Local Economy

Venezuela: Communal Banks To Reactivate Communal Economy

March 7, 2025 Radio Red VE, Orinoco Tribune. Create! Banking and Finance, Communes, Local Economy, Venezuela

The minister for communes and social movements, Ángel Prado, has said that in light of the relaunching of illegal economic sanctions by the US empire, Venezuela is counting on the reactivation of the popular and communal economy through use of the Communal Banks. “In the face of this new aggression from [forces of] imperialism,” he stated during the Assembly of Communes of the People’s Power this Wednesday, March 5, “in our Communal Banks we have funds that come from the surplus of the different social production companies that the El Maizal Commune has; previously, we invested those resources in infrastructure.”

Welcome To ‘Think Like A Commoner’

March 1, 2025 David Bollier. Create! Book Review, Local Economy, The Commons, Transformation

About a year ago, some folks in Bangkok reached out to me. Hans van Willenswaard and his wife Wallapa wanted to translate my book Think Like a Commoner into Thai and publish it. Hans is the founder of the Innovation Network International in Thailand, and his wife Wallapa is a social entrepreneur and founder of the Mindful Markets movement. Both have been quite involved in the commons for some time. I was thrilled by their request, but upon re-reading the original version of my book, published in 2014, I was dismayed to realize that parts of it felt outdated.

Action On Climate Change May Look Different Than You Expect

February 23, 2025 Vijay Kolinjivadi and Aaron Vansintjan, Counter Punch. Strategize! California, climate crisis, Local Economy, Sustainability

Talk a walk through the Los Angeles’ Arts District, and you’ll learn that there’s nothing contradictory about trying to save the world and living a luxury lifestyle. Start your tour with the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), which proudly displays a banner stating: “the future begins here.” LACI is “a non- profit organization creating an inclusive green economy” and run “by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs.” They are also supported by a “community” that includes not only the City of Los Angeles but also BMW, Wells Fargo, United Airlines, and JPMorgan Chase.

Five Years In, Philly’s Kensington Corridor Trust Is Building Momentum

February 18, 2025 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. Create! Affordable Housing, Community, Land Trust, Local Economy, Philadelphia

The first time Yolanda Del Valle came to work at Sherry’s Restaurant, she was a teen covering a friend’s shift at the popular local diner, located for 50-plus years at the corner of Kensington and Ontario Avenues in Philadelphia. Eleven years ago, Del Valle returned to Sherry’s as an employee, doing everything from serving to dishwashing to minding the griddle. This past November, she became the owner. And Sherry’s got a new landlord: its community. The diner’s building, which includes three apartments above the restaurant, was acquired a little over a year ago by the Kensington Corridor Trust, a community-controlled commercial real estate entity that recently celebrated its fifth birthday.

Converting US Domestic Military Bases To Peaceful Use

January 14, 2025 Christian Sorensen, World Beyond War. Create! Local Economy, Military bases, US military, Wars and Militarism

Former military installations can be success stories for the local community and small businesses. The former Brunswick Naval Air Station, Maine, has become Brunswick Landing, a “busy hub of tech businesses, some manufacturers, call centers, and service businesses,” in the words of News Center Maine. The former Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, now an office park home to many different industries, “supports more jobs than it did during its life as a military base,” Dr. Miriam Pemberton details in her book Six Stops on the National Security Tour (p. 109). Existing federal shipyards, from Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia to Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawai‘i, could also adjust overnight to start maintaining and upgrading commercial ships, hospital ships, river barges, and scientific vessels, instead of warships.

The Walmart Effect

December 26, 2024 Rogé Karma, Portside. Educate! Local Economy, Poverty, Walmart, Worker Rights

No corporation looms as large over the American economy as Walmart. It is both the country’s biggest private employer, known for low pay, and its biggest retailer, known for low prices. In that sense, its dominance represents the triumph of an idea that has guided much of American policy making over the past half century: that cheap consumer prices are the paramount metric of economic health, more important even than low unemployment and high wages. Indeed, Walmart’s many defenders argue that the company is a boon to poor and middle-class families, who save thousands of dollars every year shopping there.

Expanding The Possible, From Below

November 19, 2024 Alexandria Shaner, Resilience. Strategize! climate crisis, Green New Deal, Local Economy, Municipalism

Less than one week after a self-proclaimed dictator, climate change denier, and big oil-funded billionaire (among other equally impressive accolades) took the single most powerful political office in the world, it seems like a horrible time to release a book about the Green New Deal. Thinking back to 2018, not so long ago in time but perhaps much longer in space, to when the Green New Deal was launched into public attention as a bold proposal for transformative national legislation, is frankly, beyond depressing. Loss, grief and rage compete with numbness and shock, easily overwhelming any effort to fathom where we were then, and where we find ourselves now.

Baltimore Is Setting A National Standard For Diversifying Its Economy

November 8, 2024 Ilana Preuss, Next City. Create! Baltimore, Local Economy, Manufacturing, Maryland, Worker Rights and Jobs

One of the crucial economic lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic is the importance of diversifying local economies, even in America’s largest cities. New York City continues to struggle with an economy too heavily reliant on tourists and commuters; Las Vegas saw its entertainment industry shut down when out-of-state visitors stopped traveling; vacant storefronts are prominently visible in major business districts and on main streets nationwide. Diversifying often implies attracting new industries by luring them from elsewhere – often a zero-sum game, if the industries are simply shifting locations within the United States.

Demanding More In The Struggle For Collective Liberation

October 31, 2024 Austin Cole, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! Black Liberation, International Solidarity, Local Economy, New Economy, Pan Africanism

This is the second and final part of of a two-part interview series coming from a conversation that I had with Nick in April as part of my recently completed masters thesis (see Part I here ). Because the conversation was so insightful and I couldn’t include most of it in the thesis itself, I’ve decided to publish a slightly-edited version of our conversation, in two parts. In this second part, Nick and I discuss local organizing strategy, international solidarity through Pan-Africanist principles, and the applicability of a People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework to municipal work — all with an eye toward what Black/African Liberation looks like materially, locally.

A Tale Of Two Yarn-Makers Reviving The Local Mill

September 3, 2024 Marissa Tiel, Resilience. Create! Local Economy, Small Business, Sustainability, Textiles

For nearly a decade, the Spinsters were a fixture at the Bellingham Farmers Market. Their booth was easy to find: market goers just needed to look for their brightly coloured yarns in vibrant cyan and deep magenta. Founders Kate Burge and Rachel Price commuted to the market by bike — neither one owned a car at the time — and set up most Saturdays. The duo, who named their company Spincycle, specialized in a type of craft practised by few others in the early 2000s: kettle-dyeing and hand-spinning wool into beautiful skeins. Unlike most commercial yarns, which are spun and then dyed, the yarn Burge and Price create is dyed first, before it’s spun into yarn.

Tompkins County, The Finger Lakes Hub Of Sustainability

June 22, 2024 Dave Rollo, Resilience. Create! Environment, Local Economy, New York (NY), Sustainability

The Finger Lakes region of western New York State is distinguished by a series of long and narrow glacial valleys, dammed by moraine, that now contain lakes. Glacial scouring created some of the deepest lakes in North America, including Seneca, Cayuga, and Skaneateles lakes. These spectacular natural features give the region its identity. The region features ample farmland and forest and a relatively sparse population. Tompkins County, in the heart of the region, has experienced a steady 0.5% per year increase in population. But nearly all the surrounding counties have stable or slightly declining populations.

Court Decision Opens Door For Communities To Reject Dollar Stores

April 28, 2024 Kennedy Smith, Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Resist! Dollar Store, Legal System, Local Economy, Louisiana

Towns and cities have broad authority to reject dollar store development if they believe it is not in the best interest of the health, safety, and welfare of residents, according to a court ruling in a little-noticed case last November. This could be welcome news to communities pushing back against the explosive growth of dollar stores. Chains like Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar are targeting communities all over the US, expanding at an unprecedented pace. The number of chain dollar stores has soared over the past decade, putting one within a five-minute drive of almost every American.

‘New Economies’ And The Rebuilding Of Democratic Power

March 2, 2024 Jonny Gordon-Farleigh, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Strategize! Democracy, Finance and the Economy, Local Economy, Transformation

In September 2023, I joined the New Economies gathering in Rotterdam, hosted by the international philanthropic fund Partners for a New Economy. Convening 180 ‘changemakers’ from across Europe and the US, it was an opportunity to catch up on the latest developments across a movement to redesign the economy, with sessions on the impact of inequalities between the Global North and South, the consequences of international debt and currency hierarchies, the disruptions of AI technologies, and tensions surrounding the extractive role of private capital in green infrastructure investment.

It’s Time To Act Locally To Address Racial Wealth Inequality

March 1, 2024 Natasha Hicks, Next City. Create! Local Economy, Racial disparities, Systemic Racism, wealth inequality

As we close out Black History Month and the celebration of the many invaluable contributions Black people have made to the U.S., we must also reflect, acknowledge and confront one of the most pernicious issues that has faced generations of Black Americans: racial wealth inequality. Black people have never been able to fully realize the power and freedom that wealth affords since throughout history they have had their wealth systematically blocked or stolen. Despite having the deck stacked against them, generations of Black Americans have been able to save, buy land, start businesses and create their own economic engines.

How ‘Chamas’ And Mutual Credit Are Changing Africa

January 27, 2024 Shaila Agha, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Africa, Local Economy, Mutual Aid, Nonmarket Economy, Unbanked

If I say that the Sarafu Network is a mutual credit network that allows trading without conventional money, that includes 50,000 households across Kenya and did $3 million worth of trade last year – how’s that for a brief description? Yeah, actually we’re up to 52,000, and last month we had 4200 new users registered. What kind of traders are they? Mostly food / agricultural produce. Food sellers and farmers. And what’s your role there? I’m the incoming director, dealing with business development and funding.

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