DeepSummary
The episode features an interview with Margo Dalal, co-founder of the Detroit Community Wealth Fund, and Rosie DeSantis, the director of community programming. They discuss the organization's mission of fostering democratic and cooperative businesses in Detroit by providing non-extractive financing, technical assistance, and building resource networks to empower workers and communities.
Margo explains how the fund provides loans without requiring collateral upfront, only asking for repayment as a percentage of profits after living wages are paid. This non-extractive approach aims to make capital accessible to those without historical wealth. Rosie talks about facilitating the Cooperative Economic Network, which brings co-ops together to share resources, build partnerships, and create a cooperative ecosystem in Detroit.
Both Margo and Rosie emphasize the importance of building a locally self-reliant economy in Detroit, where resources and decisions affecting communities are directly controlled by the residents themselves. They envision an interconnected web of hyperlocal, democratically-run enterprises meeting the needs of neighborhoods while contributing to a larger cooperative economy.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- The Detroit Community Wealth Fund provides non-extractive financing and technical assistance to foster democratic, worker-owned cooperatives in Detroit.
- Their approach avoids traditional lending requirements like collateral, making capital more accessible to those without existing wealth.
- Repayment is only required as a percentage of profits after paying living wages, prioritizing business sustainability.
- The fund aims to build an interconnected, locally self-reliant economy controlled by Detroit communities through cooperative enterprises.
- Their vision involves hyperlocal production meeting neighborhood needs, integrated into a broader cooperative ecosystem across the city.
- Facilitating relationships, partnerships and shared resources among cooperatives is key to building this new economic model.
- The work taps into Detroit's history of community self-reliance and reclaiming agency in the face of disinvestment.
- Contrasted with extractive, traditional economic systems, their model emphasizes democratic community control over resources.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “Non-extractive capital is kind of being, and seed commons coined this. It is fortunately increasing in popularity. And I think there are different ways that you might be able to do this. But the way that the seed commons and the way that the Detroit community wealth fund does it is there's a few things that contribute towards non-extractive.“ by Margo Dalal
- “There's a culture of getting things done in Detroit by Detroiters for a long time, and that has often been because there weren't services, there weren't resources that were available.“ by Margo Dalal
- “It really is these circular hyper local production within neighborhoods or, you know, districts within. Within, let's say, municipality that can start at the neighborhood level. You know, what if a neighborhood had damn near every resource that they needed to survive and thrive and that those were owned and democratically controlled by those folks in that area, then, you know, you expand that out to, okay, how do we communicate and what are we getting from and contributing to these other hyperlocal economies?“ by Rosie DeSantis
Entities
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Organization
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Episode Information
Building Local Power
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
4/4/24