Community Recovery and the Jobs Summit
December 2nd, 2009 by Angela Glover Blackwell
Today, I will join more than 130 innovative nonprofit leaders, small-business owners, global CEOs, and community leaders at the White House Jobs Summit. I am honored by this singular opportunity to bring the voices and ideas of low-income people and communities of color to the table.
But I sincerely hope this talented group does not merely attempt to restore our pre-recession economy. We must come out of this crisis stronger, with an inclusive, expansive economy that harnesses the skills of all people. We can no longer waste the talents and potential of millions of Americans.
In a report we released today – Finding Work, Finding Hope: A Step-by-Step Guide to Get Your Community Stimulus Dollars (and Jobs!) — we have laid out a short-term roadmap to help communities access federal stimulus dollars. The guide provides phone numbers, web sites, application links and all the other information you’ll need to get stimulus dollars to your community.
And as we move forward, how do we make sure equity is at the heart of our recovery?
- Train the next generation of “middle-skill” workers
- Stop foreclosures and put people to work keeping foreclosed properties from becoming blighted
- Start the “green revolution” in low-Income communities
- Invest in the long-term infrastructure of all communities
This is, of course, just the start. Do you have other ideas? Share them in the comments section.
The Jobs Summit should mark a banner day for all of us who work to ensure all Americans have the opportunity to participate and prosper. Because a recovery without equity is no recovery at all.
Tags: employment, financial crisis, foreclosures, jobs summit, unemployment
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:29 am
The wars have to be stopped in order to fully employ our population. What is needed is a massive public works program run by the government, not by the nonprofits, that is not privatized.
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:52 am
The guide provided regarding Community Recovery and Jobs Summit was a good start. We need to keep the pressure on regarding Education. Our drop out rates are devasting and preventing our youth from being employable in green jobs or other employment opportunities. We should reinforce support of President Obama’s Race to the Top Initiative and put more funds in our Community College Sector and HBCEU’s. We are in a crises for our youth.
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Employment strategies should adopt that embraced by the military in times of recruiting shortages and as was done during the Vietnam era. Employees who fail the urine test for substances will be employed on a probationary basis; their drug use noted and the employee informed on hire; then retested at 6 months. Should the retest demonstrate that usage had been reduced or merely maintained, the employee would either be off probation or it extended. Indications that drug use had increased would result in dismissal. Details could be worked out. The principle is that substance abuse if a means of dulling the pains of living, which unemployment certainly is; and it is doubly brutal to penalize those in communities subjected to massive unemployment who have been self-medicating to continued pain with home-grown solutions, with little hope of escape. The job would become the carrot that offers hope and substance, rather than its denial being the same old stick.
December 3rd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Main Street Ventures
A new Venture Capital paradigm; Self-funding for microenterprises and worker cooperatives… owned and operated by We, the People.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Main Street Ventures: Connecting the successful with the not yet successful by self-funding its own operational and venture capital needs, and then investing in hands-on microenterprises and worker cooperatives, turning small start-ups into big opportunities.
Democracy in Action… Owned by the hands-on workers and local residents, they elect their board of directors in a democratic one-person one-vote system, deciding who, what, when, where, why, and how combining local resources and energies will best serve their overall community.
HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS
Historically a reallocation of jobs, workers and capital, inter-connected to meet the needs of the consuming public, has always been the major force behind every economic advance and lifestyle improvement in our America’s living standards.
MICROENTERPRISES are started with $35,000 or less, have five or fewer employees, 24 million are operating in the USA, account for 18% of all private employment and 87% of all U.S. businesses.
WORKER COOPERATIVES range in size from Fortune 500 companies (LandO’Lakes), to local storefronts (Ace Hardware,) daily serving over 120 million members, four out of ten Americans.
CREDIT UNION cooperatives have over 89 million invested members; 44.8% of economically active population… rarely make commercial loans.
VENTURE CAPITAL, invariably from Wall Street sources, actually invest in less than two-percent of the projects presented to them, rarely if ever investing in microenterprises.
MISSION STATEMENT
Main Street Ventures provides the ways and means for every American to achieve an equitable human equality; fair and equal access to the creation and ownership of wealth and power; earned through community invested co-operative programs.
Main Street Ventures is an entrepreneurial magnet:
• Establishing a self-funding community owned economic development
• Creating access to naturally sustainable jobs and competitive market advantages.
• Keeping locally generated profits flowing back into our own local communities.
• Maintaining a commitment to a common good with an equitable benefit for all participants.
• Assuring complete transparency in all management and financial affairs.
• Creating a climate in which member owners achieve maximum financial independence.
• Defining human dignity, every individual’s right to knowledge, opportunity and ownership.
• Continually focused on growth of member’s capital and depth of services offered.
• Promoting Human Dignity, as a highly sought after mark of service and quality.
MEMBERSHIP
Main Street Ventures start-up and ongoing revenue sources are a $25 membership registration fee plus opening a $50 (a minimum of 5 Venture Capital units @ $10) voting right investment account; applicable to all microenterprise and cooperative members. Common good and mutual aid is our strategy; each specific industry division formed for complimentary results, easily divided, combined, duplicated and/or franchised, will grow and expand by retaining a portion of patronage funds allocated to members at the end of each year.
Main Street Ventures, builds 100% ownership on our Main Street not on their Wall Street.
Our money - used where we need it - small investments producing big results.
Through natural cooperative principles, each MSV member, regardless of number of units owned, has only one vote… and they can use the full power of their vote:
• To adopt and/or amend articles of incorporation.
• To elect and/or if necessary, remove members of the Board of Directors.
• To decide on expansion or consolidation with other worker/employee owned operations.
• To assure compliance with rules applicable to articles, bylaws and membership contracts.
Main Street Ventures is a unique starting gate for good ideas and profitable business opportunities… funding its own operations and venture capital needs and spawning industry specific worker cooperatives and microenterprises.
Everyone has had new and different ideas —worth listening to and perhaps worth acting on-— this is what makes MSV methodologies vitally necessary; a community-wide friendly way of connecting the successful with the not yet successful telling the every-day American that regardless of how high or low tech their product idea or service concept may be, they will have a fair and equal chance to turn their dreams into reality.
This unique gathering of local resources and human energies will act like a magnet, attracting creative professionals, and amateurs to utilize MSV as their home base, where they can maximize their skills and abilities to invent, build, keep, and re-circulate their own profits locally… creating wealth and retaining ownership in their own productivity.
In defining life’s choices Shakespeare said… “to be, or not to be”
In today’s economy, our only choice must be… “own, or be owned”
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:57 pm
The Comments above are all worthy and shol\uld be acted upon but we are leaving out a large rapidly growing underclass of Black Men who are now felons without visible opportunity to re-enter society. I fully recognize that all of these persons are not really interested. But I truly believe that there are enough worthy of effort. There should a no nonsense voluntary program with enforced standards. Many of the persons I know posess artistic skills and mechanical skills that need to be developed. This would reduce the trend of persons of color destroying there own neighbor hoods.
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:22 pm
I think that the reality is that we need a major program of direct employment for both
adults unable to find work and teens unable to begin working. We had substatnial teen job problems, especially in summers, for many years and the Public Service Employment program adopted in the early 1970s and lasting on a modest scale until Reagan. There are so many communities facing true depression conditions and so little probability that a gradual increase in the economy will do anything significant for years for those communities, that we have to do things that were done even during the Nixon and Carter years, to say nothing of the much bolder initiatives during the New Deal. If we can figure out how to do it without business simply getting an unfocused subsidy, lowering the cost of taking on new workers is also important. We need more FDR-like experimentation and less trickle down stuff that conservatives always advocate. Obama needs some people who can make this happen quickly.
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Entrepreneurship and small business opportunities should be one of the indicators of sustainable communities and written into the SC Initiative under HUD. Also this initiative should be focused in communities that have been left out of the old economy. Structural change is needed both locally and nationally to 1) remove the obstacles to local neighborhood based businesses and 2) by giving major support to these local endeavors. I heard that Japan provides up to 80% support to assist small businesses.
December 4th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Wall Street won’t… the government can’t… We, the People, must… the choice is ours…
OWN, OR BE OWNED
December 4th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I believe employment is the key. That includes opportunities for entreprenuers who want to contribute on alll levels large and small. There are are many professionals who have the skills and the experise but not the capital to establish businesses that could have an impact on the communites in which we live and work. There are also too many part-time positions that are replacing full-time emplyment. We are left with working three or for four jobs just to make one salary.
December 9th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Of course quality employment is key for the economic turn-around, but this starts with a quality, affordable education. For people of color - an educational system which takes into consideration our diversity - such as the “Harlem Project” - must be duplicated in the areas failing from an educational perspective. This will then create the type of citizen that can become a productive part of our society. The Project takes into consideration the person from birth through adulthood, and is holistic, meeting educational as well as health care and employment needs.
Health Care Reform is needed - if we are going to have a viable health workforce - who will have access to quality health care - with out having to deal with issues of disparity within the health care delivery systems or access to quality health care issues.
Stimulus Funding is not being fairly distributed to encourage economic growth in the areas most needed. Why? Because the expertise needed to apply for these types of funds is problematic - from the technical expertise and manpower perspective. Most areas with the greatest needs don’t have “shovel-ready projects”.
If President Obama would continue to provide housing tax credit incentives, pushing more income tax on the wealthy, and less on those who are middle class and poor, this would be an excellent step in the right direction to expand the middle class, and bring individuals out of poverty.
My last point, Welfare to Work Programs are great - but employers must understand the language of the person they are trying to help, and the person must understand the language of industry. Bridges Out of Poverty - Nancy Payne Author - is the best book I have read which helps to bridge this gap so good employees are retained. Is helps to create the needed standard of understanding, and the “trust factor” which is lost by so many who are already having a difficult time.
December 17th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I will share with you the same thing I told my steering committee of the Collaborative I’m involved with (the HOPE Collaborative) when we in the process of drafting our “implementation” plan to address the inequity’s of the city of Oakland Flatland residents
In our grant proposal that was awarded by the W.H.Kellogg Foundation
Here below is the copy of the email I sent to that Steering Committee
leon davis to hopepolicycomm., HOPEsteeringco., hank, Alisa, Navina
show details Jul 4
Hello fellow committee members and staff
As Co-Chair of Local Sustainable Economic Development I’m requesting that 20 minutes economic report & presentation update be added to the agenda for the next steering committee meeting July 10th
This email is a small overview of the report & presentation which will give some detail for the 7 things needed for local sustainable economic development
#1. Recognize the 4 pillars of destruction that are exclusive to the flatlands most vulnerable neighborhoods communities and the link of between so that link can be broken.
The 4 Pillars of Destruction are
Economic (the ceiling) = i.e. the total lack of a committee to recapture wealth, very limited disposal income
Health (the left side wall) = i.e. the highest health disparity of type 2 diabetes, chronic illnesses and preventable disease
Education (the right wall) = i.e.the highest high school drop-out rate, the lowest college participation or higher education
Crime & Property (the floor) = i.e. the highest murder and other violent crimes and the lowest property value
These 4 pillars are so interconnected they form THE BOX or TUNNEL OF DESPAIR
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The Box or Tunnel of Despair apply such pressure it is guarantee to keep the vast majority of communities not only poor but destitute and poverty
Inside this box there is a economic ceiling that does not allow for the recapturing of community wealth on a large scale basis and actively promote the dysfunctional system of minimal access to affordable healthy foods.
Which effect the left side wall of health of the community and keep them from preventable chronic illness and disease.
Which also affects the right side wall of education leaving the children in these communities at a total disadvantage that reflected in the high school drop-out rate
Which take us to the ground floor of crime & property with no economic wealth or hope for higher education people inside the box are more tempted for illegal sources of revenue, drugs which further contribute to the health of the family and community adding to that pillar, senseless violence like gangs, murders and car jacking fighting over crumbs bringing down property value.
All of the Maps & Meta Analysis confirm this!!
O.K TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW
#2. We must show that only a well coordinated infrastructure that address all 4 areas simultaneously is the ONLY way to break the links that combine the pillars that form their box or tunnel of despair
We must show the only mechanism that empower the communities to access and control their own food source is their ability to recapture their wealth through a systemic infrastructure
Which they control by the by-law and governing of broad of community supervisors (Holding Company) that over see a system of local farmer agreements, distribution & processing of local affordable healthy delivered to a network of community owned stores.
Done on a scale that effect all the vulnerable neighborhoods trough out the flatlands 1 store for every 5,000 resident or about 60 store, the store should be as prevalent & accessible as the corner store and liquored store as to become the public face for the entire system.
The network will consist of working with local farmers that agrees to provides them with a better return on the dollar then they are presently getting from traditional grocers at .25 on the dollar because of the middleman, the community network can guarantee a return of .55 on the dollar, because the network will also have distribution & processing property assets who’s workforce will come from the community and only a community that has working knowledge with how they access and distribute their food sources can make such a agreement.
#3. Show the win-win benefits & result of the system that address all 4 pillars because of the community ownership of the stores
(a) 200,000,000 million dollars of recapture revenue a month staying in the flatlands + 150,0000 new investors brought online into the stock market by virtue of being owners through the collective buying power of the community
(b) Affordable healthy food now access by all of Oakland residents by reason of the health food store prevalent
(c) Family able to save to send their kid to college
(d) Crime cut by 50%
(e) Community having the sense of ownership because the store bring more community involvement
(f) Property Values increases, people wanting to live in area they can recapture their wealth
(g) Larger tax base and fewer welfare recipients
(i) High growth exit from recession economy & depression stopper
#4. Show the initial up front cost of 300,000,000 millions dollars (that the high end) is pale in comparison to the benefits of the healthy food store, which would cost no more then your average corner store (you can even convert houses into healthy food stores).
At 3 million x 60 store = 180,000 million dollars (that the high end), the distribution & processing assets can be obtain with favorable negations with city because of the benefit also land trust
Even with a proficient operation & low overhead with store operation 4-8 employees, distribution & processing workers, driver you are still looking at 350 new job instantly
#5. Show how the community owned store is fuel that will drive all of the buckets the steering committee hold so dear like
Safe, Green Spaces for Physical Activity and Play - You cant have that when the many are disenfranchised get real !! — however- - With the community now receiving the real result of profit sharing check in their pocket they have the resource them shelve for community policing.
Safe, Walkable Neighborhoods - Same answer , the Box or Tunnel of Despair prevent it - -however– With the community now receiving the real result of profit sharing check in their pocket they have the resource themselves for community policing.
Neighborhood Community Centers, Recreational Programs - Check the news the government is cutting more and more services –however– with the recapture of wealth the community broad of supervisors can write in the by-law that 15% of the profit can go more community center & recreational program
#6. Change the meaning of the word “Community Ownership”
From meaning someone in the “community” who own something (the few)
To meaning everybody in the Community owning something (the many)
#7. Declare as a steering committee with one voice and one minds the absolute insistent in our action plan that we need to have in place stores owned by the communities in order to recapture wealth and fight all 4 pillars
We must submit a plan that tell Endowment foundations, state & city official and all civic and corporate leaders that it is in their best interest to provide the up front cost of 300,000 million (that the high end) so that we can install the infrastructure
Then write up the framework of how the community board of supervisors (Holding Company) is govern the system that empowers these disenfranchise communities to be able to take back their neighborhoods and get out of the Box or Tunnel of Despair
Then we will serve as a model city that show how a society can band together in such a unselfish way as to create a paradigm shift that will change the way communities live together
Otherwise
YOU GET WHAT YOU GOT!