Helping Lending Programs Reach Underserved Small Business Owners

Date: 21 Feb 2023 | posted in: equity, Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

For the past year, ILSR and Recast City have collaborated on bringing Equitable Lending Leaders, a program to help small business lending programs reach more underserved entrepreneurs and small business owners, particularly owners of color. Now that more than 120 RLFs have participated in Equitable Lending Leaders, we have identified several best practices.… Read More

Baltimore’s Zero Waste Future

ILSR has been assisting grass roots organizations in Baltimore to fend off new incinerators and shut down an existing aging and polluting garbage incinerator in Downtown Baltimore, planning for and implementing Zero Waste practices. These practices would also help the city and communities address other pressing problems in the city; including the need for more good jobs, reduced recidivism, elimination of the ‘digital divide’, and creation of new small businesses, community based food production and environmental education.

The following article makes suggestions for transforming the current recycling system, and an update on community based activity in the context of rapidly changing markets, technology and entrepreneurial opportunities.… Read More

The Environment, The Economy, and Equity – Episode 83 of Local Energy Rules Podcast

Date: 14 Aug 2019 | posted in: Energy, Energy Self Reliant States, equity, Podcast | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

On this rebroadcast of the Building Local Power podcast, host John Farrell speaks with Denise Fairchild. The two discuss energy democracy within the context of a book she co-edited, titled “Energy Democracy: Advancing Equity in Clean Energy Solutions.” … Read More

Fighting Food Waste and Employing Youth in Baltimore

Date: 9 Aug 2018 | posted in: agriculture, Composting, environment, equity | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

The Compost Collective is an entrepreneurship program where youth are trained in workforce skills, food access programming and community-scale composting. They are receiving guided, hands-on experience managing a small-scale composting operation and its expansion, and using the compost they create to grow fresh produce for the community at Filbert Street Garden.… Read More

When Unions Are Strong, Americans Enjoy the Fruits of Their Labor

Date: 31 Mar 2011 | posted in: equity, From the Desk of David Morris, The Public Good | 1 Facebooktwitterredditmail

The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor. Thomas Donohue, Former President AFL-CIO In the early 1980s Ricardo Levins Morales, an artist and labor activist in Minneapolis designed a bumper sticker with a simple eight-word message,  “From the people who brought you the weekend. “ Since then, he’s sold tens of thousands.  In 2007 … Read More

Obama vs. FDR on Social Security

Date: 14 Dec 2010 | posted in: equity, From the Desk of David Morris, The Public Good | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Today, 75 years and 4 months since Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, a Democratic president is ignoring his wisdom and abandoning his strategy for protecting the program from shifting political winds. If congressional Democrats go along with Obama on this, it could mark the beginning of the end of Social Security as we have known it.… Read More

How Canadians Built a Fair Health Care System from the Bottom Up

Date: 13 Dec 2010 | posted in: equity, From the Desk of David Morris, The Public Good | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

 The seeds of the current Canadian health system were sown in rural Saskatchewan in the early 20th century when small cities with no doctorsbegan to subsidize a physician to come and set up practice. Several communities then joined together to open publicly-funded hospitals.

In the 1930s, a new Canadian political party, whose name reflected its philosophy, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), came to powerin Saskatchewan.

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ACORN deserves an apology, too

Date: 27 Jul 2010 | posted in: equity, From the Desk of David Morris, The Public Good | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Shirley Sherrod has her job back and a presidential apology. ACORN is still waiting. The cases are remarkably similar. Both Sherrod and ACORN were demonized by highly edited videos appearing on right-wing websites and widely publicized by Fox News and conservative radio hosts. In both cases the mainstream media and the federal government rushed to judgment … Read More

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