our city's economy what is it for new york's has been very good at piling up profits and building tall buildings but all of our private profit has come at a cost to public services a public trust could it be different we have a issue of structural economic inequality that exists or that we haven't addressed and only a real extension of public ownership and democratic control can achieve those objectives thinking of the city as a commons as a way get the city is generative so let me ask why do we need economic democracy my short answer is that we needed to hold on to democracy on this week's show we talk about the new conversations that are happening between labor unions and community members between residence workers and employers about how everyone's economy can move forward that's this week on the laura flanders show the place for the people is a company does take a back seat to the people who are doing well interest in the question of the economy is growing as evidence by an oversubscribed conference held at what used to be the murphy center now cuties newest college the college for labor and of and stud we've begun in the de blasio administration constructing prototypes for how to build economic democracy and the important thing is the we all work together and learn together i'm not saying we figured everything out no we have not we're just starting new york city faces the serious challenges of any major city specifically when it comes to inequality and climate risk but with democratic majorities at both the city and state level in government addressing those challenges is more possible now than it's been in decades and some real experts are at the table notably j philip thompson the city's deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives who comes to the job with years of experience as a scholar and coalition builder and urban planner for all of us wanting economic democracy honest dialogue and deep unity across race in geography we need to have a rough level of equality and resources and capacity attracted you to working in new york what's distinctive about new york city and its capacity to advance economic democracy well new york has always been a leader in innovation but also reason we have the largest public hospital system in the country is because people fought for that and instituted it the reason why we have public housing was originated in new york in the lower east side because people fought against s housing and these programs created the great middle class that america takes great pride in but it actually came from these kinds of initiatives and these kinds of struggles what do you lift up as the economic democracy initiatives that you're most proud of here in this city so far well we are struggling with this but one of the things that were working on is actually using the institutions that i mentioned as an institutions the hospitals alone the new york spend twelve billion a year buying goods and services why can't we use some of that twelve billion spend to build firms that are democratically run in control that have the welfare of the community and their workforce as a priority companies that actually have a civic core to them why can't we build those kinds of companies because around the world there are plenty of examples the idea that the private economy will take care of everyone's prosperity and all you have to do is leave it alone is a myth and what we're really saying is local government has to step up and we actually have to plan and ensure that our dollars our public dollars are being used in the best possible way for the residents of the city and that means building companies that are responsive to the people of this one of the many ways people are approaching economic democracy is through the city's health care budget or group of advocates organized to approach the state legislature myself included as i was serving as the chair of the committee on children and families to create a new s due to sion in brooklyn which we did children psychiatric hospital built at a cost of about fifty four million dollars state of the art institution that's incredible space and the medical director turns to me and he says well there's one problem the children they don't want to go home and that was my pitifully we have a issue of structural economic inequality that exist that we haven't addressed we spoke to former new york state assembly member roger green about his vision for transforming this the largest sector of new york's economy let's talk macro to begin where do you see the connections between the economy and health care well in new york city new york state health care is the largest sector you know and so you know when we're looking at is the institutions particularly in brooklyn being leveraged to address social the structural economic inequality that has plagued central brooklyn for some time contracts are given to the major corporations bypassing the local economy which is struggling with wage and security asset depression population displacement and all of that could be addressed if in fact the health care institutions themselves started to be direct the contracts back to the local economy by redirecting those contracts back enhances the civic infrastructure of a community by having people within those enterprises actively engage in the practice of democracy we think that's important also we have a silver tsunami coming in new york where one in five new yorkers will be elderly in need of home care home care workers right now are paid minimum wage they're poorly trained they don't know how to keep people out of hospitals because they're not trained to do that so one of the initiatives we have as a city right now as a working group on long term care and we are really trying to model how do we bring together home care providers unions community groups together to say how do we create a long term care system that works better for workers better for patients is saves government money by keeping people out of emergency rooms and can be transformative in them for us that is modeling economic democracy one route to economic democracy is through worker ownership and new york is home to the largest work around co op in the country cooperative home care associates in the we do the hardest work but we don't get paid for what we do you know it took a while for us to get only fifteen dollars an hour when i feel that we deserve more because in reality when there are more than the family were there more than the nurses this is not for everybody you know a lot of us take the training but we don't make it you know we go to our clients when we see what it's all about and it's like oh no this is not for me you know taking care of somebody that you don't even know them even speak to you not correctly you know they don't they think that you remain they think that you're there they think they're there when the pain is you i think everyone should be a workers owner pickers is a lot to go with the check you know it's it's it's it's i think in general having a culture around participatory management and an open door policy where we want workers to come in and express what's going on for them in their jobs in their communities is also part of this equation and respecting and valuing the workforce and understanding that we need to invest in the workforce for them to have quality jobs so that they can go out and provide the kind of care that some of new york's most vulnerable populations need today in two thousand and nineteen we have over two thousand one hundred on care workers and who are part of home care is the largest we're going to operate in the united states some trade unions are thinking about work of ownership too like one thousand one hundred and ninety nine the health care workers share while amin is a vice president of the union who works with nursing home workers transitioning to work about a ship is not an easy move for a trade down in what is some of the obstacles we need health care all of us and so what would be best for me would be best for you and so if you can have someone that could translate listen i know that this that we can give you the best assistance the best health care with the monies that we have i think that's the best way to go in the worker would know what's what what's the what's the best way to do it i believe now how does your work with nursing home workers intersect with this conversation about economic democracy well in the the reality of the workplace is that they are it's mostly women immigrants and low paying jobs and how it how we we see ourselves cheney as having more of a voice in the workplace and in health care in particular the issue becomes the taxpayers dollars and we want to have a say in what the monies that are shared by the taxpayers in our in our workplace in the nursing homes in the centers in the clinics and we want to have a more say of what the profitability should should where should be distributed to how distribute so how is that working for you with users workers can serve residents politicians the researchers all of a table the challenges or in our face but i believe we have the expertise and as as as  big as an organization as one thousand one hundred and ninety nine i believe we can we can iron out the issues as collective bargaining becomes more and more stringent in terms of the percentages of gross payroll as as technology becomes a part of the workforce as the issue that we have an aging workforce we need to figure out a different dynamic of capture and capital for our members and so unionized co ops is a way is another tool if you if you will of  blasio this april new york approved a for fourteen billion dollars plan to attack global warming and combat climate change a plan that's being called the city's own green new deal targets of the green new deal we're one hundred percent renewable energy within ten years which in the terms of energy policy that's like a blink of an r v that's not an easy thing to do the nd is that all emissions would be removed from transport within ten years now you only have to look at this for a few moments to realize what an enormous challenge that is from a technical angle it doesn't matter who owns it it's enormous challenge but if it's left to investor wins and scruples essentially we have no chance even with full economic democracy and public participation that will be a difficult task but that is our task it's our historical opportunity and it's our responsibility to rise to that task you have a major investment about to be made in the name of the city around the green new deal how will you how are you in the administration working to ensure that the benefits of that investment are equitably distributed almost a quarter of the cities energy is going to close in about three years  we have to reduce consumption as well as expand new ways of of generating energy renewable energy and so that means we're going to have to have a retrofitting program for buildings to reduce energy consumption we have nine hundred thousand buildings in new york and need to be retrofitted ultimately so we're talking about jobs for generation so one of the things we're working on are ensuring that our most risk young people people live in public housing people in low income communities actually get the training that they need so they can be the next generation of green architects green carpenters green engineers green laborers h back workers etc that's one the other thing is we can have micro grid there produce energy in a local basis that our community or the question of community ownership is being raised right now around a ninety five acre site that hold the brooklyn navy yard one of the community groups up bros is calling for the whole thing to be an energy co op to benefit community members my name is linda banter and i and the president of co op power and also the fund manager for the people solar energy fund i get to talk to people about what their dreams and hopes are for how they want energy to happen in their community what green jobs they want what kind of investments they want to be making what assets they want to own together i'm so excited to be working with leadership here in the city of new york because they're they're already doing things in a different way they put out a request for proposals to put solar on the brooklyn army terminal roof it said we want the power to go to low income people in this community and we're willing to exchange to reduce the lease payment if you'll give more of a discount to low income community members and we want uprose to end up with some ownership of this project in the end so you're talking about power energy electricity and power decision making and the power that comes from owning assets in  i mean a lot of people associate the word co op with their local caf are co ops really able to deal with energy production electricity and solar power absolutely so seventy five percent of the land mass in the united states is served by a lector cooperatives because when roosevelt was president he looked around and said oh my goodness this electricity is really changing how people can engage in their communities economically and we can't leave rural america behind within fifty years the entire rural america was electrified and that's all by building cooperatives rebecca leary was one of the organizers of the our economy conference i think that with the hardship that we're all facing every once in a while there's hope and and compassion that gets breathed into the solution and that's happening in different places you know one of the things you see about  cooperative economics around the globe and historically is people study together and they start a business or they start a business and they study together so we want to give them more content study with we are putting together a scene along with the bronx co op development initiative so they'll be something from every workshop that'll be written up by a student or community activist so there's a way to bring this into the classroom folks are studying this people are writing about it but when i say it's plural it's plural there are a lot of different ways to go into it look at what's coming all shapes and sizes not to traditional meals and make them a little bit healthier without losing the history or the fun or the kind of attachment that someone might have with a dish and we do that because when you go throughout the united states or even throughout the world our communities of filipino indian communities often live right next to each other and in history our communities have had a lot of interaction and so we're bringing that story and those flavors together side by side because it also tastes really good you know i think more and more under the leadership that we're in in the united states and even across the world we're seeing just like a high in sense of repression against people who who are working who are going out there sacrificing their health and they're trying to make a living in order to feed their families and then ultimately feed the nation and so for us being able to bring a whole new alternative of what economy can look like through work or cooperative is really important because we see that the people who are making the decisions on where the profits go who we cater to for example are they aligned with our mission and values are all really important and we will always put people and our community before we're having this conference talking about economy talking about where money is going where the government allocates money and knowing that almost two hundred million dollars every year is spent on a different nation's  military and police that has in the past two years killed twenty seven thousand filipinos that is part of our conversation there are so many other places that this money can go and work or operatives is one of those creating solidarity economics is one of those education is one of those health care is another one and so when we go to talk to our representatives who are supposed to be representing us we are going as grassroots organizers we are going as worker owners we are going as people who are looking at the global effects of imperialism and of capitalism and we know that just between the two of us doing this thing that's not enough so how many people can we reach how many people can we convince and influence that these things are all connected and that we are stronger together and that is where our work or copy of can go and is going where not just trying another catering cooperative we're trying to be part of a larger capitalism is always piled up profits the question is what do they do with the industrialists in the th century and others invested in things like this a public library to share some public goods for the benefit of everyone what's happened to that concept it's feeling increasingly relevant but public goods and space and resources are increasingly scarce professor sheila foster at georgetown  advancing the idea of something she calls a code city if we think about the commons we think about the natural environment the our god given world the lakes the trees the hills the oceans excedrin that's our traditional concept of the commons it's something that we all own in common in that the government holds in trust for us but when you come into a city you see that the city is a highly privatized landscape right although it used to be a common let's say just land people came on and they pop their houses down they pop their businesses and they bought things up so how do you bring the concept we all own something this is all of ours to a place that's highly privatized so we see land trust popping up in cities like new york city like london all over the world really and the other example i would give here in new york city is i'm involved in a project in harlem where we're trying to create a broadband network using again the infrastructure the city connecting into that creating a new technology that allows a desegregated network to put the internet in people's hands and affordable prices in public housing in and other buildings in harlem libraries in a sense were the th century innovation to try to expand education commons outside of private ownership libraries today we have a great one right here in new york perhaps are a symbol of an effort from that century what do you think a one hundred years now might be this from now might be the symbol of what we're doing today it's a really good question what is the innovation i actually think it may not be a place but a sense of how we operate as society more collaboratively the one thing that's happening in the world is that cities are getting too big right in the communities are too diverse they're becoming complex ecosystems what that means is that it isn't as and we are seeing this very difficult to meet the needs of different kinds of communities with a central decision maker particular when that central decision maker has its own pressures from special interests and they're not always operating in the public interest so i think what this pushes towards in the the innovation of  the st century that will last is to to think in a more decent relies way resources and decision services and goods won't just come from a central place but rather they'll be distributed is that the coast city that you're talking about that is the coast city the coast cities a co created co produce co governed city and if you think think about the innovation a participatory budgeting it's already happening where it used to be you had one budget in the city decided who got what now the city saying we're go decentralize that we're going to give a set aside a one million or millions of dollars and let these communities decide for themselves is new york alone is this initiative us only no it's not us only so think about participatory budgeting it started in brazil and now it's in cities all over the world labeling it to say that look at what's happening and how do we scale this up this is a model that we can think about governing and managing in a much more democratic much more socially just way the resources that are ours the comments i reject the idea that labor quote unquote sees the workplace as the primary place because labor doesn't only consist of unions i would say that one version of labor thinks that workplaces or where all the action is but i would argue that folks who have been fighting in civil rights folk fighting in the women's movement they're also dealing with the labor issues and part of the problem in america has been the narrow frame that labor unions have taken which have actually weakened it so i think in order to really build a strong labor movement the labor movement has to encompass women that are still on campus people of color it has to change its identity and its narrative so what does that look like here in new york city especially if you advance this economic democracy agenda well in new york city i think it means getting labor unions and community groups together to come up with common plans for things like how we do business as a city what kind of companies get contracts how do we address the affordable housing crisis can labor bring in some of their pension funds is there a participatory process so that members of unions or members of communities can work with the city and others to say here's how we want to see those dollars utilise because it's the people's money and i described co operative economics as two dollars things two things are required transparency with the resources whatever they may be and  democratic decision making how do we really show up together what you have years of oppression and exploitation and suffering you can't show up all that well so we have to heal each other so we can show up and that becomes t for this time thank you to all of you who are part of our economy you make this show possible you can join that community of democratic media makers kept me on dot com forward slash