The call from #8ToAbolition to "invest in community self governance" is a substantial and critical step forward in the evolution of demands for economic democracy and solidarity economies. I remember the M4BL platform a few year back had a set of pretty vague recommendations...
to invest in participatory budgeting and worker cooperatives. Like our own work in NYC here around rebutting and defeating amazon, we in the economic democracy/solidarity economy/new economy etc spaces failed to show up with demands that were more than just alternative models. /2
Still now, we are not yet being specific enough in our demands for reallocation beyond community needs and services. One of the critical pieces that has supported the development of solidarity economies in other places (before the institutional infrastructure is mature) /3
is a grounding enabling framework or charter. Essentially, you have to create a legal/political/economic space for the public and social forces of the solidarity economy to formally collaborate and invest non-extractively. In planning, Fainstein long ago referred to this as /4
"the public private partnership of the left". More recently @MenserMk has called these "social-public partnerships". In support of the #8ToAbolition demand framework, a call for reallocation of $ to solidarity economy and economic democracy investments could look a little like /5
1) establish a non-binding declaration in support of solidarity economy as a pathway to sustainable and emancipatory human development that advances black lives
2) a state enabling framework for cities and municipalities to designate community controlled institutions /6
2) a state enabling framework for cities and municipalities to designate community controlled institutions /6
as SE institutions.
3) structure a demutualization wall that prevents capital invested in SE to be extracted back into the dominant market economy.
4) with $750 million from the NYPD budget, allocate based on population to each borough for community controlled SE investment /7
3) structure a demutualization wall that prevents capital invested in SE to be extracted back into the dominant market economy.
4) with $750 million from the NYPD budget, allocate based on population to each borough for community controlled SE investment /7
This is not about tradeoffs or community control "versus" public sector investments (both are needed), but about moving capital and control away from EDC and the mayor towards neighborhoods and institutions and capital that allows people and communities to invest and innovate. /8
This sketch as a start, grounded in the movements activated right now, would allow for a path towards building counter institutions like Seikatsu, Mondragón, the Chantier that are inflected with black liberation politics in their founding charters. /9
it would chart a path towards reconstructing urban regional economies, and as @KeeangaYamahtta writes, create more space for movements to continue to "conquer the logic that finances police and jails at the expense of public schools and hospitals."
