Community Economic Development: Principles and Practices

What was I thinking about when I wrote this last year? I didn't post it so I am pushing it out now for my and your edification.

What is community economic development? It is a combination of community building, cooperative economic strategies and institution development.






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new reality or old dreams

I was talking with my cousin from New York City recently. She said that she was incredulous that there seems to be a persistent desire and demand to return to a storied past where the USA was the world's political, economic and cultural super power. The promises currently being made by the Obama administration and the clamoring for even more from its detractors are all shades of a time past that may never return. The nation currently exists as a shadow of its former self with the outline of its glory days clearly laying behind it.

She asked me what did I see as the future of the nation. After reflecting on what appears to be a tendency on the part of the Obama administration to hold onto the 'old way of doing things' that is reflected in the selection of Guitner and Summers I began a stream of consciousness riff. When we think about what has been the experience of other empires one of the primary reasons for their demise can be traced to dietary causes.

The roman empire may have fell due partly to the use of lead for wine goblets. Several major ancient empires have their decline traced to their food supply including the Mayans. This speaks to the current situation created by use of nitrogen fertilizer for food production.

The decline in yield from nitrogen fertilizers combined with their environmental impact (degrading soil, poisoning streams, etc.) argues for their being part of the problem rather than the solution. Combine that with the factory food production system and we teeter n the edge of empire collapse. While this is seriously over wrought and alarmist, it is a corollary to the economic decline that the U.S. is experiencing.

Just as the British once bragged that the sun never set on its empire, the U.S. must now face its declining position as the premier economic international power. This is not a particularly cogent or coherent treatment of this topic. But this serves as a beginning not the end of my thoughts on this topic.





























































































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Understanding the understood

I engaged in a conversation with an associate who shared an community organization affiliation last week. He stated an opinion with which I did not agree. In informing him (and others since we were on a listserve) of where I disagreed with him and why he was offended and withdrew. This was a disappointment to me.

The art and ability to engage in a discussion of differing opinions while remaining civil is becoming increasingly difficult. It is not just that there is an air of incivility in the air. It is also that the option to withdraw, walk away, don't show us for the meeting, stay at home, drink beer, watch t.v., find new friends, volunteer somewhere else, pop in a DVD, otherwise occupy ourselves is a real and present possibility. We don't have to see the offending individual and 'poof' they are gone from our lives and so too the disagreement. Our world is righted. Our view of self or others is confirmed to be true and accurate. We can find solace in unanimity of opinion and outlook.

The fact that we are not able to exercise our intellect, emotions and outlook in a vigorous debate without injuring one another, either literally or figuratively, is a sure sign of weakness intellectually, emotionally or socially.

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The long strange trip of Skip Gates

I apparently wasn't able to get my comments about the Skip Gates episode out of my head and into my fingers before it dribbled out my mouth in conversations with young and old, friend and foe voicing my incredulity regarding Gates naivete.

The incident in a nutshell was an example of individual ego meeting institutionalized authority. Skip was trippin' when he started flippin' about the refusal of the police officer to submit to his authority as a citizen. Of course, it has been said more than once (because it is true) someone who did not live in such affluent surroundings might have got more hurt than their feelings. So Skip may have dodged a bullet, both figuratively and literally, this time.

Let's see if he is able to integrate this experience into his life.

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Thinking about the future

I was reading something the other day that had an Eskimo proverb "yesterday is ashes. Tomorrow is wood. The flame burns brightly only today."

I found myself quoting this proverb several times over the weekend. I was attending the graduation of my niece from Dental School and this was an occasion for her parents, family and friends to reflect back on their and her life. This frequently resulted in comments like "where did all the time go?"

Another cultural tradition that has the observation made by the Eskimo proverb as a central tenet of their practice is the Zen tradition. Their admonition to live in the moment is an acknowledgment that all we have is this second but it too slips away too fast.

My mother died last week. This is the epitome of the need for being present in ones life. The separation of the physical from the spiritual in the life of the deceased and in the lives of those who loved them is irreconcilable, immediate and emotionally intense. It is in death (particularly the death of a parent or child) that men are granted the right to cry in public without being considered weak. I cried. I loved my mother and grieve her passing. But I truly believe that today and every other day should be dedicated to a celebration of life, the life of the deceased, the life of the celebrant and the only part of life that we can truly experience, the now.




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I have seen the future . . . it is the past

The direction this country is going in has a long trajectory with a long arc and it bends towards justice. The story of the impending collapse of the American capitalist historical project is one that is written with blood, sweat and tears. A look around the dustbin of the economy will reveal much that has been hidden and much that has been revealed yet not recognized. For starters there is the new found poverty of the nation. Entering into an economic downturn the likes of which has not been seen since the Great Depression. This time war will not save us because we have been and are already at war. The production of armaments offers no salvation because the primary means of production have been outsourced.

We face a world that has changed much for many of us but has remained the same for most of us. The idea of community economic development emerged as a response to the American political economy that had marginalized and disadvantaged people of African descent along with other non-European residents of the country. This process extends back to the arrival of the first indentured Africans in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 and the establishment of perpetual Black chattel slavery in 1664 in Maryland. Onward to Jim Crow laws and sharecropping the economic debasement and disenfranchisement of Blacks continued unabated until the human rights movement know popularly as the Civil Rights Movement. While attenuated even then the location of Blacks in the political economy remained firmly and securely on the bottom. This was to continue unheralded and mostly ignored by Whites into the 1970s,

By the time the American African Human Rights movement had been sidetracked and misdirected into the American Civil Rights movement the social environment was rich with expectations that couldn't be met with the half-hearted attempts to pacify and co-opt the Black leadership. The youth were not connected or rewarded by the pacification strategy and bubling up from this set of circumstances was the demand for "Black Power."

This contemporary desire for self-reliance and demand for self-determination was manifest through a number of politicial and social structures and philosophies. One that emerged was 'community economic development" This attempt at creating parallel economic structures reflected a similar strategy that harkened as far back as the presence of people of African descent in the American colonies on. Dr. W.E. B. DuBois spoke of it as "double consciousness." Many early attempts at alternate institution building were limited to social and professional organizations, e.g., Prince Hall Masons, National Bar Association, etc. Early attempts to create alternate economic institutions have include mutual aid societies, burial societies, Booker T. Washington's support of the National Negro Business League and the efforts of the Washington admirer, Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the Universal Negro Improvement Association  (UNIA), as well as the Garveyite influenced, Nation of Islam.

The federal agency, Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), took notice of the emerging strategy as it took shape in the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland under the leadership of DeForrest Brown. The strategies and institutions were the efforts of economically marginalized and socially isolated Black communities without access to the financial or social capital of Main Street America to pull themselves us by their bootstraps. This initiative in the economic area was also occurring in the social and politcal areas as well. 

Long story short (I have been working on - and off- this post for a month) the strategies that were identified and developed or incorporated as a hedge against the hegemonic forces of institutaionalized White Supremacy that kept Blacks firmly secured to the bottom of the American political economy have been more widely applied as social practice and public policy as capitalism has gone global and the significance of being white is decreasing with declining returns. What does this mean? Yet to be seen. It may portend an alliance based on class interests or it may result in increasingly harsh and shrill racial acrimony. We will be the judge and jury, plantiff and defendant.




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Coming home to myself

What's up world? I am announcing my arrival into consciousness this morning. We are alive and in color with a mission and a purpose. What next for me? What next for you? What next for the world?

We are in a place that is uncharted. We are in today. We have yesterday as an indicator and tomorrow as a possibility. But we have not lived through the time or had the experiences that await us today. This is an adventure and an opportunity. What we seek and find may confirm our insights or confound our expectations. We choose so much.

What about the current situation with Pres. Obama? This is an interesting time. I think that Pres. Obama will face many of the same challenges that all of us see in any president. We were cracking jokes about baby Bush and spitting out spiteful comments that stopped just short of being treasonous. The man is now in the machine. He is as much hostage as he is the decider. All around us there are things going on and we attribute the responsibility of them all to the president.

We just came out of an "Undoing Racism" workshop this past week. It was interesting. It was attended by a number of people who were not particulary interested in being there. I think they came well armored and ready to resist the ideas that were put forth by the trainers. Maybe it will bear fruit in the future. Maybe not. But I can tell you that the future awaits each of us pregnant with possibilities.




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Tomorrow never comes

I have been absent from the blogosphere for too long. Well, maybe not too long but a long time nonetheless. Since I last posted there have been a few things that have significance for me both physically and psychically. Of course, there is the communal electoral event that resulted in the rise to prominence (and some would say power) of President Obama. Other issues include the deepening crisis of the economy (both domestic and international) and the role of the new faithful opposition in American political society.

It is with great trepidation mixed with the air of celebration that we view the ascendancy of our man, Barack Obama, to the pinnacle of political power. Not knowing what is behind the door of the future and who Obama has, or will, find behind the curtain that shields the wizards that wield the levers of society today, we all express some degree of satisfaction and anticipation of the future. Embedded in the consciousness of the Black experience and the white reality is the role and potential of Africans both in America and in the World. It has been noticed that the choice made by both Blacks and whites (and apparently Obama himself) to identify a man that had one white parent and one black parent as a Black person is a reflection of the ongoing power, prominence and preeminence of externalized White superiority and internalized Black inferiority in European society. If indeed he (Obama) is half and half then he is just as much one as the other. The idea of who is black and who is white is reflected in the embeddedness of the "one drop rule."

The identification of Obama as a Black man and the first "Black" president is an acknowledgment of the continuing state of the world where those of European descent define and dictate what is reality through force of arms, thought domination and resource control. Is Obama's parentage a reason for Blacks to celebrate as an accomplishment of social progress that a person who has both a "white" parent of European descent and a "Black" parent of African descent has been elected President? Is Obama's parentage a reason for white people to celebrate as an achievement of social enlightenment that a person who has both a "white" parent of European descent and a "Black" parent of African descent has been elected President? We will leave it to you to answer.

But why can't we celebrate the victory of the "best man" for the job, the most qualified by American opinion, as reflected in the vote, for the job or the victor of the political race? Why must we see the event in terms of biological race? The embeddedness of the concept in the culture persists despite scientific objections to it and declarations of its irrelevance, inaccuracy and ineffectiveness as a social, political or biological concept of any specificity and clarity.

Specious is what I think most of the scientist that ogled and ahh'ed the "inconvenient truth" about climate change and the harm caused to the environment by the obstinate and backwards refusal to acknowledge and face the truth of the physical world chocking from the economic waste products of the contemporary European expression of life and its concomitant lifestyle. Yet ol' Al did not venture into the inconvenient truth that lay nestled in a wood pile in his old Tennessee home which is choking the social world with the emotional waste products of the contemporary European expression of society and its concomitant social practices of internalized oppression and externalized colonization of the minds, bodies and spirits of both white and non-white people.

This rant is all about Obama. It is slowly preparing the back story for the saga that he will write unless he flips the script and gets rid of Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner along with their associated social and economic philosophies. Now even after looking at the links that I have provided you may wonder what I am objecting to. After all these guys are about as mainstream and embedded in contemporary society at the highest levels as you can get. But then that is my complaint or rather concern.

The economy. What can I say that hasn't been said? Are we experiencing a seismic shift of the old order giving way to the new? Is America joining the Soviet Union on the dustbin of economic history? The Funkadelic music group released an album years ago named "America Eats its Young." I think it is becoming clear that we can say the same thing about capitalism.

I have my grandson in my lap now and he demands my immediate attention so more later.




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