- President and Co-Founder Ted Howard was recently quoted in The Guardian, noting the opportunity that universities have as they open new locations or redevelop their campuses. “[The university],” he shares, “has got to take account of the kind of neighbour it is, and how it uses its economic strength to creatively help solve problems in the community where it’s going to be based.”
- Last month, The Democracy Collaborative released a paper with UK-based groups Just Treatment and Global Justice Now on the opportunity for democratic public ownership in the pharmaceutical sector. Subsequently, the Labour Party announced that it was moving forward on its version of this proposal, with Jeremy Corbyn calling for "a new, publicly-owned generic drugs manufacturer to supply cheaper medicines to our NHS." Read more in The Guardian and Jacobin.
- The Next System Project’s recent proposal around the creation of a US Green Infrastructure Bank, which would provide the finance needed to catalyze a just transition, was featured in openDemocracy. Learn more about the proposal in our recommended reads section below.
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New from The Democracy Collaborative
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Senator and Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders recently released a plan for Corporate Accountability and Democracy which includes a proposal for Democratic Employee Ownership Funds. Such funds would require large companies to issue shares into worker-controlled funds – an idea proposed by The Next System Project’s Peter Gowan and Common Wealth’s Mathew Lawrence in this report. This new infographic provides further information on how such a fund, referred to as Inclusive Ownership Funds in the UK, could work.
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Over the next few years, The Democracy Collaborative will serve as a US hub for a global project on re-municipalization. The project, hosted at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, aims to explore the potential of, and growing movement for, returning services and utilities that have been privatized to public ownership. An important element of the project is a survey to better understand past and present efforts around re-municipalization. If you have been involved in such a campaign, we invite you to take the survey, which is available in multiple languages.
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New Report: A Green Investment Bank
Democratized finance will be key to executing a green and just transition away from fossil fuels. This new report from The Next System Project proposes the creation of a green infrastructure bank that can catalyze a Green New Deal and the transition to a more ecologically sustainable future that would otherwise be impossible under the short-term, high-return regime of private finance. The proposal explains how the bank would be structured to meet triple bottom line goals of facilitating the green and just transition, financial sustainability, and democratic decision-making. Read more here.
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Racially Exclusionary Housing in the Bay Area
This report from the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley discusses the historic roots of racialized housing inequality in the San Francisco Bay Area. The report outlines how state policy from the 1850s to the present codifies segregation and displacement, from violent dispossession to exclusionary real estate practices. The report makes the case that the current housing crisis is not natural, but the result of purposeful policy and tactics, and calls on readers to reimagine the role that local jurisdictions can play in reversing these trends. Read more here.
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Greater Boston Anti-Displacement Toolkit
Funded by the Surdna Foundation and a project of GreenRoots, the Everett Community Health Partnership (ECHP), Research Action Design (RAD), and MIT CoLab, this set of multimedia toolkits provides resources that organizers and residents can use to fight displacement in their communities. While geared towards Boston residents, the toolkit’s activities, how-to guides, facilitation plans, and other resources can be adapted to other geographies. Learn more here.
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