Community Wealth Building

The founding People’s Economy Lab cohort convened local economy leaders in Seattle to create a core set of ideas for a community-centered economy that works for everyone. The Lab has since evolved to explicitly center Black, Indigenous, and communities of color, but the focus remains the same: advancing a Just Transition from an economy that extracts from most of us, especially BIPOC communities, to a solidarity economy that is controlled by all of us and creates shared wealth and well-being. One set of tactics for this work has been summarized as “Community Wealth Building.”

People’s Economy Lab promotes Community Wealth Building as a transformative strategy to close the racial wealth gap. We believe that Community Wealth Building empowers BIPOC to build wealth within the current economy and to drive transformation towards the economic justice and solidarity economy we seek to build.

What is Community Wealth Building?

An illustration depicting a plate, labeled "Extractive Economy," with "Local" in the interior circle and "Global" in the exterior circle. A rainbow colored wedge pushed by small rainbow-colored people is shattering the plate from the center. The wedge has five sections, labeled "Progressive Procurement," "Locally Rooted Finance," "Inclusive and Democratic Enterprise," "Fair Work," and "Just Use of Land and Property."
"The Wedge," courtesy of Democracy Collaborative, https://democracycollaborative.org/blog/how-is-community-wealth-building-practiced
What is Community Wealth Building?

Community Wealth Building is an economic development model, described by The Democracy Collaborative, that transforms local economies by giving communities direct ownership and control of their productive assets. Community Wealth Building is a way of organizing our local economies to ensure that they genuinely work for all people. The crises we face, such as the racial wealth gap, are driven by the extractive nature of our dominant economic system, which is characterized by concentrated ownership, community disinvestment, attacks on labor, environmental degradation, and structural social and racial injustice. Community Wealth Building addresses these realities by laying the groundwork for an economic system where broad and democratic ownership support equity and social and racial justice.

 

Learn more about Community Wealth Building on The Democracy Collaborative’s website.

How does Community Wealth Building advance a Just Transition?

Just Transition requires us to build a regenerative economy based on the caring and sacredness of relationships to each other and the planet upon which we depend. To achieve this we must “shift economic control to communities,” “democratize wealth and the workplace,” and “drive racial justice and social equity.”

Community Wealth Building provides a powerful framework and set of tactics to achieve this. It’s an approach to full systems transformation that “focuses on developing alternative economic institutions, approaches, and relationships and connecting them to each other; creating interventions at various scales throughout the system; and making a conscious effort to reset social relations, build a new politics, and construct a counter hegemony based on moving beyond corporate capitalism” (Community Wealth Building: The Path Towards a Democratic and Reparative Political Economic System).

Community Wealth Building Strategies for Seattle

In 2022, People’s Economy Lab was selected by the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods to provide research, analysis, and expertise and to recommend a set of coordinated strategies to address the racial wealth gap and advance BIPOC generational wealth building. During the course of our work, we helped convene the Generational Wealth Initiative Community Roundtable; presented research and conducted workshops with the Roundtable and City of Seattle staff; conducted community participatory research with three community-based organizations representing Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities; recommended the Community Wealth Building model and specific strategies for Seattle; developed a report of findings and recommendations and supported the development of nine BIPOC-led Community Wealth Building pilot projects funded with $1.3 million over two years.

The six Community Wealth Building strategies we’ve recommended for Seattle are:

We presented our findings and recommendations to the Seattle City Council on September 22, 2023. 
 

Click here for expanded definitions of these strategies and examples of organizing work currently happening across Seattle to learn in community, pilot and test these strategies.

Examples of Our Community Wealth Building Work

Seattle Public Utilities Community Wealth Building Trainings, current project

We’re developing and leading training sessions on Community Wealth Building for Seattle Public Utilities, with a particular focus on progressive procurement. While a Community Wealth Building lens can benefit SPU as a whole, it is especially relevant to SPU’s community-centered Shape Our Water initiative.

Community Owned Resource Development Coalition Capacity Building and Loan Fund Development, 2022-2023

With funding from the City of Seattle’s Equitable Development Initiative, People’s Economy Lab partnered with Community Credit Lab to support the development of the Community Owned Resource Development (CORD) Coalition. We helped CORD, a grassroots coalition of BIPOC-led real estate developers, build a governance model and operating framework for their association.

Community Investment Trust, 2022

We tested the feasibility of a Community Investment Trust (CIT) model in the City of Seattle and King County.

South Seattle Community Capital Resiliency Project, 2019-2022

Together with Homesight, Rainier Valley Community Development Fund, and Ventures, the People’s Economy Lab piloted a partnership between three BIPOC-led Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to provide small business capital and technical assistance to low-income immigrants, refugees, women and people of color in South Seattle and unincorporated King County whose businesses are vulnerable to failure and displacement. The project sought to advance the partners’ vision of creating a place-based, community-driven small business lending and technical assistance program. It aimed a fill critical gaps and create synergy between the three partners and advance the larger field of community-controlled economics development in Seattle and South King County.

Community Capital Working Group, 2019-2021

We hosted conversations with groups in the community capital ecosystem, including community development financial institutions, credit unions, community banks, funders, and investors. The Community Capital Working Group envisioned:

1. Increased access to affordable, relevant, innovative capital for communities of color, immigrants and refugees, and women-owned small businesses and entrepreneurs

2. Community control of investment and wealth redistribution

Additional Resources

People’s Economy Lab partnered with Front and Centered on the New Economy Washington Frontline Community Fellowship program, which supported entrepreneurs from communities of color who were integrating the principles and practices of a Just Transition and advancing a solidarity economy in Washington.

The Democracy Collaborative action guide for advancing Community Wealth Building in the U.S.

 An Indigenous Approach to Community Wealth Building: A Lakota Translation

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