Dear Colleague,

• We are pleased to announce the release of our latest report Educate and Empower: Tools for Building Community Wealth. Written by Senior Associate for Policy and Strategy Keane Bhatt and Director of Special Projects Steve Dubb, the report documents how community-based organizations committed to economic inclusion address critical questions related to education, training, and empowerment. The report has already received coverage from Next City. Register for the launch webinar on September 9, 3PM EDT, download the companion poster, and read more below. 

• In the New York Times, Democracy Collaborative Co-Founder Gar Alperovitz and Research Director Thomas Hanna wrote about “Socialism, American-Style,” highlighting the prevalence of public ownership in the United States and how conservative states like Texas, Alaska, and Nebraska have embraced it as a means to provide social services and lower the public’s tax burden. Gar and Thomas further discussed public ownership with Elias Isquith in Salon and Gar spoke on the same subject with Fox News Radio’s Alan Colmes. In The Nation, Gar marked the seventieth anniversary of Hiroshima by challenging Americans to face the reality that the atomic bombings were not, in fact, a matter of military necessity. 

• The Next System Project was recently cited in MintPress News as an important development in the growing movement to transform American politics. Gar, co-chair of the project, discussed the effort on WBAI’s Building Bridges radio program and in an interview with Social Capital Markets (SOCAP). He will be a featured speaker at SOCAP’s 2015 conference, and on August 19 at 3:30 EDT, SOCAP will host a twitter conversation with the Next System Project about new political-economic opportunities. Join the conversation via Twitter using: #NextSystem. 

• In a piece for Medium, Director of Communications John Duda emphasized the need to think critically about who benefits from solar energy development, highlighting institutions and policies that are building wealth in low-income communities and communities of color while at the same time creating a more sustainable energy system. 

• The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) profiled The Democracy Collaborative and the work of BALLE Local Economy Fellow Steve Dubb. In July, Steve moderated a webinar on “Scaling the Development of Worker-owned Cooperatives,” featuring Andrew Delmonte of the Buffalo State Small Business Development Association and Hilary Abell, Co-Founder of Project Equity and author of Worker Cooperatives: Pathways to Scale.

• In June, I had the opportunity to present at the Aspen Institute’s "Rooting Opportunity: Doing Economic Development Differently" conference. Manager of Community Development Programs Sarah McKinley also spoke in a joint session on anchor institutions. Our presentations, as well as materials from several of our key partners, are now available online. A recent article in 3BL Media discussed the BALLE-RSF Community Foundation Circle convening, during which Executive Vice President Marjorie Kelly facilitated a conversation on how community foundations can align their financial practices with their missions.