these rights are being rolled back, including the right to protest, civil rights and voting rights, with the supreme court’s recent decisions eviscerating very key protections of the civil rights era,” she said. “We had the supreme court putting a nail in the coffin of what was a very widely respected Voting Rights Act with its recent decision in the Louisiana v Callais case, so we’re back to this pre-60s moment in the world.”
To combat this, the OSF is advocating for an expansion of the civil rights paradigm to meet modern threats, from securing the right to elect representatives of the voter’s choice to combating new forms of discrimination in algorithmic and technology-driven bias.
The OSF has already committed $20m for this year to help organisations on the frontlines with strategic litigation, non-profit sector defence and efforts to track government corruption. Among them are the Roosevelt Institute, whose “good life” agenda focuses on dignity and affordability; the Groundwork Collaborative thinktank; the National Women’s Law Center; and state-level groups such as Living United for Change in Arizona.
The other central pillar of the $300m investment is economic security. Even in the wealthiest country in the world, the child poverty rate is 14.3%, estimated to affect about 10.4 million children. The top 20% of households currently capture more than half of all national income. Ispahani argues the current system is failing.
“Why not have moral and material rights that resonate across constituencies?” she said. “The right to a good job with fair wages and safe working conditions isn’t controversial.
“The right to stable and affordable housing is likely very popular. The right to accessible and affordable childcare is likely also very popular. The right to healthcare and bodily autonomy the same. The right to safe communities free from violence also the same. And the right to economic mobility and opportunity regardless of background the same.”
