Young people engaging across race, class & economics

The Community Equity Fund solves a problem that Black familes live with that most white people don’t realize exists, but that is a a crucial element in why the racial wealth gap exists. That wealth gap means the average white family’s assets are 12 times greater that of the average Black family.

A key reason for the economic disparity is the friends and family gap; black business owners don’t have a rich aunt or uncle or alumni network member to help give their business the runway to grow. When a Black family owns a business, the racial wealth gap shrinks by 75%, to a still terrible three times higher for white people.

The hidden friends and family gap is why in many cities 90 % plus of African American owned businesses have fewer than two employees. Businesses that small aren’t elligible for the new loan funds that have cropped up in cities across the country to help minority businesses in response to last summers protests about racial inequality.

Ironically, because the people designing the loan funds have extensive networks of investors in their friends and family to call on as they build their funds, many don’t realize the “rich uncle” gap exists for Black and brown families. The CEF gives these micro businesses the philanthropically motivated capital they need to go full time, hire an operator and grow sales so they can take on loans to help them grow and become viable businesses.

Now we’ve constructed a way for individual faith-based congregations to be involved in solving the racial wealth gap through their contributions; money designated for their church or synagogues’ local mission outreach. Even more significant, we have devised a way for a church’s young people to become deeply engaged in solving systemic problems of racial equity and economic justice in response to the Gospel, while creating meaningful and practical relationships across race and class.

We are in talks to launch pilots with churches in Asheville, NC, Chicago, in a poor rural community on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi Delta and in South Bend, Indiana.

Here’s how it would work: members of a church would donate to the CEF through their church and get a standard tax deduction. When it’s done in a church we are calling the community equity fund the Perpetual Mission Fund. So the church would then pass on individual and church budgeted contributions to CEF, doing business as the Perpetual Mission Fund. The PMF would invest in the pre-vetted Black businesses to help them grow. The church would be paid back in five years when the businesses paid back the fund. But the church will continue to receive income from it’s initial donation for 25 years, every year, as succeeding businesses pay back the church’s contribution that was recycled into each new business every five years.

Here is where it gets interesting and young people can engage. We call the money that’s paid back the Harvest Premium, and we ask that it be designated for local mission; you can’t send it to Africa, but instead you have to give to or invest in something in your own home town. We recommend that the Harvest Premium’s local mission should reach across race, class and neighborhoods and that it be allocated in partnership with the people from community’s of color that the church is investing in, rather than having the church decide what’s needed.

Half of the Harvest Premium every year should be handed over to the control of the young people of the church. You give the young people a steady, reliable stream of capital and the responsibility to design the future.Those funds should be for investing in the future; things that take at least five years to come to pass.

We call the money set aside for young people to create their future the Future Resilience Bond. Since we can expect the Harvest Premium to come in for at least 25 years, we can afford to think long term, ask questions about systemic and structural problems that require patience to solve, from local climate change resilience in poor neighborhoods to deeper economic problems that may require changes in laws and regulations to solve..

The problems to be solved with capital with a long term horizon, the purview of the Resilient Future Bond, should not be decided by the young people of the church alone. We recommend that they reach out to the Black business owners the church has invested in to and get in touch with the youth groups in those predominantly Black churches to co design the future they will create together. It will take time to get to know the problems from each group’s viewpoint, and that’s fine. They will have five years before the first money starts to come in, and they can spend the time learning how to collaborate on solutions together.

The secret to this model is that the money from that first investment will continue to come in for 25 years. And if the Perpetual Mission Fund becomes a line item, regular expenditure for a portion of the congregation’s local mission fund every year, it can go on forever, creating intergenerational wealth in communities without a rich uncle, and helping young people solve long term problems across race, class and neighborhoods.

We will be presenting on the model Wednesday March 3 at 1130 at this Canadian conference.

Indigenous sovereignty and crypto; looking for ethical ninja to build something better

My friend Desiree Kane, a Miwok journalist and activist and I have been talking and wondering if the crypto/Ethereum/bitcoin surge, coupled with the crumbling of the power of the nation state and its growing inability to control capital flows, while digital states and mini states are emerging could create a meaningful step forward in restoring land sovereignty (video on the Doctrine of Discovery that enabled the theft) to the people it was stolen from in the United States.

We are looking for an ethical ninja in the crypto world to help us explore this new territory and see if, as things fall apart and reform, we could find a way to create a territory, and use new digital capital, to support and enable indigenous rights of land? If you are interested, you can contact me or Desiree des at desireekane.com I’m Kevindoylejones1 at gmail.I am working with an indigenous journalist and activist and we are looking for an ethical crypto ninja to help us see if we can create something using digital capital and sovereignty to help restore indigenous land rights

On Feb 11, 2021, at 2:21 PM, Desiree Kane <des at desiree kane wrote:

Dependent nation status is the linchpin for indigenous tribes to ensure reparations are made, in some small form, for the mass theft of land experienced. As the nation state model degrades under capitalism, a rise of a new type of currency is rising in tandem; cryptocurrency of many varieties. Many issues with legacy capitalism like corruption and grift have carried over unfettered into the crypto space. Resources collected whether material or digital does not a sovereign nation or body make yet the groups amassing crypto billions are creating expansive off grid compounds and currency systems domestically outside the view of both the US AND tribal government frameworks. That’s what we already have, it’s called Settlers 2.0.

Is this crypto resurgence part of an electorate destabilizing effort? Because what’s happening is that these crypto capitalist folks are FEASTING on native folks not knowing what’s going on and that ultimately really helps Putin, who has famously emboldened almost every sovereign citizens movement, which loves crypto. What is the role of both financial product architects and tribes in the time of a crypto capitalist onslaught and how can Indigenous peoples, collectives, organizations, and tribes use this moment to ensure the digital human rights of indigenous people and the rights of the land these digital and physical resource hoarders operate upon endure?

Is this crypto resurgence part of an electorate destabilizing effort? Because what’s happening is that these crypto capitalist folks are FEASTING on native folks not knowing what’s going on and that ultimately really helps Putin, who has famously emboldened almost every sovereign citizens movement, which loves crypto.

AWhat is the role of both financial product architects and tribes in the time of a crypto capitalist onslaught and how can Indigenous peoples, collectives, organizations, and tribes use this moment to ensure the digital human rights of indigenous people and the rights of the land these digital and physical resource hoarders operate upon endure?

desireekane.com
desireekane.youcanbook.me

The demise of the nation state and the rise of networked local economies

Conspiracy theories that doubt authority (anti vax to q anon) are just symptoms of the collapse of the nation state, along with the nation state’s ability to control capital flows, from either big tech or crypto.

I think Rana Dasgupta is right about the impending demise of the nation state. And U.S. centric analysis by Dasgupta. majority looks at the u.s.https://harpers.org/archive/2020/12/the-silenced-majority/

I’m working with people creating locally replicable, modular, democratic financial vehicles aimed at providing catalytic capital access to the dispossessed under the current system, which could also be adapted to higher economic strata for system-wide resilience. Some things, like loan loss reserves and home and health insurance can be centralized but mutualized. A new economy can emerge.

I love most all of what Biden is doing and it will slow the breakup of the nation state here, and probably more broadly but Apple has more cash reserves offshore than Great Britain has in total. To that point, Amy Klobuchar’s new anti monopoly bill also covers monopsony; buyer monopolies; you have to sell your books through Amazon, have to use Google to sell online ads. Its a big deal. Cory Doctorow wrote a good piece on it and is covering it in his daily email newsletter.

Never the less, the trend is clear. The nation state will become less relevant and more nations will proceed to crack to become failed states. The nation state model no longer works. The nation state and the capitalist market economy freed us from feudalism, where upward mobility and pricing your labor based on skill would result in death and all wealth was in land. It served its function. It also turned us into commodities with capital in control. People are walking away from it, to coops and local economies. It’s not certain if that will work, but that’s where I am working. The solution to a global problem is not a global solution. It’s a polycentric solution, says Elinor Ostrom.

An example of what I am working on that’s locally replicable and catalytic, aimed at reducing the racial wealth gap. Friends and family funding for entrepreneurs who don’t have a rich aunt