Convening, Recruiting, and Connecting People Who Repair Local Economies
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 […]
Markets are not value neutral or virtuous. They play by rules designed by the people that benefit from them. “Letting the market distribute wealth as it will” is simply a recipe for letting the status quo continue. The markets will produce what the markets are designed to produce – namely consolidation of wealth into the hands of […]
These last couple of weeks have been a climate nightmare for many as we continue to deal with the effects of global warming. We saw wildfires in Maui destroy the entire city of Lahaina, parts of Canada continuing to suffer from fires, tropical storms hitting Southern California, excessive heat warnings in an unprecedented number of […]
We have a volunteer who is working on the Wiki that I am creating as an online information resource, separate from our website, of the themes and the emerging taxonomy of projects and funds that we convene at Neighborhood Economics. Scott Arvin adds order to my creation of the Wiki, which tracks who I am […]
Sometimes, whether I want it to or not, my years in Texas show up. My pick-up truck, my country radio station, and my constant attempts to recreate the boot scootin’* I did at West Fraternal Auditorium through two degrees at Baylor give me away. I have added pink decals to my truck and sometimes turn […]
Mixed Income Neighborhood Trusts, or MINTS, were a brand new concept three years ago, but Trust Neighborhoods has quickly grown from two buildings in one city to 170 residences in five cities. MINTS are a rare economic justice innovation that found the right inflection point in the system at just the right point to halt […]