Our Future Economy is a Public Event Series on Transforming Economies for Communities, Workers and Climate Wellbeing Rooted in Richmond, California
What strategies, ideas, skills and relationships will build a future economy that ensures the wellbeing of all workers, communities, and ecosystems? How do we move from the pressing needs and harm today to structures that foster wellbeing for all? How can solutions be responsive to a particular place while also aligning with global goals for a healthy planet? Our Future Economy focuses on these questions and more through a series of engagements for the public to co-create knowledge and connections.
The realities of concentrated wealth and vast material needs, human-made disasters, and racial and gendered hierarchies continue to generate poverty, trauma, health crises, and displacement. An existential crisis of who we as humans must become to have a viable future haunts anyone aware of the stakes. The need to reimagine and redesign local, regional, and transnational economies is more pressing than ever.
Our Future Economy is rooted in Richmond, California, a community on the fenceline of the fossil fuel economy and on the growing edge of progressive change. Richmond is already transforming itself for a more just and resilient future, with polluter pays tax revenue, a local food system anchored by an urban farm, a new youth commons, city jobs programs, solar energy production, union and community alliances, progressive tax policies, and more. To meet community needs and advance a just transition of the local economy requires new ideas, relationships, structures and capacities that our movements and communities are developing.
Our Future Economy connects the global with the local by inviting people in any community to join virtually and share reflections, learn, imagine and connect with others. Each event is both an in-person gathering and a facilitated virtual event, bringing together residents, community organizers, public leaders, advocates, workers, entrepreneurs, artists, and scholars to learn, imagine, and plan projects and strategies for a just transition of the economy. Events are free and open to all, with targeted strategies to support the participation of people most harmed and marginalized by the current economy. There will be live music, language interpretation, arts and playback theater, inspiring speakers, discussion and time to socialize.
The series is hosted by Mayor Eduardo Martinez and the Othering and Belonging Institute, and co-sponsored by local organizations Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Cooperation Richmond, Eastbay Center for Performing Arts, Healthy Richmond, North Richmond CHDC, Richmond Community Foundation, Rising Juntos, RYSE, Safe Return Project, San Francisco Foundation, Sojourner Truth Presbyterian Church, Sustainable Economies Law Center, Urban Habitat, and Urban Tilth. The MC will be Luna Angulo, a visionary local organizer working for climate justice and a just transition.
The goals of the series are to:
- Amplify voices of the lived experience, community visions, principles and frameworks, exemplary place-based efforts, and related plans and policies that can facilitate a just transition.
- Facilitate interactive discussion and activities that apply this knowledge to Richmond and begin to generate ideas for projects and initiatives that would meet community needs and transform the economy away from dependence on fossil fuels.
- Connect Richmond residents to ideas, examples, goals and strategies put forth by national and global movements and values-aligned scholars.
Schedule and Locations:
- Wednesday, February 12th, 6pm-9pm at the Richmond Auditorium, 403 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond, CA
- Thursday, March 20th, 6pm-9pm at the Nevin Community Center, 598 Nevin Avenue, Richmond, CA
- Remaining dates and locations to be determined
Click here to register now. The series is free and open to the public, with interpretation in select languages and other accommodations available.
