Join us for a weekend of community collaboration, cultural expression, engaging discussions and workshops with local leaders.
Topic: Democracy and Governance
As the climate crisis heats up, and its impacts on the economy and people’s lives become more pronounced, concerned people everywhere are looking for new alternatives. Energy democracy seeks to replace the current corporate fossil-fuel economy with one that puts racial, social, and economic justice at the forefront of the transition to a 100% renewable energy future.
Does building a truly just, democratic and sustainable economy mean creating an entirely new system beyond capitalism—or can we reform capitalism to operate according to those values?
In America Beyond Capitalism, Gar Alperovitz's expert diagnosis of the long-term structural crisis of the American economic and political system is accompanied by detailed, practical answers to the problems we face as a society.
This interdisciplinary conference will gather academics, practitioners, policy-makers, researchers and educators interested in expanding and deepening democracy anywhere in the world.
Think food co-ops can only exist in wealthy neighborhoods? Think again, and then check out this exciting new resource from the Cooperative Development Institute (an NEC member) detailing different models of cooperative ownership that are bringing real food and good jobs to low-income communities around the US.
Working to build a new economy from the bottom up will require a lot of experimentation. Having a long-term vision can help make sure such new experiments open the door to even more transformative change in how the economy works.
Signs of deep economic changes are slowly taking place across the United States, focusing on cooperative/solidarity economics.
By working together, we can build the next great progressive movement to take back our government and create the kind of just and sustainable economy in which we want to live and work.
In the not-too distant future we can expect to see a rapid increase in structural unemployment as a result of increasing substitution of technology—including sophisticated robots—for human labor. A massive shift to new energy technologies can, in the short run, substitute for many jobs lost in the dirty fuel industries we must, and will, phase out.