The new economy conversation includes many aspirational ideas about transforming capital markets; including changing market structures, governance, metrics and incentives, all to redirect investment away from short-term private profit and toward long term public needs. While these ideas are exciting, the more immediate and prosaic problem faced by those of us who are trying to build a new economy is how to access financing now for innovative economic enterprises.

Affordable access to land is a key component of economic justice. Control over resources empowers communities, and ownership enables the building and recycling of wealth. In this workshop, we explore how shared equity models of ownership for land and buildings can spread the benefits of land access and ownership more broadly and equitably.

Exciting New Economy efforts are brewing across Boston neighborhoods. Hear about projects that are modeling democratic alternatives to "business as usual" and are doing it in relation to Boston's grassroots organizing field. Learn about participatory budgeting, community land trusts, green worker co-ops, youth led urban agriculture and local impact investing. Engage with some of Boston's most innovative activists in large panel and breakout formats.

Recent decades have seen a marked decline in union density in the US and Canada due, in large part, to a combination of increased political attacks on unions and the increased mobility of global capital. This panel will highlight several innovative labor organizing models that offer exciting approaches to meeting the unique challenges of our time. The Freelancers Union is the nation's largest group representing the growing independent workforce.

This session will explore the challenges and opportunities of building an inclusive new economy movement. Historically, race has been a critical dividing factor in the economy as well as social movements. Panelists will discuss strategies for building cross-race solidarity, addressing a highly racialized economy, and recognizing the differing forms of leadership and new economy activity across communities.

A new generation of progressives are taking leadership roles in city economic development. This creates a promising opening to advance initiatives in community wealth building – such as using city policies and anchor institution strategies to support locally and broadly owned enterprises such as cooperatives, community land trusts, employee-owned firms, and municipally owned companies.

The purpose of this panel is to share stories of Urban Food Justice movements around the country and explore opportunities for synergies between systems. Across the food supply chain from production to access, communities of color and low-wealth communities are disproportionately, negatively impacted. Community based organizations, Student Groups, Policy Organizations, and Urban Food Security Networks are working to address rights for farm workers and food service employees, and to increase...

This workshop will focus on sharing stories and inviting insights and reflection from grassroots efforts to bring the new economy to life  at the regional level. Many local grassroots groups working for resilience in the new economy are realizing the need to collaborate across communities and municipalities, and even states, as we need to address regional systems of transport, energy, water, food, and challenges of equity between communities.

The US Government is failing to govern at the most fundamental level, let alone to address challenges like record levels of inequality or climate change. Meanwhile, corporate power grows unchecked: big companies freely violate environmental regulations, receive government bailouts and tax breaks, give dizzying executive pay packages, and write trade, internet, and energy policy. What ails our democracy? And how do we fix it?

The first challenge in building any social movement group is to get diverse and new people in the door, literally and figuratively. Recruitment and retention problems are consistent among both working class and middle class groups, and the one dimensional recruitment and retention techniques account for class homogeneity in most activist groups.