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Activating Stagnant Capital to Catalyze Local Transformation

Our celebration of Small is Beautiful continues into May with a new theme: Activating Stagnant Capital to Catalyze Local Transformation. Our participants for this online conversation are introduced below.

Join us Thursday the 18th at 2PM (EST). As with each of our 2023 Schumacher Conversations, registration is free.

Register.

Small is Beautiful advocated “production from local resources, for local needs” as a key organizing principle of a just, ecologically-balanced economics. But a web of flourishing regional economies, producing first for local needs, is possible only when communities have access to resources and the power to direct investments.

With soaring inequality and the pressing need to transition out of old, extractive systems, accumulated wealth cannot remain stagnant. Either it will be captured and reallocated centrally via taxes, or, it can be released: as free gifts and interest-free investments for place-based transformation of social, economic and cultural life.

May’s panelists are those advancing innovative approaches to catalytic wealth redistribution. This group of participants advocate radical steps—encouraging foundations to spend down their funds, land gifting rather than land-hoarding, and divestment from Wall Street back into Main Streets. In short, calling on people and institutions to commit to transformation here and now. Each panelist is invited to reflect on themes in Small Is Beautiful, opening up a broader conversation on the topic of activating stagnant capital. An audience Q&A will follow moderated by our host, Nwamaka Agbo.

May Participants
Chuck Collins, is Program Director for Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits Inequality.org. He is an expert on U.S. inequality and the racial wealth divide and author of over ten books.
Kate Poole is an anticapitalist investment advisor and co-founder of Chordata Capital, which supports investors in moving money off of Wall Street into community investments that center racial and economic justice—helping clients in redistributing, rather than continuing to accumulate, wealth.
Alfa Demmellash is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Rising Tide Capital, a non-profit organization providing underserved entrepreneurs with resources to launch and grow successful businesses.
Nwamaka Agbo (host) is CEO of the Kataly Foundation and Managing Director of the Restorative Economies Fund. Prior, as a consultant, she has assisted and guided community-owned and governed initiatives including Restore Oakland, Black Land & Power and others.
Register.

A reminder that April’s Conversation, Reallocating Land: From Market to Commons, may be viewed here.

 

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