Convening, Recruiting, and Connecting People Who Repair Local Economies
Our Neighborhood Economics conference in Jackson, Mississippi, this past spring had a surprising degree of success attracting the leading national catalytic foundations that invest in economic justice. The Jackson conference was just our second in-person event since the pandemic, and we attracted the MacArthur, Surdna, Heron, and Kellogg foundations, and we are in conversation with […]
Imagine a world where every Black entrepreneur doesn’t just survive—they thrive, shattering systemic barriers with unyielding resilience and innovation. Despite the unwavering spirit of Black entrepreneurs, the stark reality remains: 95% of Black-owned businesses are sole proprietorships, a figure reported by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2019. This overwhelming majority stems from pronounced financial disparities, […]
I recently visited San Antonio and had the honor of meeting community leaders and pastors doing some wonderful work in the city. I am thrilled to get to know so many people as we prepare for our convening there in February. One of the groups I had the chance to connect with was a few […]
Background You Need to Know One key principle that the team at Neighborhood Economics has taken from our experience in building SOCAP, the impact investing and social enterprise conference we started and ran for a decade, is finding the valuable strangers and helping them become unlikely allies. That principle is one reason SOCAP became the […]
When someone like Oscar Perry Abello, one of a small handful of journalists with deep and broad knowledge of the important innovative solutions to systemic economic justice, finally decides to write a book, my first question is why it’s not about those new things that are delivering economic power to those who have been historically […]
I’m not quite sure if I’ve ever produced a conference in February. The reason for our February event, Neighborhood Economics: San Antonio, is that we really wanted to go to San Antonio, and we don’t want to be there in the heat that strained the people and the grid last year.. We have amazing partners […]
There are many things that need to connect over time for a neighborhood economy to emerge, and it takes a connected community committed over time to see it come into view. This week, I want to emphasize a different factor in the work. We were a part of a committed community of faith that wasn’t […]
This past week, my wife Donna and I were able to go back to Atlanta where we spent seventeen years of our lives. Our grandchild lives there, it’s where our oldest children were raised, and where our two oldest sons and daughter-in-law still live and work. Did I mention our grandchild lives there? Tuesday morning, I […]
There is a movement growing across the country to establish the legal personhood of a river as a way to check the power of corporate personhood. If a river has legal standing to sue its polluters, a town or county could, for example, stop fracking in their community, or halt a pipeline the people living […]
I guess it’s not surprising how many times Kevin and I are asked some version of the following: Are you going to SOCAP? What is SOCAP doing now? Or, more pointedly: How do you feel about SOCAP these days? And I think perhaps the unasked question from the group of people who read this newsletter […]