Grassroots Building Blocks of a Transformed Economy. A group of ministers works with a community development corporation to build a much needed grocery store in a blighted neighborhood. A local trading system allows people to trade goods and services with each other without using cash. Community-based economic experiments like these are at the forefront of a new grassroots politics aimed at establishing community control over economic resources. By themselves, these experiments have little impact on the overall structure of the political-economic system.
None can fundamentally alter the political economy of a community or the nation.
They do, however, constitute possible elements of a long-term process of reconstructing a stagnant economy. The people involved in these experiments have seek to make the political, economic and social composition of their communities more responsive to their needs and enhance the quality of their lives. Whether or not people engaged in these experiment view their actions as an attempt to rebuild a democratic economy, they often describe an increased sense of ownership and belonging to the community. The essence of political action in a democracy is the coming together of citizens to shape and build the architecture of their society. By committing to the difficult and painstaking process of shaping and building the architecture of their communities, participants in these experiments are fully exercising their most potent political power.