With helpful feedback from MaryEllen Etienne of Reuse Alliance We are happy to report that it looks like White Street Landfill is not going to be reopened! Through solid community organizing that garnered allies from across the city to the “Keep White Street Closed” side of the fight, plus a sea-change in the make-up of [...]
Category: Ideas
Fish, Pies, the Commons and Economic Development
Since late last year, F4DC has been working with individuals and organizations from across North Carolina to frame a different approach to economic development action plan. Over the last 9 months or so, we been thinking, planning and organizing with cooperative business stalwart Frank Adams, workers in NC cooperative businesses, and leaders from a range [...]
The Problem We’re Trying to Solve
Since late last year, F4DC has been working with individuals and organizations from across North Carolina to frame a different approach to economic development action plan. Over the last 9 months or so, we been thinking, planning and organizing with cooperative business stalwart Frank Adams, workers in NC cooperative businesses, and leaders from a range [...]
Marnie’s Remarks at the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits Annual Conference
The 2010 Annual Conference of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits was recently held in Raleigh. I was asked to serve on a panel called Foundations and Operating Nonprofits Working Together in a New Reality, to contribute information about F4DC’s approach to various aspects of our grantmaking, given the current economic crisis. Below are the [...]
Fundraising as community building
Like many people involved in work with nonprofits, community groups, and other grassroots organizing efforts, I do not look forward to fundraising efforts. Asking people for money – even when I believe passionately in the cause – is often times a painful exercise that leaves me feeling like part of the “problem” I am seeking [...]
Visiting the Federation of Southern Cooperatives
A trip into Epes, Alabama takes you down some curvy, bumpy roads. But given their history and connections, visiting the training center for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives is a necessary part of looking into grass roots economies in the South. After a phone call where I asked for a few minutes time on their [...]
Critical Democratic Education is Child Centered and Community Owned, Based and Controlled
Separate schools are not inherently unequal, but segregated schools that exclude some category of children based on assumed inferiority, whether innate, acquired or cultural, are morally odious. The difference between “separate” and “segregated” needs to be understood as well as the incredible educational achievements that were made even under conditions of segregation.
Speech at First Board Meeting
(This is the speech I gave at the first board meeting of F4DC in July of 2007. It lays out part of the vision for this organization. This works continues to be a challenge. ELW) Today we are called upon to seize this moment. We are here with gardeners, artists, technicians, philosophers, mathematicians, organizers, [...]
