IMAGINATION FOR ACTION: THE COMMUNITY ENTERPRISE NETWORK AND CITIZEN SHARE BROOKLYN
We at CoLab have learned a lot in the past five years. With COVID in some ways forcing us to begin again, what might be possible if we could create our reality from scratch? In our wildest imaginings, what would we want to build? What institutions, structures, and practices might communities actually need to govern their own economies? In the Bronx and Brooklyn, with our partners, we have begun to imagine and map out creative pathways to a better future. How might the maps we draw help us move toward transformative action?
In the Bronx, together with our partners, we’ve drawn a map called the Community Enterprise Network, a set of structures that advance a local economy that invests in human dignity, fosters community well-being, and supports a larger movement for self-determination. When complete, the Bronx Community Enterprise Network will comprise six projects that together coordinate critical economic actors, shift the ownership and governance of key assets, and build shared wealth for low-income people of color. Our partners are building key pieces of this map now. Four projects have launched: the Planning and Policy Lab (co-creating local planning and coordination capacity), the Economic Democracy Learning Center (training leaders to co-develop analysis for economic democracy), the BronXchange (connecting local vendors to anchor institutions), and the Bronx Innovation Factory (democratizing digital fabrication for women, youth and people of color). The remaining two projects are in the conceptual phase: The Bronx Fund (sustainably financing the network) and the Civic Action Hub (developing collective strategy across organizations).
In Brooklyn, the map we’ve co-created with partners describes the Citizen Share Brooklyn model. The model envisions an economic and social ecosystem built on the principles of racial equity, democratic self-governance, and economic democracy. Parts of this model are being incorporated through a strategic partnership between Citizen Share Brooklyn and Brooklyn Communities Collaborative. Together, they are co-creating a sustainable community economic development initiative that incorporates unionized worker cooperatives aligned with the health care sector supply chain.
speculative fiction
To build a better world, we have to be able to envision a world that does not yet exist.
Imagine a truly equitable, truly sustainable society. What is the pathway that might get us there? Through a variety of projects over the last five years, CoLab students and partners have been imagining alternative futures in the form of speculative fiction. You can read the entire series here.
