Dear Colleague,

In the first few weeks since the new President took office, it has become clear that the chilling rhetoric of the campaign is translating into action. We at The Democracy Collaborative are deeply concerned that the new administration and the current Congressional majority will attempt to dismantle essential elements of the nation’s Federal community development infrastructure. If this goes forward, it will severely impact affordable housing, job creation, environmental justice, and capital investments in underserved communities, both rural and urban. We risk seeing decades of progress in community development unraveled, the burden of which will undoubtedly fall on poor residents and communities of color.

In order to ensure public awareness of and a robust debate about these proposals, The Democracy Collaborative has developed the Rolling Back Inclusion tracker. The tracker will provide continuous updates regarding the status of inclusive community development programs so that efforts to gut this critical infrastructure do not pass by under the radar. As you, our friends and allies, learn of new government attempts to diminish support for community wealth building, please report them to us at rollingbackinclusion@democracycollaborative.org so that we can keep this resource up-to-date, and follow developments on twitter with the hashtag #RollingBackInclusion.

Yet even as the landscape becomes more uncertain for the community wealth field, we remain convinced of the transformational power of local action. The most promising such efforts often start with conversations that bring communities together to map the challenges they face, the assets they hold, and the vision they share. This month, we release two new publications that suggest ways to begin these conversations in your community: Jacksonville’s Community Wealth Building Roundtable, by Michelle Barth, details how a city-led convening unfolded in Jacksonville, Florida; and Sparking the conversation in your community, by Justine Porter, provides insights from a “Do-It-Yourself” convening process in Poughkeepsie, New York. Read more about these publications and our Community Wealth Innovators Series below. We are excited to welcome the author of the second paper, Justine Porter, to our staff as a Senior Associate in our Washington, DC office starting this month.

I would also like to extend my welcome to Jenny Kassan who will be joining us as a Fellow. Jenny has over two decades of experience as an entrepreneur and attorney and helps her clients with mission-aligned financing in her private legal and coaching practice. She is also the President of Community Ventures, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the economic and social development of communities. Throughout 2017, Jenny will be contributing a series of articles based on themes found in her forthcoming book about how businesses in the New Economy can raise capital in ways that neither concentrate wealth in fewer hands nor require fast growth at any cost.

Healthcare is another area where I am inspired by local innovation despite the threat of federal rollbacks.  Much of this innovation is reported in our recently issued Hospitals Aligned for Healthy Communities toolkit series. Dana Brown, Deputy Director of the Next System Project authored a blog post on the array of local models for affordable healthcare. In addition to efforts like these, there is a growing movement to fundamentally shift the conditions that create poor health in the first place. The Democracy Collaborative’s work on anchor institutions and inclusive, local economic development is profiled in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s new report, Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity. By linking efforts to extend the provision of care with this anchor institution support for community wealth building, we can begin to move the bar on health and well-being in the United States.

Sincerely,

Ted Howard
President & Co-Founder, The Democracy Collaborative