community equity agenda

The Nation — Amazon has ended its plan, less than three months after it was announced, to locate one of its two new headquarters in Long Island City—a deal had triggered fierce if entirely predictable opposition to throwing billions in public subsidies at the world’s richest man, bypassing public review processes, securing few promises for low-income job seekers, and rewarding a company with a lousy labor record, a creepy role in Big Data, and some objectionable dealings with federal law-enforcement agencies.

Our organizations support the concept of “postal banking,” as a potentially transformative form of public banking. As banks continue to redline New York neighborhoods — perpetuating poverty, inequality, and segregation — bold solutions like postal banking are clearly needed. Some recently-introduced proposals, however, would exacerbate our two-tiered financial system and promote debt as a solution to people’s financial struggles.

City Limits, Op-ed by Deyanira Del Rio and Andy Morrison — Unless you’ve been stuck under a rock – or perhaps on the 7 train – you’ve heard the news: the winner of the Amazon HQ2 sweepstakes is…Amazon. Two hundred and thirty-eight cities competed. Twenty finalists raced to the finish line. Two – New York City and Washington, D.C. – were selected to split Amazon’s new so-called second headquarters. But in the end, Amazon took home the big prize: $4.6 billion of public money.

Inside City Hall — New Economy Project’s Campaigns Director Andy Morrison imagines what would happen if “the enthusiasm that were seeing from the Governor and the Mayor toward Amazon was directed at real, community-based development and community-led initiatives that are proven – whether it’s Community Land Trusts, worker co-ops, or other things – to build wealth from the roots.”

On August 3, 2018, nearly two dozen people from NYC community organizing and cooperative development organizations packed into our conference room for an engaging lunch discussion with Álvaro Porro, Social Economy Commissioner for the City of Barcelona. Barcelona’s story presents a powerful model for New York City, and we were eager for this extended opportunity to hear about his work.

A lot has been written about the shortcomings of New York’s recently-passed state budget. The upshot: New York’s electeds missed the clear opportunity to take decisive action against Trumpism and to protect communities under attack. A glaring example of this failure of leadership is the decision, yet again, not to fund a widely-supported program that invests in low-income communities and communities of color: the state’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund.