This month we’re talking about environmental justice post Hurricane Katrina, the work behind tenant organizing and sustainable housing, long COVID realities, and participatory budgeting across the United States. 

 

 

Reflections 19 years after Katrina: The impacts of environmental racism and climate disasters cause devastating impacts to communities, putting Black communities disproportionately at risk. As we mark the 19th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, read a reflection of the learnings of Katrina, look through a communities’ reflection on the lives and memories lost in the storm, and join us in study with Race, Place, and The Environment in Post-Katrina New Orleans, by Environmental Justice Movement elders Dr. Robert D. Bullard and Dr. Beverly Wright. 

A Tenant Win in the Midst of Mass Displacement: In 1984, a community of Cambodian refugees in California worked together to organize safe housing in their community. After 40 years of investment, capacity building, non-profit development, and racist scrutiny from HUD, they are organizing for full control of their apartment complex. Their story colors the map of social housing, tenant unions, and housing rights wins in the United States – but so do the threats to it. This July, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order targeting unhoused communities with violent sweeps that destroy their shelter and displace them. Human Rights Watch says this criminalization “punishes people for living in poverty while ignoring and even reaffirming the causes of that poverty embedded in the economic system…” Read NEC member the Sustainable Economies Law Center’s demands to Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Gavin Newsome and follow POOR Magazine for houseless community-led solutions and frontline coverage of the sweeps.

COVID Surge & Community Care: The COVID-19 pandemic is not over, and the emphasis on individual safety is putting everyone at risk– particularly disabled people. In 2023, COVID-19 was dropped from public health emergency status and since then, over 3,000 Floridians have died from the virus. As the spread continues to be undermined by mask bans, research is expanding to understand long COVID, and viral activity in wastewater. Sign up here for action alerts to resist mask bans– even if you don’t live in a place considering them– or join People’s Hub on September 10th for the Community Care Clinic for Disabled and Chronically Ill Movement Folks.

“The People’s Money:” Cities from coast to coast are using participatory budgeting (PB) to return public dollars to the people and fund initiatives like local mental healthcare, community restrooms, Native Youth centers, community-led public safety, and emergency shelters. This summer, over 100,000 New Yorkers voted to fund 20 participatory budgeting projects, which will be implemented in the next year. In Seattle, City Council is seeking approval of $27 million to finally fund six participatory budgeting projects selected by Black, Indigenous, and justice-impacted people. But the PB seeds aren’t only growing in coastal cities– this PB map shows a constellation of projects from Chicago to San Antonio, with  progress to be made in rural communities. Want to know where and how to get something like this where you live? Check out NEC member the Participatory Budgeting Project for a start guide or apply to the PB seeds program coming to New Jersey this fall.

Congratulations to the Coalition for Worker Ownership and Power (COWOP) on three huge budget expansions supporting technical assistance for cooperatives in Massachusetts. May 2025 be the year of the Co-op!

 

 

• A Bronx Tale: Cooperativism in New York
• A National Tenants Union Has Arrived
• An Open Letter to California’s Philanthropic Leaders
• California’s Wealthy Wine Industry Routinely Endangers Health of Its Workers
• Comunidad trabaja para combatir la isla de calor de Baltimore | Community works to combat Baltimore heat island
• Defunding Racial Justice
• Help April Taylor Recover 
• Homeless Sweeps Are Expensive, Useless and Cruel, Human Rights Watch Charges
• Introduction to Solidarity Economy Districts
• Mutual Aid: The Soul of the Solidarity Economy 
• On a rural Hawaiian island, solar provides a path to energy sovereignty
• Petition aims to dismiss Atlanta’s bid to use Rico law against ‘Cop City’ activists
• The transformative power of Urban Recipe’s Atlanta food co-op model 

 

 

 

“The “PPP: People Practicing Power” workshop is a 2024 Highlander intervention ensuring our folks are equipped to protect themselves during this year’s election season, know who is running and what’s at stake, and begin experimenting with ways to build power between and beyond election cycles.”

PODCASTS & VIDEO

• Election time with Malkia Devich Cyril & Michelle Mascarenhas – How to Survive the End of the World Podcast
• People Practicing Power Series – Highlander Center 
• Social Innovation In Money Pooling Systems For Immigrant Women with Juliet Kego – Diverse Economies for Youth Podcast
• The People’s Push Back – Scene On Radio Podcast 
• What is Co-Governance? –  Partners for Dignity & Rights

 

TOOLS & CURRICULUM

• • A Beginners Guide to Divesting from Militarism – Resource Generation 
  • Black Disability Justice Syllabus – Sins Invalid 
  • Community Benefits Plans for Rural Electric Cooperatives – Rural Power Coalition 
  • Next Generation Democracy – Participatory Budgeting Project
  • The Financial Activist Discussion Guide Zine — Jasmine Rashid

 

Check out our NEC Resource Library for more tools, zines, and other ways to learn more about the Solidarity Economy

 

 

Base Building Director, Rogue Climate
Campaign Director, Permit Power
Director of Policy & Research, Center for Economic Democracy
Executive Director, Rogue Climate
Executive Assistant, Highlander Center
Lead Researcher, Transforming Finance
Solar for All Project Director, Clean Energy States Alliance
Senior Director of Development, Highlander Center

If you’re hiring, consider submitting to The Roundup.
For more opportunities, check out this job board from NEC member the Post Growth Institute!

 

 

 

Motherhouse: Starter Series
Starting September 3, 2024 and running for 6 weeks, this foundational course includes live teaching by over 15 incredible speakers, art, ritual, embodiment and prayer practices. Our goal is to help you connect the knowledge, spirit and practice of Mother Law to your own life and work, and to help build a movement to become Complicit No More with the forces that would destroy life and thriving for the planet and all beings. (Sept 3 – Oct 7 – Virtual) 

Highlander Center’s 92nd Homecoming: Breaking Ground and Building Community
Homecoming is our favorite weekend of the year at Highlander – every September we bring together hundreds of movement family from around the globe who join for fellowship, learning and strategizing, singing and dancing, and deepening relationships over a meal, a beautiful view of the mountains, or in the quiet moments the Hill provides. (Sept 7 – Knoxville, TN)

Financial Activism 101: Moving Money And Power With Jasmine Rashid
Join us this September for a transformative event led by author and activist Jasmine Rashid! In a world shaped by “The Great Wealth Transfer” and unprecedented “Financialization,” this is a radical and timely offering for everyday individuals to empower themselves and reshape our economy collectively. (Sept 10 – Virtual)

Book Launch Party for The Financial Activist Playbook!
Join Oakland-based financial activist, author, and impact investor Jasmine Rashid and her community for a joy-filled evening of reclaiming wealth and collective well-being, as we celebrate the release of The Financial Activist Playbook (Sept 12 – Oakland, CA)

Facilitating Cooperation: Embracing Complexity and Navigating Uncertainty with Collective Power
What does it take to facilitate a meeting and be able to address the complexity and the unexpected while moving your work forward effectively? How do you set up a flow for your team to listen and adapt as a facilitator? Come to this free webinar to learn cooperative practices* to listen in your facilitation, engage your team members and self, and align the collective. (Sept 15 – Virtual)

Escaping Corporate Capture
What is “corporate capture” and how can people escape its effects—in our politics, our culture, our daily life, and in the nonprofit sector? How do people, in short, build an actual everyday politics and economics of liberation? This was the organizing question for the summer 2024 issue of Nonprofit Quarterly. To addresses this question and expand upon their contributions, three authors from NPQ’s summer economic justice magazine will explore the concept of corporate capture and how movement-based groups can build viable escape routes to advance economic justice. (Sept 18 – Virtual)

Cooperative Caregiving for Elders and Children
Join Texas Rural Cooperative Center Director Annelies Lottmann to explore real-world examples of caregiver-owned co-ops as well as parent and family-owned cooperatives working to make great care a reality even within the constraints of our current private pay system. (Sept 18 – Virtual) 

Through the Portal
Join us for a pivotal gathering as a thousand artists, activists, and scholars converge in Chicago to culminate the Portal Project. This two-year, movement-driven symposium has ignited debates, dialogue, and collective envisioning on critical questions of justice, power, solidarity, and change. (Sept 20-22 – Chicago, IL)

Why Can’t the People Govern? Understanding the Fundamental Flaws of Our Democracy
From ceasefire to gun regulation, we are experiencing in real time the continual inability to translate the popular will into tangible policy change and changed material conditions for people’s lives. Join us for a webinar, led by Max Berger, co-founder of the Democracy Revival Center and co-founder of Momentum, to understand just how our political system is rigged. We’ll explore the US political system–from the electoral college to court systems– to better understand how we can win our demands and transform society. In order to understand how to win, we need to better understand the problem. And the good news is, political systems can change and have. (Sept 25 – Virtual)

Black Climate Leadership Summit (Climate Week Week NYC)
Sign up for the latest updates and info about this event hosted by Taproot Noire. (Sept 26 – NYC)

Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice
The first annual Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice will address the links between war, militarism and climate injustice, promoting grassroots action and policy making for peace and climate justice. This year’s theme is divest from war – invest in climate justice! The Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice will run yearly, involving a wide range of events and actions organized by groups around the world, from webinars to advocacy events to demonstrations. Check out the website for the week of action. (Sept 21-28 – Hybrid) 

An Anti-Colonial People’s Economic History of the Americas
This workshop brings together economic histories from across the Americas with the intention of looking at how these geographies have realized different forms of social organization and efforts to create well-being across time and space. Many indigenous economic practices have persisted in spite of genocide and epistemicide. We hope to debate, explore, question and practice the first economies of the Abya Yala, Turtle Island, Mikinoc Waajew, Cem Anáhuac and all of the ways that we might know what is now called the Americas. (Sept 29 – Nov 17 – Online) 

Discover the Benefits of Worker Co-ops
In this webinar, we’ll learn what it means to be a values focused business and practice the cooperative principles. We’ll talk about the basics of starting a worker owned business and look at some examples of start up planning. We’ll also discuss the benefits and challenges worker co-ops face from launching to doing business. (Nov 20 – Virtual)