New from The Democracy Collaborative
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Rochester's Market Driven Community Corporation Launches First Start-Up
We extend sincere congratulations to Mayor Lovely Warren and our other partners in Rochester, NY, for the launch of ENEROC, the first startup business incubated by the Market Driven Community Corporation (MDCC), an independent non-profit focused on the development of worker-owned businesses within the City. Known as ENEROC, the new business has secured a contract install LED lighting at Rochester General Hospital and is expected to create between 9 and 14 new jobs for local residents. Find out more
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Next System Project Announces Essay Contest Winners
After reviewing hundreds of submissions from 30 different states and 26 countries, The Next System Project announced six winning original essays from the 2016 “What’s Next?” essay contest. The winners were selected with the help of distinguished guest judges Naomi Klein, Raj Patel, and Dayna Cunningham, and put forward a wide range of alternatives to the current system, from a renewed participatory democracy to establishing present-day commons. Read the winning essays here.
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Community Wealth In The News
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The City Council of Richmond, Virginia voted to renew funding for its Office of Community Wealth Building. Read more about the community organizing that led to the development of the office on the Living Cities blog and in US News.
- Communications Director John Duda was quoted in an article in The Nation about the work of Cooperation Jackson, which is working to build a more just and equitable economic system for residents in Jackson, Mississippi.
- Manager of Community Development Programs Sarah McKinely was interviewed by AGORA, a platform focused on sustainable economies based in Spain, about the potential of community wealth building to catalyze a new economic system. Read the interview in English or in Spanish
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Democracy Collaborative Co-Founder and Next System Project Co-Chair Gar Alperovitz discusses the potential of buying out fossil fuel companies as a strategy to combat climate change on Reality Asserts Itself.
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Democracy Collaborative President & Co-Founder Ted Howard discusses the role of anchors in building resurgent cities as part of a TedX event at Cleveland State University. His remarks begin at the 5-minute mark.
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Best Practices for Social Value Procurement
While a growing number of institutions are recognizing the need to integrate social, economic, and environmental values into their purchasing decisions, few actually evaluate and measure these values, limiting the uptake of this approach. This new paper from the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation reviews existing social value procurement frameworks, including Cleveland’s Greater University Circle Initiative, and puts forwards common themes and lessons learned. Read the full paper here.
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Series Explores Stories of Milwaukee’s Persistent Poverty
Published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “What Happened to Us?” is a series by reporter James Causey that examines the challenges faced by Milwaukee’s black community by following the lives of his third-grade classmates. The series includes sections on housing, incarceration, and jobs, as well as a segment that outlines how models such as Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperatives offer a pathway forward. Read the full series here.
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Trade-Offs: Taxpayers Your Money, Your Choice
Developed by the National Priorities Project, “Trade-Offs: Taxpayers Your Money, Your Choice” is an interactive tool that allows users to see the dollar amount that taxpayers in a particular locality are contributing to national budget items. This is paired with a list of other budget items that these resources could be diverted to, and users can create their own custom combination based on their priorities.
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Visualizing the Small Business Closure Crisis
Six out of 10 business owners in the U.S. plan to sell their companyof the next decade. This series of data visualizations created by Project Equity shows the impact this will have on employees of these firms and the opportunity it provides for worker cooperative conversions. The site includes national level data, as well as detailed data on the San Francisco Bay Area and Western North Carolina. It maps the number of baby boomer owned businesses, the number of employees that would be affected by a potential sale or conversion, and a breakdown of the economic impact of specific industries.
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