Remaking the Economy: Finding the Levers for System Change

How does social change happen? Join us to explore economic system change from multiple vantage points: including community-based economic development, electoral organizing, and group facilitation—with an eye to identifying unexpected intersections and areas of alignment.

Our panelists are:

Sendolo Diaminah is co-director of Carolina Federation, a statewide group that combines electoral work with base-building local grassroots community organizing. In 2020, the group organized its first campaigns in four North Carolina counties.

Lela Klein is co-executive director of Co-op Dayton, a nonprofit incubator of cooperatives. Klein was part of a team that engaged in a 6-year-long co-op organizing campaign that culminated in the May 2021 opening of Gem City Market, a food co-op in West Dayton, a primarily Black neighborhood.

Tuesday Ryan-Hart is cofounder and systems change strategist for The Outside, a social change consultancy that helps build infrastructure for equitable systems change and which works with a wide range of groups across the globe in areas such as employment policy, hunger alleviation, homelessness, and refugee assistance.

This webinar will explore:

? What are leading barriers to changing economic systems, even at the local level? What are some effective techniques for overcoming those barriers?

? How does one go about organizing a facilitated process to engage in equitable systems change? What are some key questions to ask going in?

? What does base-building organizing involve in practice? How does it differ from traditional voter mobilization strategies?

? What are the elements that enable a community to sustain a community economic development campaign over multiple years?

? What factors go into the choice of tactics (e.g., inside v. outside strategies)?

? What tools can people use to map the terrain and gain a better sense of where and how to act?

? What are some examples of where organizing has led to major economic changes? What are some of the factors that led to those successes?

? What steps can nonprofits and philanthropy take to support economic systems change work?