Day 1 of New Economy Week: The New Economy Isn’t New

This article was produced in partnership with the New Economy Coalition as part of the 2014 New Economy Week. Each day this week, YES! will publish articles responding to different topic prompts.

Prompt 1: The new economy isn’t new.

Let’s get this out of the way at the start: There’s nothing really new in the “new economy.” Ideas like cooperative economics, ecological justice, horizontal democracy, and the commons are ideas with a rich history—especially in the places most deeply affected by pollution, poverty, and racism. Those who have suffered the most at the hands of an unfair economy are the most experienced at imagining and building alternative futures. How can we honor that as we build a broad-based social movement to transform our economy?

Our feature articles provide some insight:

• With an Economy That Worked for All, Mike Brown Would Still Be Alive
  “Our full humanity is expressed only when we have the capacity and the opportunity to be productive, to do for ourselves, meeting our needs in our communities.”
• What Housing Organizers in Buffalo Learned From the 1970s
  Why did some of the cooperative institutions built in the ’70s—especially food co-ops—get to scale and thrive in subsequent decades, while others faded away?

For more perspectives, visit the New Economy Coalition.

Want more? Here’s a sampling of articles we’ve published at YES! related to this topic:

• Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson
  Naomi Klein speaks with writer, spoken-word artist, and indigenous academic Leanne Betasamosake Simpson about “extractivism,” why it’s important to talk about memories of the land, and what’s next for Idle No More.
• After 20-Year Fight, Bronx Wins Big on Development Project Committed to Living Wages and Local Economy
  The people of New York’s poorest borough fought to ensure that redevelopment of its castle-like landmark will benefit those who live there. Will it be a gamechanger?
• The Dark Side of the “Green Economy”
  Why some indigenous groups and environmentalists are saying no to the “green economy.”