Resources by Topic: Economic Justice

State of the Dream 2020: Building a Fair Economy at the Intersections makes clear that entrenched racism and sexism is sustaining yawning economic inequities in the U.S. This well-rounded report features research, stories, interviews and a practical resource through a popular education workshop exercise that helps us fight for a fair economy and ensures all of us can thrive.

Civil society organisations, trade unions, and local authorities are crafting new templates for how to expand democratic public ownership to all levels of society and opening up new routes to community-led and climate conscious public services.

Billionaires dominate our politics, culture, and economy. Their wealth, as this report shows, has concentrated mightily over the last four decades — even as the number of U.S. households with zero or negative net worth is increasing and most of us are living paycheck to paycheck.

The current pandemic is exposing our central economic and social reality: Extreme wealth inequality has become America’s “pre-existing condition.”

In this report, we show how billionaire wealth has grown astoundingly over the last few decades — and, for some “pandemic profiteers,” even more dramatically since the COVID-19 crisis — even as billionaire tax obligations have plummeted.

Essays and infographics on the state of finance and popular movement solutions.

Designed with organizers and advocates in mind, this guide gives you the tools you need to get started campaigning to bring PB to your community.

Covering five years of business progress, the 2017 Worker Cooperative State of the Sector is a report on worker-owned business in the United States. This report is a co-production of Democracy at Work Institute and U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, drawing upon the latest developments in the field, and deepens our understanding of the sector.

This study is the fourth in a series of WealthWorks papers focused on financing rural value chains. It helps value chain practitioners understand emerging opportunities to tap into new place-based forms of finance, across a wide spectrum ranging from crowdfunding to Slow Money, to community development finance and impact investing.

This publication presents the “Clean 15,” the first fossil-free model portfolio developed by the Clean Portfolio Project.

A documentary episode on Worker Cooperatives, focusing on the topics of economic democracy, racial and social justice, and collectivist vs capitalistic values.

Featuring: Richard Wolff, Gopal Dayaneni, Doria Robinson, Najari Smith, and more.

In this episode of Upstream, we explore the Solidarity Economy through expert interviews, stories, and rich sound design.

Featuring:
​— Michael Ventura
— Caroline Woolard
— Michael Lewis
— Pat Conaty 
— Jessica Gordon Nembard
— Biba Schoenmaker (Breadfunds)
— Stuart Field (Breadfunds UK)
— Jos Veldhuizen (Broodfonds)

This report explores the concept of the green economy as a potential solution to
multiple challenges including climate change, biodiversity loss, resource
scarcity, and financial instability

These eight films are just a small sample of films documenting the sharing movement. Some are short, some are feature length. They all demonstrate that the sharing movement is growing every day.

A conversation about capitalism with two brilliant minds, Cornel West and Richard D. Wolff, together in a rare joint appearance.

Socialism could have a future in America, our guests this week argue, if we just think about it differently. Joining us this week are Bhaskar Sunkara and Sarah Leonard, co-editors of of a new essay collection titled "The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century."

In 1969 Shirley Sherrod co-founded a collective farm in Lee County, Georgia. At 6,000 acres, it was the largest tract of black-owned land in the United States. What happened to the New Communities land trust they planned? Let's just say they were way, way ahead of their time but their time just might be coming back

This document is the syllabus for the Center for Family Life's 6-session "Implementers" training on worker cooperative development for other community-based organizations. This syllabus generally follows the "Planners" training.

Shortly after the economic meltdown of 2008, Korten fleshed out a vision of an alternative to the corporate Wall Street economy. He offers his analysis and guidance on mounting a grassroots campaign to bring about an economy based on shared prosperity, ecological stewardship, and citizen democracy.

In this new edition of his classic book, David Korten illuminates the convergence of ideological, political, and technological forces that have driven an ever-greater concentration of economic and political power in a handful of corporations and financial institutions and left the market system blind to all but its own short-term financial gains.

An Operating Agreement created by the Sustainable Economies Law Center for a worker‐owned cooperative popsicle company (hence, the popsicle‐shaped people). Please note that it was written to conform with California law and with the particular preferences and needs of that cooperative. Originally written in Spanish, then translated into English.

A veritable choose your own adventure through the New Economy, Principles of a Pluralist Commonwealth is a book that allows multiple entries into a vision for a new system by exploring the possible building blocks for that system.

A new investment co-op model lets communities own and develop their commercial spaces. Though new, this model holds potential for the many neighborhoods whose business districts are decaying, controlled by distant landlords or faraway retail chains.

This report suggests that the decline of small businesses is owed in part to anticompetitive behavior by large, dominant corporations. This report presents three compelling reasons to bring a commitment to fair and open markets for small businesses back into public policy, and outlines specific steps to revive competition and small business.

LocalCatch.org is a community-of-practice from across North America that are committed to providing local, healthful, low-impact seafood via community supported fisheries and direct marketing arrangements in order to support healthy fisheries and the communities that depend on them. This map helps connect consumers to these seafood providers.

We hope that this Resource Bank, created by members of the Power Shift Network, will help create an equitable, just, inclusive (and therefore stronger) movement for climate justice and justice for all, and provide concrete anti-oppression tools for anyone looking for concrete ways to center principles of justice and equity in their work.

We have unique CED resources - websites, publications, case studies, videos, and more - in our CED toolbox.

The People's Guide to the Budget was created to help Louisville, KY residents understand how their tax dollars are spent, and how they can change it.

This is an online resource that features documents, videos, and articles about energy democracy and the growing movement to democratize energy.

Improving care jobs requires reshaping the nation's understanding of what care work is, what it is worth, and how to pay for it. Care workers, as well as their advocates and unions, need to be connected to city and state minimum wage campaigns and to begin securing public and private resources to make higher wages for care workers a reality.

The Beautiful Solutions Gallery and Lab is an interactive space for sharing the stories, solutions and big ideas needed to build new institutional power and point the way toward a just, resilient, and democratic future.

Developed by Beautiful Solutions in partnership with This Changes Everything, this is an open-ended project that will continue to evolve based on the ideas you submit to the Lab, and the ongoing contributions of the thinkers and practitioners on the forefront of building alternatives.

Marnie Thompson from The Fund For Democratic Communities addresses the Divestemnt Student Network on her personal journey toward reinvestment. (From New Economy Week 2015)

In response to the sustained and increasingly visible violence against Black communities in the U.S. and globally, a collective of more than 50 organizations representing thousands of Black people from across the country have come together with renewed energy and purpose to articulate a common vision and agenda.

Fostering resilient communities and building wealth in today’s local economies is necessary to achieve individual, regional, and national economic security. A community wealth building strategy employs a range of forms of community ownership and asset building strategies to build wealth in low-income communities. In so doing, community wealth building bolsters the ability of communities and individuals to increase asset ownership, anchor jobs locally, expand the provision of public services, and ensure local economic stability. 

How do low-income communities learn to advance economically and build wealth? Low-income communities and communities of color, in challenging structural economic and social inequality, have historically grappled with tensions inherent to development. Who participates in, directs, and ultimately owns the economic-development process? In creating and sustaining new, inclusive economic institutions, how do community members cultivate and pass on skills, commitment and knowledge—especially among those who have long faced barriers to education and employment? And how should communities strike an appropriate balance between utilizing local knowledge and accessing outside expertise? This report draws on case studies of 11 different community economic development initiatives from across the United States to highlight a diverse set of powerful answers to these critical questions.

This CommonBound 2014 opening plenary panel explores what it means for our movements to “win.” Grounding us in a framework of decolonization, community self-determination and sovereignty, we dive deep into why we do this work. Each of the panelists share their perspective on what is unique about this moment in history — from the political and economic level, to the cultural and ecological.

What will an anti-imperialist, economy look like? What will it take to decolonize economic structures in pursuit of liberation? After introducing frameworks for building a movement for sustainable business, community and worker ownership, workplace democracy, and thriving family businesses, we go local. We hear lessons from Boston, where grassroots organizations, small businesses and investors are working together to model an alternative to the capitalist economy at a local level. Participants learn from leaders of the Boston Ujima Project about their efforts to fight poverty and displacement through the formation of a community capital fund, a Good Business Certification, and an alternative local currency. Participants learn about Boston's unique new economy project and engage in the opportunities and limits of this community development strategy.

This paper, released in the wake of the 2015 Paris climate talks, argues that globalization, the deregulation of trade and finance through free trade treaties, is the driving force behind climate change. As a result, the climate problem can only be tackled effectively if governments stop subsidizing globalization, and pursue localization instead.

Want to understand the alternatives to business as usual? We know the current system does exactly what it was designed to do: line corporate pockets at the expense of real people’s health and livelihoods, destroying the environment while fueling the war machine. But we also know that another world is possible. Many models for radically different, sustainable, inclusive and democratic societies exist and this CommonBound workshop features a few of their proponents to present their ideas, debate the options and answer questions about what a better world looks like in detail.

Planet Local is Local Futures' project to highlight and catalog the diverse examples of localization springing up all over the planet. Our examples listed range from local business and finance to local food, health, community rights, place-based education, energy, eco-communities, and more.

This plenary panel from CommonBound 2016 features leaders in Buffalo, NY's vibrant New Economy Movement discussing their work and vision for a just and sustainable city.

A New Economy Week 2015 conversation between Ed Whitfield of the Fund For Democratic Communities and Anand Jahi, NEC Program Director.

Movement Generation is proud to offer you their new Strategic Framework for a Just Transition Zine! Offered in English and Spanish, it is a 32-page long training tool and offers a framework for a fair shift to an economy that is ecologically sustainable, equitable and just for all its members. It is full of visuals, stand-alone sections, and curriculum ideas.