In every New Economy Roundup, we couple our critical analysis of the news with an action you can take to learn more or do something about the issues presented. This month we’re talking about MLK’s legacy, locally controlled finance, labor wins in transportation, ceasefire celebrations in Gaza, and anti-colonial activity in Nepal. Read through to the end for related resources, events, and trainings.

Dr. King’s Legacy: On MLK Day, mass mobilizations took place across over 80 cities against the “ultra-right billionaire agenda.” At the Trump inauguration rally on the same day, several fascists cherry picked King’s words, applauded a seig heil, then signed executive orders to end civil rights era equal opportunity protections. Just shortly before, the city of Atlanta murdered Cornelius Taylor, an unhoused man, by bulldozing over his encampment outside of King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. Nonviolent strategies of the civil rights movement encourage public rejection of fascist ideologies like this. Up your anti-fascist organizing skills against ICE and police with a virtual training from National Immigration Project on January 29th. Bookmark this page from new NEC member, Muslims for Just Futures, for regularly updated community defense tools.

A Public Banking Comeback: Los Angeles faces $250 billion in wildfire damage from this historic catastrophe, and instead of paying Wall Street to rebuild, Public Bank LA thinks community financing can do it. Public banks can accelerate local economies by providing loans for homeownership, local businesses, and municipalities. California can move forward on its 2019 Public Banking Act by putting power back in the hands of families left to struggle by insurance companies and the city. “It’s about putting public dollars to work for public good and building stronger, more resilient communities in the process.” Read these articles to learn how people powered financing like public banks or CDFIs can rebuild LA after the wildfires.

The Los Angeles fires have devastated the mountains and basins, and displaced entire communities. Take action & support community-led recovery efforts:

• Displaced Disabled Families GoFund Me Directory
• Displaced Black Families GoFund Me Directory
• Commissary funds for incarcerated fire fighters
• Help Volunteer with local food distribution
• Volunteer with a mutual aid dispatch

Transportation Union and Co-op Wins: Transportation workers are not waiting around for the federal government or impact investors to make a change in their industry. In Philadelphia, the SMART-TD Railroad Union won its fight for protective barriers on SEPTA buses. Striking flight attendants across airlines and transportation unions won raises and retroactive pay for labor theft. Rideshare drivers are taking power back from Uber and Lyft with a national Drivers Cooperative federation from Miami to Las Vegas. Need changes like this in your workplace? Join Labor Notes for their ‘Secrets of a Successful Organizer’ training this winter. No one will be turned away for the lack of funds.

Gaza Ceasefire: For the first time in over a year, there is silence over the Gaza sky– free from Israeli airstrikes. So far, over 240 imprisoned Palestinian women and children have been released and 33 Israeli hostages have returned home. However, the IOF also launched an attack in Jenin, West Bank, abducting 90 people and martyring 9 (at the time of writing this). This is not the first ceasefire deal and a spike in violence to be brokered and undermined at the same time. It’s also not a deal that ensures Israel’s full cooperation to end the unlawful occupation. New Yorkers, join Palestinian Youth Movement and friends for a community gathering in Brooklyn to honor the martyrs lost in this 500 day genocide. Keep talking about Palestine and boycotting complicit corporations.

Resistance Committees Reach Wad Madani: “These guys, they conquer the army and then they come for the civilians.” The people of Sudan are starving and at risk of the worst famine in centuries and these conditions are manufactured by the SAF and RSF. First time in over a year, humanitarian aid and remaining horizontal resistance committees were able to reach Wad Madani, a vital agricultural city. Though this SAF conquest brought back agricultural production and food service, they’re perpetrating an anti-Black genocidal regime targeting community resistance congresses and committees formed in the 2019 revolution. Sudan is for her people, not power thirsty warlords. Learn more about Sudan’s regional, revolutionary, and democratic resistance committees organizing humanitarian aid throughout the country.

Indigenous Movement Resurges in Nepal: “To wage a movement is not easy, and it is not easy when stakeholders of power on the other side of the battle lines have joined forces… as a necessary tool for continuing and deepening neo-colonial domination and control.” Across Nepal, indigenous Rai and Lumbu communities are fighting against cultural genocide by rejecting the Hindu provincial name “Koshi” placed upon their ancestral lands. The “No Koshi” movement is being organized by a youth-led federated network called “struggle committees” with a central hub in Phungling. This horizontal resistance is being built with culture at the forefront, where folks can learn about the movement anywhere in the local economy from tea shops to public spaces. Learn more about the anti-colonial “No Koshi” movement in this narrative in Progressive International.

• Advocates Demand Tenant Protections as LA Landlords Use Fires to Price Gouge
• CFPB Sues Capital One for Cheating Consumers Out of More Than $2 Billion in Interest Payments on Savings Accounts
• Chesterfield Residents, Community, and Climate Groups Rally Amid Fresh Zoning Challenges to Dominion Gas Plant
• ‘Deadly Exchange’: US sends hundreds of law enforcement to Israel to learn ‘worst practices’ from IDF
• Defunding Dissent
• Everybody’s Talking about the Community Land Act!
• Facing Wildfire and Rent Gouging, L.A. Tenants Are Fighting For Rent Control
• Food Access for All—Regardless of Immigration Status
• ​​Healing Justice: A Black Panther legacy
• Hospitals Are Desperately Understaffed. Could Co-ops Be an Answer?
• How Big Developers Crushed Regulation That Could Have Mitigated LA Fires
• How to Interrupt the Public Funds to Private Profits Pipeline: A California Story
• Left Organizing Is in Crisis. Philanthropy Is a Major Reason Why.
• Leonard Peltier to Be Freed After Half-Century in Prison: “A Day of Victory for Indigenous People” 
• Reclaiming Martin Luther King Jr. from the grips of imperialism
• Rural Power Coalition: 2024 Year in Review
• The City That Wiped Out $100 Million in Medical Debt
• The Possibilities of Participatory Budgeting
• Trump Needs Public Cooperation to Enact a Fascist Vision. Here’s How We Refuse.
• Where Urban Fault Lines Run Deep, Solidarity Cities Take Root
• Whose land is this land? Sisters, Native tribes begin process of land justice
• Why more and more journalists are launching worker-owned outlets

 

Support Mandela Grocery Cooperative: Mandela Grocery Cooperative has proudly served our West Oakland community for years, providing access to fresh, healthy food and creating business ownership opportunities for those of us marginalized from traditional small business models. Donate to Help Mandela Grocery Meet Urgent Refrigeration Needs.

PODCASTS
Beyond False Harmony: Nwamaka Agbo on Community-Driven Democracy and Economic Justice | Race Forward
The Future of Sudan’s Resistance Committees | The Horn

VIDEO
Anti-colonialism, Climate Change, and Social Transformation in Senegal | The Instiute of Social Ecology
Dialogues on Radical Democracy and Autonomy – Voices of Africa | Global Tapestry of Alternatives
Elements For Regional Solidarity Economies | PeoplesHub & GEO Collective
The evolution of housing cooperatives in Washington with Ajowa Nzinga | Everything Co-op

PUBLICATIONS
Alternatives for Calling 911 | Equality 4 Flatbush
Community Guide for Grassroots Groups | Muslims For Just Futures
The Past and Future of Black Co-ops: A Conversation with Jessica Gordon Nembhard | Nonprofit Quarterly
The Young Lords: A Radical History | Johanna Fernandez
Recovering Solidarity? Work, struggle, and cooperation among Italian recovered enterprises | Economic Anthropology

 

Beginning Farmer Fellowship, Unadilla Community Farm – West Edmeston, NY
Loan Steward, LA Co-op Lab
Unpaid Ujima Fund Research Intern, Boston Ujima Project
Unpaid Ujima Fund General Management Intern, Boston Ujima Project
Various Positions, Appalachian Voices
Various Positions, OurSpace

If you’re hiring, consider submitting to The Roundup.
For more opportunities, check out this job board from NEC member Post Growth Institute and this one from the U.S. Federation of Worker Co-ops!

 

We Got Us: Durham ICE Watch Training
This is not a time to back down, it’s a time to organize. Come get involved and find out how YOU can play a role in keeping your community safe so we can all live with dignity.” Juntos podemos! (Jan 25 – Durham, NC)

Community Defender Training: Understanding Your Rights and Protecting Your Community
Join the National Immigration Project for a free webinar for community defenders, advocates, and impacted community members to go over the basics of what you can do to protect yourself and your community in the face of potential immigration enforcement. Interpretation in Spanish & Haitian Kreyol. (Virtual – Jan 29)  

Reflections with Coalitions, Policy & Grassroots Organizing Team and Anchor Institution Organizing Team
This month at #UjimaWednesdays, we’re engaging in reflection and discussion with Ujima Staff, members and committees. Representatives from Ujima’s ecosystem will give us insight into their 2024 wins, challenges, and lessons. We’ll have space for questions about cooperative work and processes afterward. (Jan 29 – Jamaica Plain, MA)

Artists Building Solidarity Economy Models at Home
How are arts and culture groups who are fed up with the current system of extraction building Solidarity Economy models at home? Hear from systems change artists and culture workers who are challenging dominant “business as usual” and “winners-take-all” practices by developing cooperative and solidarity economy models across regions and sectors. (Virtual – Jan 30)

Level I: Facilitative Leadership Skills Training
Join the Roundsky cohort Increase your facilitative leadership capacity in this training by tapping into tools, skills, confidence to facilitate in the midst of uncertainty, and gaining effective and collaborative decision-making processes. (Applications Due Feb 2) 

How to Start a Co-op & Buy Land as a Community: Legal Structures and Practical Steps
In this class we’ll have a brief review of legal structures for land stewardship and community-owned community projects, and then dive into a practical overview of how to bring a collective land project from vision to reality. We’ll also have space to discuss some of the challenges and developmental edges of the changing space of collective ownership and management. (Virtual – Feb 5) 

Governance and Scale: What we can learn from Ecology and Global Social Movements
When thinking about governance in our movement homes, what can we learn from the principles of ecology?  How can we build movements that can govern not just within our organizations, but at the appropriate scales necessary for truly transformative change. Join Gopal Dayaneni for an exploration of core ecological principles and examples from global social movements that can inform how we build our organizations.  This is module one of Collaborate to Co-liberate, see the full schedule here. (Feb 12 – Virtual)

We Can’t Be Abolitionists and Conflict Avoidant
This is an experiential workshop on how to stop being conflict avoidant, cultivate accountability, and engage in generative conflict & repair, to collectively inscribe abolition on the agenda of our futures and liberation on the map of our collective body. (Feb 13 – Virtual)

Next Economy MBA
The Next Economy MBA is a nine-month course created by LIFT Economy to equip social impact leaders with the tools they need to help create an equitable, inclusive, and regenerative economy. In addition to bi-weekly facilitated course sessions, office hours to dive into deeper learning, and practical resources from the LIFT team, participants in the Next Economy MBA program will join a 500+ strong alumni network. (Begins March 2025 – Virtual) 

2025 National Radical Black Organizing Conference
Bigger! Blacker! Better! Black left forces are gathering to organize with our people. The theme for this year’s conference is “Base-Building for Collective Power.” (May 30 – June 1 – Indianapolis, IN) 

Socialism Conference 2025
The Socialism Conference is a center of political education rooted in ideas, perspectives, and strategic debate. Our purpose is to provide a forum for addressing not just the “how,” but especially the “what” and “why” of left politics and social movements. A four-day conference featuring dozens of panels, lectures, and workshops organized by groups from all over the country. Save the Date for Socialism 2025! (July 3-6 2025 – Chicago, IL)