 All right. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for sticking around. I'm Oscar Perry Obello from Next City and we're going to introduce ourselves a little bit here, but let me do a little bit of framing. So we're sort of the second half. We're going to shift a little bit from talking about what we just heard or everything we've heard about racial equity and the differences in wealth and what that means and who has access to and who manages wealth. And now we're going to talk, we're going to shift to talking about who is responding to that problem, who is working on that problem, who's out there doing the work. And so this is sort of why and we can't and there are literally millions of people out there doing something about the racial wealth gap, doing something about gender equity, doing something about justice for the planet. There's millions of them and so we sort of have the shortcut here of having a journalist, having a really two, three-ish journalists, two and a half journalists. So Marjorie Kelly is a long-time journalist and Ted Howard is the co-authors of the Making of a Democratic Economy, which is the book, the title of the session and they have the book here. Available at finer bookstores everywhere. And so we're going to talk about and the book is full of examples of the folks who are responding to that problem. So let me start by introducing myself and talking a little bit about those numbers we heard today. So at Next City, we're an online magazine, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to driving change for the world through cities, through journalism and events around the world. So we were founded in 2003 and in 2003, cities were still the problem places, right? Full of crime, full of drugs, they were the problem places. And now that cities are more in vogue, we look at the neighborhoods in cities as the, as our focus, let me look at those neighborhoods as the places where the solutions really are coming from and can come from, should come from, they're emerging really and they're worth our attention and that's why we write about them at Next City. So we write about urban planning and urban policy and development and design, affordable housing, public chains, banking and finance and access to capital and all that. And so in that spirit, let me, let me throw out some more numbers out there and you may have heard these numbers before in terms of, let's say, the, you know, the racial wealth gap in the United States. The median net worth of a white household is around $171,000, right? And the median net worth of a black household, $17,600, right? If you look at, if you can chop that up by city, there's some, there's some really interesting studies by city. So in Boston, where Marjorie is based, in Boston, the median net worth of a white household is $247,000. The median net worth of a black household in Boston is $8. That's not a type of 8. The median net worth of a white household in Los Angeles is 100 times the median net worth of the, of a black household. And then it's not just wealth, right? That, that, that's a, that's a root cause of many things and there's some root causes that led to that wealth gap, but it results in other gaps. Gaps like here in San Francisco, the average revenue for a white-owned business is around $600,000. The average revenue for a black-owned business is around $119,000. The average revenue for a black-owned business in Oakland is $66,000. And that's, that's just one area. I mean, if you look at Detroit, the average white-owned business in Detroit, in Detroit earns $1.3 million. The average black-owned business in Detroit, $32,625. So that's the kind of inequality and the, that's why the, the numbers we heard earlier about who is managing wealth really matters. And what we're going to talk about today for the, for the next 17-ish minutes, 13-ish minutes, is who is working on that problem. And that, because that, that's really what I really, what I really like about the, the book, Making of a Democratic Economy. So, you know, we're not, we didn't bring millions of people with us, but we brought a couple of folks who wrote a book about the folks who are responding to all of these problems. So, and I want to ask them to tell us a little bit about the communities where, who are trying to respond to that problem of racial wealth, inequality, injustice, environmental injustice. So I'm going to start by having you guys talk about, there's a, there's a really interesting little anecdote in the book of when, of when your organization, the Democracy Collaborative, where Marjorie Kelly is executive vice president and, and Ted Howard here is the president of the Democracy Collaborative. Your organization went out to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. And tell us what happened. Sure. Yeah, I'll start with that. Thanks, Oscar. Yeah, the very first project I worked on at Democracy Collaborative was we are working with a group of Native American non-profits wanting to get some economic development going. And we went to Pine Ridge in South Dakota. Pine Ridge is a place with like 80% unemployment. There was not a single house for sale anywhere on this reservation. And we had the good fortune to work with Nick Tilson, who is, I believe he's here tonight. And so, yeah, Nick was doing a regenerative community trying to rebuild all kinds of wealth on the reservation, skills, culture, and so forth. And they were one part of a cohort that we worked with, we worked with a half a dozen Native non-profits. We came in thinking that our, our job was to lecture these Native leaders. And we came in with our, our PowerPoints at the ready. And the very first morning of this gathering, there was a revolt. And they basically told us, this is like learning from a fire hose, please leave the room. And we'll let you back in when we, when we, when we're ready. So it was interesting, Oscar, they came back and said, well, you know, we learned that we were going to do a process of co-learning. And from then on, this project was a learning action lab. We, we developed the gender together, we, we brought in experts for people and, and really began this whole, this whole process of, of cultural sensitivity. And I, and I want to just end up with a, one of the lovely outcomes of this is one of the women who was involved took some of our work on community wealth building and translated into Lakota. And we published that for them. So it had a, it had a nice stark to it. And, you know, that's just one of the examples in the book. And the thing that stood out to me most is out of eight examples, a majority of them, about five, were rooted in the lived experience of a historically marginalized community. So the Pine Ridge Reservation, you also went to the South Bronx, you take us to Portland. And most, and perhaps most near and dear I know to you, to your hearts is you took us to Cleveland. Yeah. And you have when we have the Cleveland model. So why don't you talk, Ted, introduce the, what is the Cleveland model and how, how it kind of emerged, you know, and do that in like two minutes, right? Good. I can do that. So is anybody here from Cleveland, Ohio? There always seems to be somebody. Okay. So Ohio, we're kind of like the Irish, there's this huge diaspora of Ohioans everywhere. I've been to Amarillo, Texas. And I said, is there anybody here from Cleveland? Oh, yeah. High plans. So Cleveland's a very interesting story. I moved there to do this work about eight years ago. And it's an interesting story because Cleveland back in the day, back in the 50s and 60s, was one of the five wealthiest cities in America, it had a population of about a million people. There are more Fortune 500 corporations headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, than any city in America, except Manhattan, New York City. John D Rockefeller was born in Cleveland, he's buried there today. There were millionaires, it was quite a city. Today, Cleveland's not one of the five wealthiest, it's one of the three poorest cities in America. The population has fallen to about 385,000 as the, from a million as the city's been deindustrialized, jobs have moved offshore and so forth. And about 35% of the population of the entire city lives below the federal poverty line. So it's a city that's been very, very hard hit as many older industrial rest belt cities were. And we look to see what can we do that can actually start to rebuild a living local economy. And the Cleveland Foundation, the local philanthropy, the oldest community foundation in the world, invited me and my organization to come work there and help design an economic inclusion strategy. The end result of which is the following that while most of the industry had left our city, what remained was a legacy of the manufacturing strength, large place based anchor institutions, Cleveland Clinic, many of you have heard of, Case Western Reserve University. So large universities, hospitals, cultural centers that buy billions and billions of dollars of goods and services. And yet, they're surrounded by six neighborhoods where the median household income is below $18,500. Federal poverty line is $225. So where are those billions of dollars going? Well, they're all exiting our system. So the strategy, what became known as the Cleveland model was to work with the anchor institutions to move their contracts back to the city and into local business. Then we started a network of for profit worker owned cooperatives called the Evergreen Cooperatives to explicitly provide goods and services to those institutions and and be sustained by the contracts from the institutions. So we have two industrial scale laundries employing a couple hundred people doing about 30 million pounds of sheets and towels for the hospitals, employing people who were formerly unemployed and about 50% formerly incarcerated. We built a hydroponic greenhouse in downtown Cleveland, growing 3 million heads of lettuce and 300,000 pounds of basil for the local food market because in Cleveland, because of the short growing season with the weather, almost all leafy greens are trucked 12 to 1500 miles on carbon based transportation from Mexico, Arizona and California. We said, let's grow it there and keep people working. So the end result is that we have close to 300 people currently employed who are in a network of four or five companies more on the way. Everyone receives a family supporting the living wage. They receive what are essentially no cost health benefits. And because they're the owners of their companies, there aren't outside investors as the companies are profitable and they are, they share in the profits. So early this year, final story, final data point for the people who had been at the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, the longest again, 50% of whom were formerly incarcerated and almost all of whom were formerly unemployed. Those people received bonus checks in January of this year, $5,000 because their labor is what created that profit. And so that's one of the principles of what a democratic economy starts to look like. And that's one story from Cleveland, Ohio. And as you said, their stories are all over the country. And I got to take you, I got to take us one more layer into Cleveland because there's something really interesting that recently formed out of this model. So Ted mentioned there are more worker owned companies along the way. There's a really interesting fund that you guys that is also part of this ecosystem. It's the Fund for Employee Ownership. And let me describe it to you and you tell me if I'm wrong and you tell me what I'm missing. So this fund will acquire existing legacy businesses, whatever you want to call them. It will acquire them and hold on to them until such time that the workers are able to take over ownership of those businesses. Yeah, that's right, Oscar. It's a Fund for Employee Ownership. It was started just in the last year. It's already raised 11 million. And it's a it's intriguing. It's a it's a private equity model, kind of a concessionary private equity where, yes, you buy, hold, convert to employee ownership and then exit into the evergreen network of the three employee owned companies. So and it's being tested right now in Northeast Ohio. The fund we think will close on its first acquisition probably by the end of the year. And I want to point out also that this is, it's intended as a model. That's how we work at the Democracy Collaborative. Let's create models that show their different ways of doing things. Anchor institutions, we've done models there and model of how do you spread employee ownership. There are others here working on other private equity, other kinds of funds taking employee ownership to scale. So it's really a growing area and you're going to be hearing more about this opportunities for investors to make, you know, attractive mid-range returns and create wealth for those who have been left out. And let me just say this is incredibly important nationally, not just Cleveland, because of the retirement of the baby boom generation, my people, who, you know, in the next ten years there are going to be tens of thousands of companies in this country that are closely held. They're going to be on the chopping block and that represents millions of jobs. And either we're going to lose those jobs if we sell to competitors and so forth, or we're going to leverage this moment of what's called the Silver Tsunami into a dramatic expansion of employee ownership in America. And we're trying to test that concept through the fund. And so this is, and this is just one of the many things, you know, this is in the book and it's, the reason it's in the book, right, is these, all these examples we just heard about is because they are, they're elements of prints or illustrations of principles of a democratic economy. Yeah. So, you know, just for the, I'm sure folks are wondering, what, what is a democratic economy? Again, you have two minutes to answer that. Yeah. Great. To Karl Marx, like, 30 years, at the British Library, but you're on. Well, just to step back, I mean, impact investing is one piece of a very large movement that is working to transform the economy from the inside out. So it's, a democratic economy is not just about regulations and social safety nets wrapped around the economy as it is, but it's about the DNA. And that's exactly what impact investing is about. We want to invest for mission, we want to invest for social outcomes, along, right alongside financial outcomes. This is also happening in, in ownership. There's public banks that are being started working with the anchor institutions. We do a lot with that. And so, the whole idea is, you know, can we imagine a next system, not just a project here or, you know, an approach there, but an entire economy, a new paradigm around the common good, designed around the common good. So that's what we talk about in the book. When we say this is not a pipe dream, we go and we visit the places where this is emerging and the, and the really brilliant people who are, who are doing this work. And it's, it's an alternative to the extractive economy, which we have now, which as we know, is designed for extraction by a financial elite. So how do you design it for the prosperity of all of us? And that, that work is, is very far along. And, okay, so we've got four minutes left. So I try to, I tried the budget at about four minutes because now we've got to plug what tomorrow's session is about. So tomorrow at 1130, it's going to take four minutes, tomorrow at 1130, we will also be in a breakout session, a workshop, and it's going to be in the theater tent, the gallery tent down at, down at the end of the row here. And so there's eight examples, there's eight examples in the book that illustrate the principles of a democratic economy. There are a majority of them are coming from historically marginalized communities in a sense of illustrating that the economy, one of the reasons the economy is not democratic is that there are specific communities that, for whom the economy is not working. And the, and the book is about how, how can we build an economy that works for those communities that has to be built with those communities. Yeah. And so tomorrow at 1130, there will be one, two, three, four, five other examples of historically marginalized communities that are organizing to build a democratic economy. And so I'm going to take you, take us on a quick tour of these. Right. In West Oakland, community foods market, you might have, you might have heard of it as the people's community market, it opened as community foods market in June. And this is a market that raised 11 million dollars to, for the community to own its own grocery store. How do you get 11 million dollars into, into West Oakland, into a food desert in a way that's non-extractive, in a way that is with the community? Well, they had no other choice. You can hear about it tomorrow. They had, they had, they raised 600, 700-ish thousand in about nine months using a direct public offering structure. Once they got that 700,000, CDFIs, new market tax credits, suddenly everybody wanted in on that deal. So they were able to raise the rest of the 11 million. And they've actually raised 2 million. They've, they kept on raising the, the direct public offering. They've kept it open so that they have working capital after the open. That's West Oakland. That's just one. Another example is Recology. If you're from the Bay Area, you've probably heard of Recology. This is the worker-owned composting, recycling company. They're going to talk about employee ownership and, and what, and what investors can do to support employee ownership. And it's a billion dollar company. Oh, excuse me. 1.2 billion? 1.2 billion. 1.2 billion dollar company. Yeah. That's, that's, that's two. Community foods market, Recology. Three, the runway project. This is a, this is a, a project to create a product to fill in the friends and family capital gap. That wealth gap we talked about earlier. You know, if your median wealth in your, in your, in your neighborhood is 8 dollars, what do you do about how, where do you get the friends family capital? Not just the money, but the friends and family part of it too. So that's, and that would, that has been designed that by, by black folks, for people of color, for black folks. That's, that's, that's number two. Number three is the public banking campaign. So this is a, this is a campaign to create city and county owned banks. California just passed the bill to create a legal pathway for cities and counties to do this. Ten city or, and or county owned banks over the next seven years, at a limit of two per year. So, cities and counties are going to be able to go to the California state regulator and ask for a banking license to create their own bank. And that's about public banking North Dakota. That's four. That's four. And another great model. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I have a minute. Beauty foods market. Recology. Public banking campaign. Again, these are all models of communities, historically marginalized communities that are organizing, accessing capital, creating their own capital stack, building projects in, in, in, in the, in their vision, right? There weren't any projects. It's all right. Community foods market. Well, you have to show up tomorrow to find out what's going on. Um, well, thank you very much, everyone. And I think that's our time. Any, any closing thoughts? Could I just say another shameless plug? If you'd like a copy of book, Marjorie and I are signing them tomorrow in the Festival Pavilion at 10 o'clock. But I'd also like to just end with a quote from the book. Marjorie mentioned, uh, our colleagues on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. And people asked me, what's in the way of our achieving truly a democratic economy? And really, I think it's, we don't have the ambition and the vision to drive forward. And so the native leaders on Pine Ridge gotten a sweat lodge and they heard a message from their elders. And this is what they heard, which motivated them into action. How long are you going to let other people decide the future for your children? Are you not warriors? It's time to stop talking and start doing. Don't come from a place of fear. Come from a place of hope. That's a message for all of us. Thank you. Thank you.