As the 50th anniversary of the book Small is Beautiful, 2023 is our opportunity to advance solutions to today’s social, economic, and environmental challenges that build on Schumacher’s original vision.
To meet this calling, the Schumacher Center is convening a monthly series featuring New Economic thinkers, builders and activists from a range of fields. “Schumacher Conversations: Envisioning the Next 50 Years” brings together change-makers whose work today is actively shaping a ‘small is beautiful’ future, organized around 12 key themes and fields of activism.
February’s theme is: Making Reparations: Seeding a Just Future. This online event took place Thursday, February 16th at 2PM (EST).
Each speaker began with prepared remarks, opening up a broader conversion on the topic, followed by audience Q&A.
Today, there is a growing recognition that the prevailing economic system is holding back collective agendas for a habitable planet and a fairer distribution of wealth. Realizing the extent to which the dominant system remains rooted in legacies of colonial violence and slavery, addressing the systemic injustices of racism and colonialism remain essential elements of a just and regenerative future.
February’s panelists are those at the forefront of efforts to publicly reckon with these systemic injustices and repair their harms. Each participant represents a particular approach to reparations, arrived at through community activism and in context of place:
- Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) economist, environmentalist, Native American activist, and co-founder of Honor the Earth. She created a Community Land Trust structure to regather lost Ojibiwe land at the White Earth Land Recovery Project, using donated funds to repurchase land.
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Chief Kelly LaRocca is Chief of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation and Director for the National Lands Advisory Board for First Nations Lands Management in Canada. Acting on behalf of the Scucog Island First Nation, Chief Kelly successfully obtained reparation funding from the Canadian government.
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Robin Rue Simmons is founder and Executive Director of FirstRepair, which trains elected officials in other communities on city-funded reparations, and chairperson of the City of Evanston, Illinois Reparations Committee. A former city Alderman, she spearheaded a bill in Evanston that provided reparations funding at the municipal level.
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Kali Akuno, Co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson who sits on the Schumacher Center’s Board of Directors, moderates the conversation. Kali brings experience in grassroots organizing in Jackson, Mississippi, gaining access to land for homes and small enterprise to provide greater economic security through cooperation.
Each panelist was invited to reflect on themes in Small Is Beautiful that connect with their own thinking and activism. This includes economies of place, effective scale of action, production for local markets, cooperative structures, and the role of land in economic justice. These reflections then opened up a broader conversation on the topic of Seeding a Just Future. An audience Q&A will follow moderated by our host, Kali.
The Schumacher Center has also put forward an approach encouraging voluntary land gifting into a Black Commons structure, through which access to land can be reallocated via 98 year leases to those historically excluded from it.
Alongside each monthly conversation, we’re shining light on aligned organizations and initiatives that are championing social and economic transformation in their respective fields. In curating these groups, we intend to provide listeners with conduits to action: connecting individuals looking to support or join-in with those already doing the work. Explore February’s organizations here.
