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In this week’s roundup, we’re talking about the development (without displacement), homegrown internet, and the Poor People’s Campaign.
P.S. 2018 is our year—join us in dreaming and achieving a new vision of the future. Please consider giving today and help us build a new economy in 2018.
Stories from the Field
Rustbelt Revival: From net-zero homes to redeveloping shuttered schools, PUSH Buffalo is working to ensure that gentrification is not the theme of their city. Read about how to community is taking development into their own hands here.
Homegrown Internet: Rural America is going where Comcast won’t go and building its own high speed internet. Through rural electric co-ops—well positioned to start community-owned internet projects because they already own the infrastructure—rural areas are developing in the same way they built electricity in the 1930’s. Read more here.
City Farms: How do we go from urban gardening to actually growing our own food? The question is key to facing our dysfunctional food system and urban land farm trusts are a good place to start. Read more on the future of urban farming here.
The People’s Credit Union vs. POTUS: In Manhattan, the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union (LESPFCU) filed suit against Donald Trump over the illegal takeover of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB protects millions of Americans from unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices in the financial marketplace. Read more here.
Solidarity Economies Abroad
Solidarity Currency: Unstable internet connections lead a Brazilian town to create its own currency. The 'Gostoso' was put into circulation in 2011 and the solidarity bank of the city offer no interest micro-loans in the currency. Read more.
Catalan Co-op: The 2,000 member Catalan Integral Cooperative includes a financial co-op, a food pantry, a legal-aid desk, an open-source tool workshop, and its own local exchange currency. A new report looks at how the community operates. Read it here.
Nursery Hacks: Childcare makes up more than a quarter of the average family's income in the UK. In this parent-run nursery, families share the costs and labor in childcare by rotating work.
Resource: Poor People’s Campaign
50 years after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders launched a Poor People’s Campaign to organize towards transformative actions to address poverty, racism, and militarism in America, the Institute of Policy Studies issued a report and analysis of how far we’ve come on the core issues. Spoiler: not very far. Read the report here and plug-in with the recently re-launched #PoorPeoplesCampaign across the country!
Movement News
- Native American Tribes Join to File Lawsuit Against Trump Attack on Bears Ears National Monument
- Self-Governance – The Southern Movements Way
- Building an Alternative to Capitalism From the Ground Up
- Jeremy Corbyn tells Morgan Stanley: 'You're right, we are a threat'
- Lost Einsteins: The Innovations We’re Missing
- Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union Sues Donald Trump to Save the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Baby Boomer Retirement Means Now’s the Time for Worker-Owned Businesses
- The Moral Obligation to Provide Sanctuary
- Philando Castile’s Death Inspires Black Economic Movement
- How Not To Debate the Tax Plan
Network Coordinator, Cooperative Maine Business Alliance (Maine)
Operations Manager, NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives (New York)
Director of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, Economic Security Project (California)
Advocacy Center Director, Conservation Law Foundation (Massachusetts)
Communications Associate, Conservation Law Fund (Boston, MA)
Just Transition Loan Fund Project Steward, Climate Justice Alliance (Flexible)
Development Coordinator, Green Worker Cooperatives (New York)
Communications Director, Ella Baker Center (Oakland, CA)
Communications Director, Northern Plains Resource Council (Billings, Montana)
Various Positions, Cooperative Economics Alliance of NYC Jobs Board (New York City)
Senior Vice President, (various) Self-Help Credit Union (NC and California)
Upcoming Events
Transform Finance Institute for Social Justice
In its first three years, the Institute has brought together over 100 leaders, majority people of color, serving over 5 million individuals collectively. Over three days, participants learn how capital works, explore its relationship with communities, and imagine what it could do instead if grassroots leaders and activists were at the helm. For capital to become a force for good, we need social justice leaders like you to devise ways to engage with it and take it back. From NEC member, Transform Finance. (New York, December 8 – 10)
Financial Analysis for New Cooperatives
Are you interested in learning financial analysis for start-up co-ops? Session 3 of Cooperation Works!’s The Art and Science of Cooperative Development offers participants an in-depth training for understanding and performing feasibility analysis for new cooperatives. Participants will learn advanced Excel skills, research skills, how to perform cash-flow analysis, and to read and create multi-year projections and statements of operations. (Online, December 11 – 15)
The Future of Solidarity Economics in Jackson & Beyond
NEC members Democracy at Work, in support of Cooperation Jackson, will celebrate the release of 'Jackson Rising' with a presentation by Kali Akuno, as well as a roundtable discussion with world-renowned economist Richard Wolff, political economist Jessica Gordon Nembhard, and 2017 New York City council candidate Jabari Brisport. The conversation will map the successes and struggles of Cooperation Jackson, the need for an emergence of a new politics that will advance worker-owned cooperatives and thereby democratize the economy, and how to navigate the electoral/political terrain under a movement for solidarity economics in the era of Donald Trump. (Brooklyn, New York, December 19th)
In January of most years, the President delivers a State of the Union Address highlighting the past year and suggesting priorities for the coming year. It’s a broadcast from one to many. But democracy is a conversation, not a monologue. Understanding the state of our union takes We the People reflecting in our own communities on our challenges and opportunities locally, nationally, and globally. The People’s State of the Union from US Department of Arts & Culture has two main parts: Story Circles across the nation, and a collaboratively composed Poetic Address to the Nation (Multiple Locations, January 25 – February 4)
View all NEC member events on our website »
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