The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar “Remaking the Economy: How to Change Our Stories about the Economy.” View the full webinar here.
Yes, there’s innovation and new ideas, and we’re so excited to invest into them, but there are a lot of things that have [always] been here. We look at nonextractive finance, zero-percent interest finance. That’s Islamic finance. That goes back centuries.
We look at cooperative economics and their history here in the US, which goes back to the moment that Black folks were brought to this soil against their will. We look at susus and giving in communities back in Africa.
“The number of models and leaders and folks who know how to do this, to create a more equitable economy, they’re already here and they’re already doing it.”
We look at many, different ways that funding and money have moved differently—[where] power and wealth have been shared by definition—and this is not rocket science. It’s actually what was and is normative. We just have to believe in it again.
And so, at Common Future, we don’t do anything new, we don’t do anything radical, we just evince what’s already there. And I think what is so tremendous—shocking, scary, but also, I think, like everyone here, I see the glass half full—we have such an opportunity just to show what’s already happening.
And there’s not going to be a silver bullet. But also, in the many ways that we invest in the many models that we have, and the many ways that we move, there’s less ability to resist us.
We are powerful because we are many. The number of models and leaders and folks who know how to do this, to create a more equitable economy, they’re already here and they’re already doing it.
What we lack sometimes is power; that is political. What we lack sometimes is capital; it’s a measure of power. And that’s I think where the solidarity between the work that we collectively do, the folks here, becomes all the more relevant.
