Create!

Along with direct action and other forms of resistance, a transformational movement must also have a constructive program that builds new institutions based on the values that the movement aspires to achieve. These may eventually replace the old systems. From small, worker-owned cooperatives to national advocacy groups, hundreds of thousands of people around the country are working to create democratic and sustainable systems that meet the basic needs of all people.

These Black Bookstores Are Committed To The Fight For Freedom

April 9, 2025 Katie Mitchell, In These Times. Create! Black America, Black Liberation, Bookstores, culture

Blooming from the tumult of the Civil Rights era, Black bookstores emerged during the Black Arts Movement as cultural hubs where some of the first seeds of slam poetry, spoken word and hip-hop were planted. In 1968, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover hoped to curb “the establishment of Black extremist bookstores which represent propaganda outlets for revolutionary and hate publications,” ordering his agents to pursue a targeted, nationwide surveillance. Today, a new generation of Black bookstores is blossoming amid the upheaval of the Movement for Black Lives.

A Town In Transition, And Local Community Resilience

April 8, 2025 Chris Rhodes, Resilience. Create! Local Economy, Sustainability, Transition Town, United Kingdom (UK)

A large town, not yet a city, Reading (UK) is typically seen as a commuter hub, with thousands travelling into London every day to get to work. Reading itself may seem unexceptional, even bland, with not much going on there. But, on looking a little closer, Reading has real community, a group of local people who are coming together to create real change. While many of our problems are global – e.g. the climate and biodiversity emergency, declining fossil fuels, dwindling resources, pollution, overconsumption, food insecurity, inequality – there is much we can do at the local level to make things better.

Militarizing The Ledger, Colonizing The Future

April 7, 2025 Arnie Saiki, Onibaba. Create! Debt, Finance and the Economy, History, Military Industrial Complex, United Nations, US Hegemony, US Imperialism

When we begin to examine U.S. hegemony, the Military-Industrial Complex often serves as the shorthand for understanding the entangled relationship between investment capital, militarism, neocolonial extraction, and unipolar power. But to truly unravel this system, we must look deeper into how the Military-Debt Nexus is legitimized—not only through ideological alignment or geopolitical pressure, but through institutional mechanisms such as trade agreements, national accounting rules, and debt-financed militarization. The intersection between military expenditure and global trade is not incidental; it forms the core infrastructure of compliance and control, shaping everything from resource acquisition to sanctions enforcement, all under the veil of economic normalcy.

McKinley Or Lincoln? Tariffs Vs. Greenbacks

April 7, 2025 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Debt, DOGE, Donald Trump, Finance and the Economy, History, Tariffs

President Trump has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Republican President William McKinley, highlighting his use of tariffs as a model for economic policy. But as critics note, Trump’s tariffs, which are intended to protect U.S. interests, have instead fueled a stock market nosedive, provoked tit-for-tat tariffs from key partners, risk a broader trade withdrawal, and could increase the federal debt by reducing GDP and tax income. The federal debt has reached $36.2 trillion, the annual interest on it is $1.2 trillion, and the projected 2025 budget deficit is $1.9 trillion – meaning $1.9 trillion will be added to the debt this year. It’s an unsustainable debt bubble doomed to pop on its present trajectory.

French Parliament Moves To Tackle Medical Deserts

April 6, 2025 Ana Vračar, People's Dispatch. Create! France, France Unbowed, Health Care, La France Insoumise, Medical deserts, People's Health Dispatch

After years of political struggle, French parliamentarians made significant progress in tackling the country’s problem of medical deserts by backing a motion to regulate where physicians can establish their practices. Led by Socialist MP Guillaume Garot, the proposal received cross-party support – from right-wing Republicans to the left France Unbowed (La France Insoumise, LFI) – and was opposed only by part of the Macronist camp and the far-right National Rally. The motion proposes that regional health agencies be granted the authority to approve physicians – both general practitioners and specialists – wishing to set up practice in a given area.

Top Manta Co-op Helps Barcelona’s Street Vendors Formalise

April 6, 2025 Anca Voinea, Coop News. Create! Cooperatives, Local Economy, Migrants, Spain

Undocumented migrants arriving in Spain with hopes for a better life get trapped into a life of informality. Their undocumented status prevents them from accessing jobs in the formal economy, and, as a result, they cannot get healthcare or contribute to the social security system. According to the International Labour Organization’s Recommendation 204 on the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy, “most people enter the informal economy not by choice but as a consequence of a lack of opportunities in the formal economy and in the absence of other means of livelihood.”

Project In Venezuela Wants To Build Food Sovereignty

April 4, 2025 Lorenzo Santiago, Orinoco Tribune. Create! Brazil, Food Sovereignty, Landless Workers, Venezuela

A project to guarantee Venezuela’s food sovereignty: This is how the Patria Grande del Sur program is being treated by the Venezuelan government and the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST, in Portuguese). The initiative was launched two weeks ago and will use 180,000 hectares for food production based on agroecology. Rosana Fernandes has been coordinating the MST brigade in Venezuela for two months. The movement has been active in the country for 20 years and is now the central organization leading the project in southern Venezuela. She says it intends to occupy the territory of Vergareña and expand the food production carried out by small families in the region.

Commoning Within Arts Collectives: Three International Stories

April 3, 2025 David Bollier. Create! Art, Collectives, Local Economy, The Commons

What are some of the distinctive ways that precarious arts collectives share resources, support each other, and make art? I recently learned a lot about this topic from a workshop of international artists convened in Amsterdam. Most of the artists are associated with the so-called Lumbung Practice collective, an interdisciplinary group experimenting with how to cultivate a commons-based art economy. The artists come from Indonesia, Iran, Morocco, transqueer-migrant disaporas, and other geographies and circumstances, so they have some very different experiences and talents.

A People’s History Of Palestine

April 2, 2025 Ramzy Baroud, Consortium News. Create! Decolonization, History, Israel, Palestine, Refaat Alareer

My journey into the realm of people’s history began during my teenage years when I first read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. This initial exposure sparked my curiosity about how history is constructed and it led me to delve deeper into historiography — particularly the evolution of people’s history as an intellectual movement. Over the years, a wide range of historians, from Michel Foucault and Marc Bloch to Lucien Febvre and Chris Harman, each offered unique perspectives on the study of ordinary people in history.

Worker-Owned News Outlets Are Changing The Media Industry

April 1, 2025 Damon Orion, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cooperatives, COVID-19, Employee Ownership, Journalism, Media, Worker Cooperatives, Worker Rights and Jobs

The arrival of COVID-19 in the United States kicked off an ongoing period of job insecurity within the media industry. In April 2020, the New York Times reported that about 37,000 news company employees had been laid off, furloughed, or had their salaries reduced since March of that year. This instability was still evident in 2024, with media outlets like the Los Angeles Times, the Messenger, and HuffPost undergoing major layoffs and closures. An October 2024 report from the executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc. found that 13,279 media jobs had been cut that year. This included 3,520 cuts in the broadcast, digital, and print news industry—the most since 2020. Job insecurity has helped spur the rise of worker-owned journalism cooperatives like Flaming Hydra, Aftermath, Racket, and RANGE. According to the Poynter Institute, “[a]t least six worker-centered [news] outlets launched in 2024 alone.”

As Federal Environmental Priorities Shift, Native American Nations Plan

March 31, 2025 Alyssa Kreikemeier, Resilience. Create! Environment, Indigenous Sovereignty, Native Americans, Water

Long before the large-scale Earth Day protests on April 22, 1970 – often credited with spurring significant environmental protection legislation – Native Americans stewarded the environment. As sovereign nations, Native Americans have been able to protect land, water and air, including well beyond their own boundaries. Their actions laid the groundwork for modern federal law and policy, including national legislation aimed at reducing pollution. Now the Trump administration is seeking to weaken some of those limits and eliminate programs aimed at improving the environments in which marginalized people live and work.

The Rise Of Community Land Trusts In Hawai‘I

March 30, 2025 Noelle Fujii-Oride, Next City. Create! Affordable Housing, community land trusts, Hawaii, Land trusts, Wildfires

On Aug. 8, 2024, a new milestone was reached in the aftermath of the deadly Lahaina wildfire that destroyed 2,200 structures and displaced 12,000 residents on the island of Maui: A Lahaina nonprofit secured its first residential parcel for community ownership. 1651 Lokia Street, which once held a four-bed, three-bath house, sits empty. But one day, the property will accommodate a new main house and two accessory dwelling units — known locally as ‘ohana units — providing a stable, affordable home for an extended or multigenerational family.

Beyond Community Currencies: Strengthening Your Local Economy

March 28, 2025 Alex Lopez, Resilience. Create! Communities, Energy, Local Economy, Renewable Energy, Renewable Energy Communities (REC)

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in Renewable Energy Communities (REC), legal entities that collectively manage energy, promoting economic, social, and environmental benefits for their community. This model of citizen management over an essential resource has been widely accepted — so could a similar principle be applied to money? Ekhilur, a nonprofit citizen cooperative, is pioneering an innovative approach to strengthening the local economy. Instead of creating a new currency, it operates its own payment system — regulated by the Bank of Spain — to maximize the circulation of the existing euro within the community for as long as possible.

A St. Paul CDFI Is Now Offering Net Zero Banking

March 25, 2025 Hibah Ansari, Next City. Create! Banking, Carbon emissions, cdfis, Minnesota, Net Zero Banking

Once an outdoor educator, Laura Wildenborg spent 10 years taking kids on field trips to go rock climbing or cross-country skiing across the region, all to inspire children to love and care for the environment. After receiving her MBA in 2020, she made a drastic career pivot — to banking. But she brought her care for the environment along with her. “That love of the outdoors, that was such an important aspect of what I was doing, and I wanted to carry that through into my next role,” says Wildenborg, vice president of strategic lending for Sunrise Banks, a community development financial institution based in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Providing Family Benefits In Washington State

March 24, 2025 Matt Bruenig and Kamau Chege, People's Policy Project. Create! Child Care, Family benefits, Food Access, Washington State

When Democrats had control of the House, Senate, and Presidency in 2021 and 2022, there was some hope that they would pass a comprehensive scheme of benefits for families with children. But the failure to pass the Build Back Better legislation and failure to extend the Child Tax Credit provisions of the American Rescue Plan dashed those hopes. With Republicans now in control of the House, Senate, and Presidency, any federal expansion of family benefits is effectively off the table for the next four years. States, especially those controlled by Democrats, have the ability to fill the void left by the federal government and enact their own suite of family benefits.

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