The Roots of Collective Action: A History of Community Wealth Building

Description: What does it mean to build an economy rooted in dignity, community ownership, and respect? In the inaugural episode of The Wealth We Build, host Yessica Holguin is joined by community champions Michelle Sturm, Patrick Horvath, and Michael Miera to track the grassroots history of the community wealth building movement in metro Denver.

From a fateful 2013 delegation trip to study the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, to an early Denver symposium that almost got the organizers arrested, the guests pull back the curtain on how a passionate, all-volunteer network rejected top-down consultant models to build a self-determined economic ecosystem from the ground up.

Tune in to discover how changing the way anchor institutions, cities, and local entrepreneurs collaborate can successfully rewrite an unfair system, dismantle the myth of the "self-made" individual, and pave a path of "most resistance" to achieve true economic justice.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• The core differences between traditional economic development and collective economics.
• The 12-year history tracking from the early volunteer days of the Community Wealth Building Network to the founding of the Center for Community Wealth.
• How major healthcare and higher education institutions realized they couldn't "clinic their way out" of local poverty.
• Yessica’s personal journey from community organizing in Nicaragua back to a rapidly gentrifying Denver.
• The intentionality required to design wealth-building structures that include, rather than exclude, communities of color and micro-businesses.
• The core pillars of CCW's work