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Small Business

A Tale Of Two Yarn-Makers Reviving The Local Mill

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.

A Rochester Credit Union Wants The Local Government To Create A Bank

Melissa Marquez inherited her mother’s deep desire to make the banking system work for those whom it has long excluded. At 14, she saw her mother break down in tears again and again after coming home from work as a loan officer at a bank. The bank refused to lend to their community in Barrio Logan, an epicenter of Chicano culture in San Diego, her mother told her. Barrio Logan residents would come in, make their deposits and stay faithful customers to the bank, but still couldn’t get access to credit. That memory from 1974 has driven Marquez to help lead a coalition of tenant organizers, community land trusts, community development lenders and elected officials that has spent the last few years calling for more government-owned banks across New York.

Philadelphia Nonprofit Gives Latino Entrepreneurs The Boost They Need

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - When Juan Placencia opened a ghost kitchen in Philadelphia at the end of 2020, the experience wasn’t what he expected. Even with his impressive credentials — he is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of Arts and has experience in Michelin-starred restaurants and working with James Beard award-winner Christina Martinez — he struggled to make his take-out restaurant successful. “The investment in partaking in this type of system was much higher than a brick and mortar, but it wasn’t advertised that way,” he says. “Since then I began looking for a restaurant space.”

Seeds Of Economic Recovery Are Already Sprouting Roots In The Bronx

The Bronx - New York City, New York- It’s not common for bank CEOs to walk around a neighborhood in the South Bronx, knocking on doors of local businesses to say hello and start getting to know them and their owners or employees. But what if it was? That’s what Rachel Macarthy is looking forward to doing later this spring and over the summer. Born and raised in the South Bronx, with a business degree in finance from Howard University, she’s the CEO of New Covenant Dominion Credit Union. At 1185 Boston Road, the Black and Hispanic-serving credit union sits at a busy crossroads in the heart of the borough.

Boxed Out: How Predatory Buying Is Killing Off Small Businesses

Walmart, Amazon, and other powerful, well-financed companies have captured control over much of retailing. These giants maintain their extraordinary market position not by competing on the merits of their service. Instead, they exert their power as dominant buyers of food and goods to bully suppliers, extracting discounts for themselves while forcing independent retailers to pay more. This is threatening those small businesses, wounding competition, and hollowing out communities large and small. It’s a monopoly tactic we call “predatory buying.” In this report, we examine the history of these abuses, the law Congress passed in 1936 to protect independent businesses’ right to compete on fair terms, and the pro-bigness coup that stopped enforcement of the law in the 1970s.

New Report: Small Business’s Big Moment

Small businesses build local wealth, with benefits for nearly every aspect of the community and region. They offer a path to prosperity for hard-working entrepreneurs. They keep a larger share of their economic output within the community than businesses with outside ownership, putting that output to work to support schools, public safety, roads, parks, affordable housing, and many other vital public needs. And young, small businesses create the bulk of the nation’s new jobs. But one of the biggest challenges facing America’s communities is leveling the playing field for small businesses and intentionally moving away from the past decade’s Amazon-take-all trajectory. The $1.9 trillion ARPA provides America’s towns and cities with the money and encouragement to do so.

City Excludes Parts Of Chinatown From Small Business Pandemic Loans

A city pandemic loan program intended to help out small businesses in lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color has left out a swath of Manhattan's Chinatown. In late November, the city's Department of Small Business Services launched a $35 million low-to-moderate income storefront loan program. Small businesses in certain neighborhoods could receive up to $100,000 in a zero-interest loan. The funds would provide loans for at least 350 businesses across the city, depending on the size of loans allocated. To qualify, businesses need to have fewer than 100 employees and be located in a low- to moderate-income ZIP code. But not all of Chinatown—a "hard-hit" neighborhood that was reeling from economic impacts from COVID-19 even before the city became the epicenter of the pandemic—was included.

Black And Minority-Owned Businesses Are Denied Virus Relief Funds

Many Black and Latino business owners say they are on the verge of losing their businesses because they are currently out of work due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, that may not be the only reason because according to a new survey, these two minority groups have also been side-lined and are barely benefiting from the Paycheck Protection Program and other government aid efforts. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is a part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act that is intended to provide some form of financial aid to small business owners who are finding it hard to function amid the coronavirus pandemic. Nonetheless, Black and Latino small business owners are on the losing end of the scale, according to the survey conducted by the Global Strategy Group for two equal-rights organizations, Color of Change and UnidosUS. From April 30 to last Monday, a total of 500 business owners and 1,200 workers were interviewed, according to the New York Times.

US Banks Make A Quick $10 Billion Processing Government Loans

Banks have earned a quick $10 billion processing US government loans to small businesses affected by the coronavirus crisis, according to a new report. The $350 billion rescue program aims to funnel cash to small businesses distressed by the economic blows of the COVID-19 crisis. In two weeks, banks including JP Morgan, Bank of America, and PNC Bank vetted thousands of applications for federal loans of up to $10 million. Transaction charges start at 5% for loans under $350,000, reducing to 1% for loans between $2 and $10 million, according to NPR. The loans are guaranteed by the government, and the guidelines issued by the Treasury Department indicate that they require less vetting than regular loans. There is no risk to the banks which are merely the middlemen.

Small Businesses Furious At Paycheck Protection Program Structure

With allegations that major banks shuffled Paycheck Protection Program applications to prioritize larger loan amounts and bigger businesses, Main Street businesses are furious. This possibility points to a clear design flaw in the program that tried to use the private lending market, already rife with discrimination and putting profits over all, as the mechanism for small business relief. Small businesses are demanding that any new funding must come directly to them via subsidies, not loans, and it must prioritize those who were left out. Business owners of color are particularly vulnerable to discrimination in the lending system. A report from the Center for Responsible Lending shows that a large majority of minority owned businesses, including 95 percent of Black business owners...

Most Workers And Businesses At The Heart Of US Economy Can’t Meet Financial Needs

A survey of small businesses and workers conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management published on April 1 finds that small businesses and workers are being hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis. Their findings reveal the real class divide in the United States in that those workers who are essential, such as those who work in construction, manufacturing, transportation, education, and food, have the highest rates of not being able to meet their basic needs because of the shutdown while professionals are less affected. This poll highlights the need to demand financial security for everyone during this time of necessary physical distancing. We need a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, full coverage of health care by the government, higher pay for essential workers and adequate unemployment benefits for those who are unable to work.

European Chains Spur Further Grocery Consolidation, Squeezing Farmers, Workers, And Independent Businesses

European grocery chains are driving a new round of concentration in American food retail, as they race to buy up independent grocers or drive them out of business. In the most recent deal, Stop & Shop, a subsidiary of Dutch-based Ahold-Delhaize, announced it will acquire Long Island supermarket chain, King Kullen, America’s first-ever supermarket. Traditionally-dominant conglomerates like Ahold-Delhaize feel pressure to acquire more stores due in part to price pressure from German discounters, Lidl and Aldi. These chains, which have grown rapidly across Europe over the past two decades, sell primarily private label products and offer less selection than traditional grocers to drive up purchasing volumes and lower prices.

To Preserve African-American Businesses, Durham, NC, Turns To Employee Ownership

Durham, North Carolina, once famous for its “Black Wall Street,” is exploring a new strategy to preserve and grow local African-American businesses through employee ownership. One of four cities chosen to participate in the Shared Equity in Economic Development (SEED) fellowship program, sponsored by the National League of Cities and the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI), the city is preparing to reach out to African-American business owners — particularly those approaching retirement age — to encourage them to consider employee ownership when planning their succession strategies.

The Death Of Small Businesses In Big Cities

If you want to understand “retail death” — and I’m using quotes here because the concept of buying and selling things is very much alive — all you have to do is look at one very specific street. In the ’90s, the stretch of Bleecker Street that snakes north through New York City’s Greenwich Village was home to dozens of independently owned bookshops, sex shops, antique stores, and framing galleries. But the death knell rang when the luxury fashion house Marc Jacobs decided to settle there in 2001, the year after the nearby Magnolia Bakery was featured in an episode of Sex and the City. Within the next 10 years, 44 of those original neighborhood businesses would close to make space for the chains and luxury boutiques that followed.

The Woman Aiming To Get 50 Million Americans Into The Worker-Owner Economy

For decades Marjorie Kelly has looked for ways that businesses can better contribute to the good of society. In 1987, after getting a master’s degree in journalism, she founded Business Ethics magazine to showcase socially responsible corporations. But after 20 years as president and publisher, she sold the magazine. She had come to an epiphany: Encouraging individual corporations to behave better was an insufficient route to improving society. Significant change would require a shift in the ownership structure of business. Kelly’s 2012 book, Owning Our Future, lays out ways to expand democratized ownership models, including employee ownership. Research shows that when employees own the company, they make higher wages.

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Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

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Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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