A Localist Agenda: Policy and Politics for Building a Community-Scaled Economy

The video : 1h23min

Filmed at NEC’s #CommonBound conference (www.commonbound.org).

Chief among the barriers we face in trying to transform our economic system is a web of local, state, and federal policies that concentrate economic power, undermine community-scaled enterprises and systems, and strip citizens of their capacity and authority to determine their own economic future. This workshop will focus on crafting a countervailing political narrative and shared policy framework for devolving economic power and advancing a just, sustainable, and community-scaled economy. Speakers will reflect on the anti-monopoly thinking that guided America’s political economy from the country’s founding until the 1980s and how it might be resurrected in today’s context; present an emerging policy agenda that outlines concrete municipal, state, and federal proposals for countering corporate power and rebuilding community-scaled enterprises; and explore organizing strategies to bring together small business, labor, environmental, and community groups in new ways to advance policy change.

Speakers:

Stacy Mitchell, Institute for Local Self Reliance

Barry Lynn, New America Foundation

Lew Daly, Demos