Our new report explores the "right to own"—giving workers the right of first refusal anytime their workplace is up for sale—as a strategy to massively scale up employee ownership in the economy. We outline the major provisions and legal changes necessary to enact this right, and the ecosystem of support and financing necessary to make it truly operative for workers.
‘Urban and Metropolitan Universities: The Transformative Power of Anchor Institutions’ focuses on the role of urban and metropolitan universities as anchor institutions in their community to address long standing inequities. Anchor institutions are nonprofit or public institutions that are rooted in place. These institutions have a mission to serve and are the largest employers and purchaser of goods and services in many communities. Also, they have other assets and capacities that can be leveraged to support reciprocal community development, including local hiring, procurement, and investment practices. Anchor mission strategies involve the entire university, including the business, community partnership, administrative, research and academic divisions.
Metropolitan Universities journal (MUJ) is the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities’ quarterly online journal. This special issue, guest edited by The Democracy Collaborative's Emily Sladek, is an initiative of TDC and CUMU's Higher Education Anchor Mission Initiative.
Public ownership is more widespread and popular in the United States than is commonly understood. This book is the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the scope and scale of U.S. public ownership, debunking frequent misconceptions about the alleged inefficiency and underperformance of public ownership and arguing that it offers powerful, flexible solutions to current problems of inequality, instability, and unsustainability- explaining why after decades of privatization it is making a comeback, including in the agenda of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party in Britain. Hanna offers a vision of deploying new forms of democratized public ownership broadly, across multiple sectors, as a key ingredient of any next system beyond corporate capitalism. This book is a valuable, extensively researched resource that sets out the past record and future possibilities of public ownership at a time when ever more people are searching for answers.
Buy on Amazon * Buy from a local independent bookseller
Stephanie Gutierrez, co-founder of Hope Nation LLC, explores hows effective community wealth building in Native communities depends on an active process of cultural translation.
Written by Randy Oostra, CEO of ProMedica (a member of the Healthcare Anchor Network) with the support of The Democracy Collaborative's David Zuckerman and Katie Parker, this report offers an in-depth look at how the Toledo, Ohio based health system aligned its institutional operations and clinical practice to better tackle the social determinants of health. From an innovative hospital-owned grocery store in a food desert to investments in preserving affordable housing, this exploration of ProMedica's decade-long journey to understand how their resources as a healthcare anchor could be used for the wellbeing of the communities they serve is a useful guide for hospitals and health systems embarking on similar shifts.
Our new report, Higher Education's Anchor Mission, examines how an ongoing—and expanding—effort to track the impact of colleges and universities on the financial and social well-being of their surrounding neighborhoods is helping these anchor institutions align their resources to build stronger community partnerships and create more inclusive local economies.
Anchor institutions can play a key role in helping the low-income communities they serve by better aligning their institutional resources—like hiring, purchasing, investment, and volunteer base—with the needs of those of communities. The recommendations in this “playbook,” drawn from research carried out to help Rush University Medical Center (RUMC) align around its Anchor Mission, are being published to help other hospitals and health systems accelerate their own efforts to drive institutional alignment with community needs.
With income inequality in the United States at record high levels, employee ownership is increasingly being lauded as a potential solution to spreading wealth more broadly. Most recently, research from the National Center for Employee Ownership released in May shows that employee owners have a household net worth that is 92 percent higher than non-employee owners. They also make 33 percent higher wages, and are far less likely to be laid off.
But employee ownership requires new investment in order to get to scale. A new report by Mary Ann Beyster, president and trustee of the Foundation for Enterprise Development (FED), published by the Fifty by Fifty initiative of The Democracy Collaborative, examines the investing landscape for potential opportunities in employee ownership. The report, Impact Investing and Employee Ownership, reports on the results from six months of research showing that the opportunities for impact investors to support employee ownership are limited, but that an investing infrastructure is beginning to emerge across asset classes.
In The Next System Project’s first policy brief, Democracy Collaborative Fellow Ellen Brown, founder and president emeritus of the Public Banking Institute, explores what’s wrong with President Trump’s approach to infrastructure. By focusing on private investment and public-private partnerships (PPPs) to come up with the capital to invest in repairing and upgrading our infrastructure, his plan will accelerate (partial) privatization of public assets and impose huge costs upon local residents, to be repaid through local taxes and extractive and regressive user fees like tolls.
Drawing on the historical precedents of both Lincoln’s investments in railroad infrastructure and FDR’s financing strategies for the New Deal, Brown shows how public strategies for investing in infrastructure make far more sense than what Trump is likely to put on the table. She estimates that an approach grounded in the use of public depository banks, either at the federal level or spread across a state-by-state network, could cut the $1.18 Trillion financing costs associated with a $1 Trillion investment in infrastructure in the Trump plan, once the returns demanded by private investors are factored in, to a mere $200 Billion. Not only would such public banks be able to lend money for infrastructure projects at a far lower rate, the interest earned on such loans would return to the public coffers.
Brown also identifies an even bolder approach that could bring the costs of investment in infrastructure down to zero. By embracing its power to create money for the public good using an innovative “qualitative easing” approach to inject new money into the real economy, the federal government could directly cover the costs of the pressing upgrades and repairs to our nation’s roads, bridges, dams, water supplies, electrical grid, and transit lines without the need to borrow any money at all.
The inability of traditional politics and policies to address fundamental U.S. challenges has generated an increasing number of thoughtful proposals that suggest new possibilities. Individual thinkers have begun to set out – sometimes in considerable detail – alternatives that emphasize fundamental change in our system of politics and economics.
We at the Next System Project want to help dispel the wrongheaded idea that “there is no alternative.” To that end, we have been gathering some of the most interesting and important proposals for political-economic alternatives – in effect, descriptions of new systems. Some are more detailed than others, but each seeks to envision something very different from today’s political economy.
We are in a time of deepening systemic crisis. Throughout the world, we see staggering levels of economic inequality, unchecked extractive behavior by corporate-dominated industries, overt attacks on civil rights, massive and ongoing violence against women and people of color, deteriorating democracy, heightened militarization, endless wars, rapidly advancing climate change—and the list goes on.
Unfortunately, the system that has produced this crisis isn’t “broken.” In fact, the mounting challenges we face are to a large degree its natural byproducts and intended outcomes. Therefore, we cannot simply wait for the system to correct itself, or hope that by working at the margins for piecemeal reforms we will alter its fundamental outcomes. Instead we must think deeply about what we want to replace the current system with, and then work to establish the new institutions, practices, and customs required to make this vision a reality.
In December 2016, leaders from 40 health systems gathered in Washington, DC to explore the potential to more fully harness their economic power to inclusively and sustainably benefit the long-term well-being of American communities. Together, they discussed best practices and strategies to advance the Anchor Mission of healthcare.
At the conclusion of the convening, the Healthcare Anchor Network was formed to support health systems collaborating nationally to accelerate learning and local implementation of economic inclusion strategies.
This report summarizes the events of that convening and next steps, inviting your hospital or health system to join the Network and help advance the Anchor Mission of healthcare in your institution, in your community, and nationally.
Across the country, healthcare institutions are recognizing that they can creatively leverage their supply chains to address the upstream economic and environmental conditions that have the greatest impact on the health of local residents. In doing so, they can create family-supporting local jobs and build community wealth. This toolkit on local and diverse purchasing showcases examples of how hospitals and health systems are reevaluating their roles as their community’s largest purchasers, understanding that a thriving local economy is fundamental to a healthy community.
The sourcing of goods, services, and food that your hospital or health system does every day, when aligned with your mission, can help build local wealth in the communities you serve. By supporting diverse and locally owned vendors and helping to incubate new community enterprises to fill supply chain gaps, hospital and health systems like yours can leverage existing resources to drive local economic growth and build a culture of health in their communities. This toolkit can help you get started
Nationally, health systems have an estimated $400 billion in investment assets. Redirecting even a small portion of these resources to place-based investments would shift billions of dollars toward addressing economic and environmental disparities in local communities. It would allow institutions to more effectively improve community health and well-being, even as they continue to earn a healthy rate of return. This toolkit outlines a range of strategies for how health systems are using their investment assets to help address the resource gaps that keep communities from achieving better health and well-being.
As we learn more about what families and children need to lead healthy lives, it is clear that adverse social, economic, and environmental factors, coupled with racial disparities, prevent communities from building a culture of health. The good news is that hospitals and health systems are recognizing that they have significant, untapped assets at their disposal to help address these challenges: their investment portfolios. Through place-based investing, institutions can leverage these resources to improve their communities’ overall health and well-being. This toolkit will help you get started.
Broad-based ownership models bring substantial benefits to communities and workers, particularly those of low and moderate income. These models are poised for substantial growth as tools for solving the massive problem of economic inequality. In an economy where wages have been stagnant for decades—and a disturbing 40 percent of jobs are now part-time, temporary, or contingent—public interest in models fostering broad-based ownership has grown substantially.
Every day, we learn more about how patients’ health outcomes are tied not only to the healthcare they receive but also to the conditions in the communities where they live. Social and economic inequities, amplified by race, often emerge as the leading factors explaining differences in health outcomes and life expectancies.
Through local and inclusive hiring, health systems can invest in an ecosystem of success that lifts up local residents; helps create career pathways for low-income, minority, and hard-to-employ populations; and begins to transform neighborhoods. In the process, health systems can develop a more efficient workforce pipeline, meet sustainability and inclusion goals, and ultimately improve the health of their communities. Establishing a local and inclusive hiring strategy is an important first step towards rethinking your health system’s role in the community. This toolkit can help you get started.
There's a movement afoot to build a more equitable, democratic economy in the United States. It's a movement led by community-based activists who, each in their own way, are building new institutions to support social and economic justice, rooted in community-controlled land and enterprises. This movement has a name: it's called community wealth building.
On June 13 and 14, 2016 in Washington, DC, many of the nation’s leading experts in employee ownership, sustainable business and finance, community and economic development, and philanthropy came together in a Learning + Design session. Co-hosts for the meeting were Marjorie Kelly and Jessica Bonanno of The Democracy Collaborative and Camille Kerr of Democracy at Work Institute. The purpose of the session was to discuss how to achieve unprecedented scale of employee ownership by focusing on achieving an audacious goal: 50 million U.S. employee-owners by 2050. This report summarizes and expands upon the June meeting:
Cities are increasingly turning to their “anchor” institutions as drivers of economic development, harnessing the power of these major economic players to benefit the neighborhoods where they are rooted. This is especially true for cities that are struggling with widespread poverty and disinvestment. Urban anchors— typically hospitals and universities—have sometimes isolated themselves from the poor and struggling neighborhoods that surround them. But this is changing. Since the late 1990s, as population, jobs, and investment have migrated outward, these “rooted in place” institutions are becoming a key to the long, hard work of revitalization. In Cleveland, the Greater University Circle Initiative is a unique, multi-stakeholder initiative with a ten-year track record. What is the “secret sauce” that keeps this effort together?
Gar Alperovitz reviews Nathan Schneider's Everything for Everyone.
The Green New Deal won't get far if it's left hostage to the whims of private finance. We need to set up public banks and democratize the Federal Reserve.
John Oliver's commentary on the effect automation will have on the labor market fails to undertand the power dynamics involved, namely the exclusion of workers from decisions that greatly affect them, as well as the environmental consequences of continued automation and cost-cutting technology. "While it’s welcome that a well-nuanced discussion of automation is reaching Oliver’s mainstream millions, the limited narratives are obsolete and in need of a major reboot," Simpson poses.
Having stockholders can offer confusing incentives for business owners with a mission–but not if those stockholders are employees who believe in the mission, too.
The city of Preston, England, is a case study in how a community reimagines itself when long-sought after corporate investment fails to materialize.
Amazon's HQ2 would contribute to gentrification by creating jobs for people outside the communities where the headquarters will be. "The people pushed out by rising housing costs in communities that already face affordable housing shortages will become another community’s problem, as will rising costs of living, shortages of living-wage jobs and the over-policing demanded by gentrifier populations," writes Democracy Collaborative policy associate Peter Gowan.
TDC's public comments discussed how anchor mission and anchor collaborative work helps to address the social determinants of health and builds community wealth.
Martin O'Neill and Joe Guinan interview Zitto Kabwe, a political opposition leader in Tanzania who has committed to bringing the corruption of the government to light despite the repression he faces. See Part II of the interview, as well.
The Labour Party, with Jeremy Corbyn as its leader, seeks to create a more economically equitable system through employee ownership.
The Memphis Medical District Collaborative is a community development organization working with partners to strengthen the communities in the Memphis Medical District.
Between July and September 2018, The Democracy Collaborative and Innovate Memphis conducted a review of MMDC’s work during its first two years of operation. This research process was composed of a review of baseline anchor data, stakeholder surveys, and current program data; stakeholder interviews with over 30 partners, anchor staff, board members, and funders; and facilitated work sessions with MMDC staff and board members.
The resulting case study summarizes themes from this review process, with the goal of painting an accurate picture of the scope of work currently undertaken by MMDC and its partners, and representing common themes articulated by key stakeholder groups. Document review and interview themes are supplemented by Innovate Memphis’ local context knowledge of Memphis’s economic development ecosystem and TDC’s national perspective on the field of anchor collaboratives and community wealth building.
Anchor collaboratives are stronger and can accomplish goals that once seemed out of reach by combining efforts and resources. However, forming an anchor collaboration isn’t automatic; it takes effort and time to get institutions to see their common interests and potential alignment. The article discusses some ways it can work.
A growing number of forward-thinking healthcare anchor institutions have taken up an “Anchor Mission” to realign all institutional resources to fight long-standing inequities at their root by building community wealth.
Many anchor institutions are also major landowners in their communities, and many are already engaged in housing programs such as employer-assisted housing. Anchor institutions can and should employ CLTs to maximize the impact of their long-term investments in housing for their workforce, and utilize and support CLTs to help build more inclusive communities around their institutions more generally.
Many anchor institutions are also major landowners in their communities, and many are already engaged in housing programs such as employer-assisted housing. Anchor institutions can and should employ CLTs to maximize the impact of their long-term investments in housing for their workforce, and utilize and support CLTs to help build more inclusive communities around their institutions more generally.
Isaiah Pool, of the Democracy Collaborative, writes for Common Dream on "Why We Have To Break Up Amazon."
It is the kind of inquiry that people like Stacy Mitchell, the director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, has been pushing for. In an interview this week for The Next System Podcast, a project of the Democracy Collaborative, Mitchell explained that Amazon is to the 21st century what railroads were to the late 19th century. Amazon’s third-party reseller program underscores the parallel.
In this article, Politico Magazine writes about a socialist future, "What Would a Socialist America Look Like?" Peter Gowan—a fellow at The Democracy Collaborative—was interviewed about democratic ownership:
A democratically elected government should own natural monopolies such as utilities and rail transport; provide social services like health care, education, housing, child care and banking; and create a general welfare state that eliminates poverty through guaranteeing a minimum income, with assistance for people with disabilities, the elderly and families with children.
But we have to go beyond that. We need measures to establish democratic ownership over the wider economy, and eliminate our dependence on industries that rely on pollution and war for their existence. There need to be strategies to allow workers in the defense, aerospace and fossil fuel industries to repurpose their facilities for more socially useful production, drawing on the example of the Lucas Plan in Britain, where workers designed and published a viable “alternative corporate plan” that included funding for renewable energy, public transport and medical technology. We need a mechanism to transfer corporate equity into sector-oriented social wealth funds controlled by diverse and accountable stakeholders, which would gradually transfer ownership away from unaccountable elites and toward inclusive institutions.
A democratic socialist America would be a society where wealth and power are far more evenly distributed, and it would be less cruel, less lonely and less alienating. Democratic socialism aims for the liberation of human agency and creativity—not just in America, but in all the countries that capital exploits and invades for the profits of our nation’s billionaires.
Dana Brown deputy director of the Next System Project writes for The American Prospect: "Before Big Pharma Kills Us, Maybe Public Pharma Can Save Us." In this article, Brown writes about the need for public funded medical research:
Writing for HuffPost, Jarrid Green explores the story of how Hasta Muerte Coffee partnered with the Oakland Community Land Trust to fight back against displacement.
Joe Guinan and Martin O'Neill write for Renewal, "Editorial: The institutional turn: Labour’s new political economy ." In this editorial, they write about the Labour's leadership in the new economy:
The Labour leadership is putting together the elements of a new twenty-first century socialist political economy with a direct focus on ownership, control, democracy, and participation. Rolled out across the entire economy, it could displace traditional corporate and financial power in Britain.
Read more in Renewal
Martin O'Neill and Ted Howard write for Renewal "Beyond extraction: The political power of community wealth building." In this piece, they write about new ideas for the economy:
An interview with Ted Howard, Co-Founder and President of the Democracy Collaborative, a Washington, D.C.-based ‘think-do tank’ that develops and promotes ideas for a more democratic economy. Howard is now an adviser to the Labour Party’s new Community Wealth Building Unit.
Read more in Renewal
Thomas M. Hanna, Joe Guinana, and Joe Bilsborough write in Open Democracy "The ‘Preston Model’ and the modern politics of municipal socialism."In this piece, the writers highlight the flagship community wealth building project in Cleveland, Ohio, and Preston, England and what it means for municipal socialism:
There are now two flagship models of community wealth building—and a growing number of additional efforts in cities across the United States and United Kingdom. The first model is the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio—created, in part, by our own organisation, The Democracy Collaborative. Cleveland had lost almost half of its population and most of its large publicly-traded companies due to deindustrialisation, disinvestment, and capital flight. But it still had very large non-profit and quasi-public institutions such as the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western Reserve University, and University Hospitals—known as anchor institutions because they are rooted in place and aren’t likely to up and leave. Together, Cleveland’s anchors were spending around $3 billion per year, very little of which was previously staying in the local community. The Democracy Collaborative worked with them to localise a portion of their procurement in support of a network of purposely-created green worker co-ops, the Evergreen Co-operatives, tied together in a community corporation so that they too are rooted in place. Today these companies are profitable and are beginning to eat the lunch of the multinational corporations that had previously provided contract services to the big anchors. Last month came the announcement of an expansion of the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry to a new site serving the needs of the Cleveland Clinic, with a hundred new employees on fast track to worker ownership.
Jarried Green writes in Other Words "A Future For Homeownership." In this article, Green writes about how community land trust and housing could save the American dream:
At this point, it’s no secret that America has an affordable housing problem. Home ownership, long the staple of the “American Dream,” is increasingly a privilege enjoyed only by the wealthier and whiter.
For many young people, the opportunity their parents had to build stable wealth through home ownership seems like a cruel joke in today’s economy. There’s even a viral tweet: “Millennials. Walking around like they rent the place.”
But the housing situation in the U.S. is no laughing matter.
Peter Gowan writes in Jacobin Magazine "A Plan to Nationalize Fossil-Fuel Companies." In this article, Gowan writes about the Democracy Collaborative's research on the cost of nationalizating fossil-fuel industry:
"This could be quite costly — writers from The Democracy Collaborative recently estimated “the price tag to purchase outright the top 25 largest US-based publicly traded oil and gas companies, along with most of the remaining publicly traded coal companies” at $1.15 trillion. But there are ways to minimize this cost while still obtaining all of the benefits."
Dana Brown and Thomas Hanna of the Democracy Collaborative write for In These Times on "It’s Time for a Public Option in the Pharmaceutical Industry." In their article, Brown and Hanna highlight TDC work in public ownership and the need for "drugs for the public good:
Writing in Jacobin Magazine, Peter Gowan proposes a "A Plan to Nationalize Fossil-Fuel Companies." Highlight the research of the Democracy Collaborative published in the Nation magazine:
This could be quite costly — writers from The Democracy Collaborative recently estimated “the price tag to purchase outright the top 25 largest US-based publicly traded oil and gas companies, along with most of the remaining publicly traded coal companies” at $1.15 trillion. But there are ways to minimize this cost while still obtaining all of the benefits.
CFO, and Director of Employee-Ownership of the Democracy Collaborative, Jessica Rose writes in Times Union "Employee ownership can boost NY economy, families." Rose's op-ed highlights how empowee-ownership can boost upstate New York's economy:
"Companies owned by their employees are more widespread than you might think. Nationally, there are at least 7,000 of these firms in nearly every major industry, sector, and region of the U.S. In New York, many employee-owned businesses are recognized industry leaders and household brands, such as Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) in the Bronx, and Chobani yogurt, in Norwich, which each employ more than 2,000 workers. Though structured differently, both offer employees an opportunity to share in the fruits of their labor which, in turn, makes workers invested in the company's success. It's not just fair, its smart: Extensive research shows that participatory employee ownership contributes to greater productivity and firm stability."
