Response from Taylor Jo Isenberg, Vice President of Networks at Roosevelt Institute: Thank you for the comments from all. The heart of the assessment – e.g. that work should be paid for, not least of all by an organization like the Roosevelt Institute that promotes broadening prosperity and fair labor practices — is dead on, and Roosevelt will be posting a revised version of the Pipeline blogging opportunity soon to reflect that. Still, this discussion provides opportunity for clarification. Among its many pillars of activity, the Roosevelt Institute supports two membership-based networks - one of undergraduate students and one of young professionals. The goal of our civic organization is to ensure that young people can participate in larger policy conversations, where there are often high barriers to entry. We are fortunate that we have many emerging writers and policy thinkers requesting an opportunity to post their work on our professional blog, the Next New Deal. We devised the writing opportunity on the New Guard blog, which is an NND sideblog, as a way to provide an outlet for new writers who have requested support in developing their voices. The New Guard is conceived as an incubator for new writers and does not require a fixed time commitment and is not a position; we used language in the posting that mangled and misstated our intentions, for which we apologize. As a membership based organization, we simply hope to elevate those who desire to be active citizens and have perspectives that should be valued.To restate, the Roosevelt Institute is committed to progressive workplace practices: We pay all of our interns, and stipend our student member leadership for their volunteer time.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 21:18:26 +0000