Collaboration for Economic Justice: The Boston Ujima Project
“All of a sudden, these small business owners, these mom and pop shops have so much power in a really beautiful way to heal, to be present for the wellness of the people in their surrounding space.” — Dasjon Jordan
On the latest episode of The Move Podcast, Dasjon Jordan discussed his experience in New Orleans working to bring different business owners and stakeholders together. While working along Bayou Road, he found that interacting directly with business owners was an effective tool for creating equity because they themselves were the ones creating New Orleans’ culture and as such, had political agency.
But take Dasjon’s experience and vision one step further. What would it look like to bring in other like-minded stakeholders, including labor unions, grassroots community organizations, faith and civic organizations, and investors to not only begin to speak and act together, but from that dialogue, democratically govern the direction of their own local economy?
That’s what the Boston Ujima Project is aiming to do. Ujima, the Swahili word for “collective work and responsibility,” is a democratic economic network and capital fund. The project is about the creation and growth of community-based, democratically-instituted economy. And members each have one vote, regardless of how much they donate (membership fees are $25).
Founded in 2015, the organization has two main assemblies: a general assembly, where Ujima members make major decisions and vote on the board of directors, and neighborhood assemblies, where community decisions are made on which businesses to fund. The project also boasts a community capital fund that is supported by membership dues and donations, an anchor institution advocacy program, and a business alliance.
The Ujima Business Alliance is a local association for organizations, companies, and businesses committed to fostering social and economic justice through their business operations. Members of the Ujima Business Alliance agree to create good jobs (for instance, paying a living wage and providing retirement benefits), share ownership and wealth, and meet local needs. Currently, the Ujima Project is in the midst of collectively defining these Good Business Standards further.
As a benefit of the alliance, not only do members of the alliance have access to financial resources through the community’s capital fund, but they also have access to technical assistance, new contracts, procurement advocacy, reduced costs through collective purchasing, and other non-financial support.
But this doesn’t mean that the coming together of these various stakeholders is always easy or straightforward. Residents are the ones who identify both existing businesses and new enterprises that they would like Ujima to support. And the allocation of this funding is collectively determined in a participatory budgeting exercise during neighborhood assemblies.
These collective decisions are ultimately about weighing the trade-offs between funding one investment or another. And discussions on trade-offs are always fundamentally about a community values most. The hope is that in these meetings, residents and businesses will wrestle with their values for the neighborhood, face-to-face, in a more transparent process.
Ujima co-founder Aaron Tanaka sees this project as a means to build the public’s capacity for democracy. As he said in an article from Next City: “The question became how do we start allowing communities to experience democratic planning at a local level, in a way that not only starts to build our democratic muscle memory, but is also directly benefiting communities from a position of job creation, ecological benefit, and wealth development.”
Originally published at themove.mit.edu on October 11, 2018.
