As part of his research on grassroots economic projects toward Black Liberation, Austin Cole spoke with Nicholas Richard-Thompson about his community organizing, expanding definitions of economic development, and connecting the people to the public sector.
Originally published in politics in command of "planning"
“If we have a shared value and we have shared spaces where we can commune, and if we have institutions that actually encourage that type of participation, you’re solving a lot of problems. You're creating a culture of bonding. You're creating a culture of community as a verb and not just a word you are repeating. I think about the development of actual civic participants in the process, instead of people who are detached and disenchanted with the system.”
— Nicholas Richard-Thompson
Introducing the conversation
Nicholas Richard-Thompson is a human rights organizer and cultural worker. He is the Director of Communications for the Illinois Black Advocacy Initiative, a founder of the Aurora Participatory Democracy Hub and the Midwest Regional Organizer for The Black Alliance for Peace. Nick provided an important interview as researched grassroots economic projects toward Black Liberation. Nick offers invaluable insight across many fields and perspectives, including public sector planning, grassroots community organizing, culture work and artistic expression, and nonprofit advocacy.
This two-part interview series comes from a conversation that I had with Nick in April as part of my recently completed master's thesis (see my first post on the thesis here). Because the conversation was so insightful and I couldn’t include most of it in the thesis itself, I’ve decided to publish a slightly-edited version of our conversation, in two parts.
In this first part of the conversation, Nick lays out his thoughts on a large range of topics: definitions of economic development and how to think about expanding it to serve all people in a more holistic manner; the fallacy of jobs-only economic development programs and measurements; radical municipalism that can form and utilize people-centered institutions; what true participatory democracy might look like; how to make the public sector work for “the people” and why organizers should get involved in local/municipal governance ; and governing from a place of radical inclusiveness, collective wisdom, and a shared responsibility. I hope that y’all enjoy hearing Nick’s perspective on these topics and more. Eternal gratitude again to Nick for taking the time, and for allowing me to publish this conversation!
Conversation with Nicholas Richard-Thompson
Austin: Tell me a little bit about the work that you do and how you got involved in it.
Nicholas: I work for municipal government and the mayor's office of community affairs. The last 7 years I've worked in communications. I recently moved over to community engagement, and with that a lot of the work is assisting with community groups, community initiatives, cultural events, and sometimes economic development. Additionally, I'm an organizer with several organizations. Most notably the Black Alliance for Peace. And then I sit on several boards for nonprofits that focus on food Insecurity, mentorship, violence, prevention, and just youth development. So, I work a lot in the community in a lot of different capacities, and I see it from the municipal governance side and public administration, but I also see it from the grassroots kind of bottom up approach. What might be called radical progressive forces trying to enact change or bring innovative ideas to the community.
Austin: So, thinking about some of the economic development stuff that you've done from both a government standpoint and a grassroots community standpoint, how do you think about what development is and what the intentions should be for “development” in a community?
Nicholas: I mean the political and academic definition of economic development, I think, makes sense to me in the idea that we're trying to improve infrastructure generally and enhance our public systems. So schooling, public safety, and the different institutions that facilitate personal wellness and development and also the collectivity that we have as a community, which includes trying to improve parks and bring in and foster economic viability, as well as other things.
But the issue is in practice. Often what I see is that everything I mentioned is not necessarily included in economic development. Economic development is focused solely at times on attracting businesses to incentivize job creation. The issue with that is there are cultural components that are left out. There is wellness and quality of life that aren't part of that calculus. What economic development really becomes is: “can we attract the businesses that are large and are allegedly bringing jobs and are extravagant and create kind of a destination spot in a city or region?”. This is what normally happens instead of asking questions like “is this improving people's lives?”.
The thing with jobs that I constantly tell people, and I actually attended a seminar about this, is that there are many times where jobs are subsidized, where you may have, like a billions of dollars given to a company, with the thought they'll create 1,300 jobs. In actuality, they sometimes create something more conservative like 300. And then not only is that fewer than expected, but you have less jobs when you factor it out and do the math of what the subsidy was and what the salary is for the jobs. Theoretically, you could have just given people a UBI [universal basic income] or stipend or a cash payment, and it would have been better. Arguably they didn't have to go to work. They could have stayed home with their kids, they could have volunteered and gave effort to another issue in the community that was needed.
So these strategies around “jobs” don't entice me and should not be the primary component of economic development, especially because attracting business and finance to come to the city oftentimes it in some way leads to displacement. What these strategies do is facilitate more accumulation, and that's not tied to quality of life.
Austin: So you mentioned culture and wellness and a few other things around health and holistic measures in terms of what communities want and need, versus traditional economic development measures. Because they are harder to count than jobs, how do you think about the ability to demonstrate and measure and communicate the value that these things bring to a community or to society at large? What does it look like to build culture, health, wellness, etc.?
Nicholas: I believe that it involves, without a doubt, a democratization of society. With some of our participatory processes and civic institutions, I would argue that some [of our institutions] are not conducive to cooperation, involvement, or civic engagement. I don't think a lot of them are. You can try to measure these in many ways, whether it's voter turnout or participation, or who is coming to city events, who is engaging in community events.
Oftentimes people assume the public sector is always in the interest of the community, but that presupposes that community has control over that or are leading and directing the public sector and municipal governments across the board. But whether it’s a city or a county, these roles and institutions have been very professionalized. So you have public administrators making decisions, and it becomes very bureaucratic, and it's not popular in any way. It's not including people for a variety of reasons.
I hear alderpeople, I hear municipal employees suggest this idea that people don't care, but baked into the system there is a detachment that stems from the institution not being shaped in a way to include participation. Passivity due to powerlessness. So it's reciprocal in that way. It’s not as simple as people just don't care because they don't care. But because of that way of thinking, people say, “Well, why should we try to go get all these people to be engaged?” I think there's an economic and political interest of why they don't want a lot of folks engaged. I think that's just true.
Coming back to the question, building these things requires again, institutions that have a tendency toward cooperation, for sharing and developing public life. You know, I’m actually reading a book recently about ancient cities, and something that has been missing is like, we need a town square that is free. We need public spaces that people don't have to pay to inhabit. And we need places where people can go and to engage and build belonging and cultivate that community and culture that is important to a city due to the fact that it's a reflection of values. So you do need to have shared values. I think this idea that we live in proximity, but we don't really know a lot about each other actually just makes us more unsafe in many ways.
So if we have a shared value, we have shared spaces where we can commune, and if we have institutions that actually encourage that type of participation, you’re solving a lot of problems. You're creating a culture of bonding. You're creating a culture of community as a verb and not just a word you are repeating. I think about the development of actual civic participants in the process, instead of people who are detached and disenchanted with the system, I believe any legitimate democracy should want to seek maximum participation, and it's a process for sure. But if you're not seeking that, I don't know if you can even really call yourself a democratic society, and I mean democracy to the truest term, not like the kind of representative kind of practices we do, but legitimate popular participation.
To build out the culture true democracy requires and institutions that encourage it, it also requires connecting resources to values. I’ve heard our mayor say many times, “Our budget speaks to our values.” So I think it looks like more public dollars to facilitate those types of events, and doing it with no strings attached, and doing it in a way that is informed by the community and not just throwing darts at a board.
We can go back to economic development for a quick second. I think a lot of times economic development is playing a guessing game based on numbers instead of very popular answers like can you supply the basics that people demand. Any economist knows if you can manufacture or at least create something that is always going to be in demand in a community like a grocery store — because that's what they've been asking for — then you don't have to worry much about its success cause it's going to be successful because people want it. But if you go there and you say we're going to build like a hockey rink, and we're going to hope and try to build a culture around that, you're trying to manufacture in the opposite way. I think we should do it reverse – say what is needed and then that demand will always be there, right? So it's not as much of a risk that you're taking financially. And to me it makes more sense because most public administrators are very risk averse so like, why not have more guarantees that these businesses will be successful. Then you have a more coordinated, deliberate, intentional form of economic development that's based on wellness, based on need, not based on, “is this profitable?”.
Our institutions need to be shaped in this way — understanding that we shape them and they shape us. That means encouraging participation and participatory processes throughout. And we need investment, legitimate investment into public spaces that also encourage and facilitate those kinds of ideals that we seek. We want to build solidarity. We want cooperation. We want sharing in civic life. How do we get that? Because right now we have a culture of every person for themselves, not cooperation but competition, and very self-involved people, which is going to create many social kinds of aberrations and social disconnects. How can we build more connections? With all this, I’m asking questions of what it looks like to have a culture of cooperation.
Austin: So if you’re thinking from the grassroots side, from that bottom up level with people’s needs surging to the forefront. How is that? How do you see those things happening? And how do you see bottom-up economics working?
Nicholas: Initially the thought is like, “We'll just have a bunch of town halls”. And there are communities that do that. And they ask questions about a specific development, they do studies because a lot of municipalities require a study before you do a major development for traffic reasons, ecological reasons, environment reasons, all that. But I don't think that's enough, and oftentimes I don't know how serious they are. I think those studies are good, but if you have 5 people showing up to events again and again, is that the community? So, I think first you would have to start building some of those civic institutions up and then ask questions of deliberately building a municipalized economy. You know, meeting the maxim that people have talked about for each according to ability, to each according to need. I think that can happen really well at the local level because trying to do it with the technology we have now, especially, is mostly asking really basic questions like, what is missing that our people need?
We have the data, so it’s evidence-based. Right now, I think what is missing is the will to do so. And maybe I'm idealistic, but if you have the data and you have the resources, then building a municipalized economy would primarily require direct engagement that’s sincere, while building from the bottom up. This would mean having assemblies that are constant and not just a one-off town hall, assemblies that convene different interests but are also open to the public – these would be direct and democratic. In that way you can have a nonprofit, you can have your summits, you can have the working people, but ultimately a structure must exist where people can actively participate in direct democracy.
Here, participatory budgeting is something that is interesting to me, and there are models that exist all over the country, and internationally, that have utilized participatory budgeting and have worked really well. Putting aside, maybe a as a pilot program, a million to 10 million dollars out of the budget depending on the size of municipality. And to say, like, we're gonna put aside one, maybe 10 million, and then continually, incrementally build that up, and let assemblies properly decide what they want to invest into full stop. No stipulations, no hoops to jump through to be participating in that process – anybody who lives in an area will be able participate. That is a way you can start asking questions like the one I raised earlier. You'll figure out what is needed because you're directly engaging these people.
But there is a second part that has to do with what is being created by these people participatorily when there’s an issue with it. Elected officials should love this. Now they can say, “Well, that's what you created. Now we can help you fix it. But you did choose that, right?” So [for elected officials] it takes pressure off you even having to bear the brunt, because now it's not just one individual who we've selected as a representative. If we do this together now that leads us to 3 things again: radical inclusiveness, collective wisdom, and a shared responsibility. Again, I think these are cultural things that we should want to encourage and adopt. And, as we go forward, we will see better outcomes — I would argue — than people who are investing in only themselves, every person for themselves, and who need to be in competition.
We have shared interests, we live in proximity. We have to see that we are bound together, so that my success is yours in a very simple way, that we are interconnected. And I think that's inextricable. So for me, an economy needs to reflect that ultimately, though that is very abstract, right? So, what does it mean concretely. I could tell you I'm a proponent of cooperatives. I'm a proponent of UBI measures. I'm a proponent of housing people who need to be housed. I'm a proponent of the right to have public safety budgets be public safety and finding innovative ways to do that. People just with guns and badges don't equate safety. So how do we redefine these terms? Do we have substance use issues still? Then is that safety? All these things play into the role of economic development.
So economic development shouldn't just be subsidizing businesses and finding incentives to bring business. I think that's lazy, reductive and a very outdated model of like the early nineties and eighties of economic development. I think about these in innovative ways.
Austin: I really like that. It makes me remember that you should check out a book. I’m assuming you’ve read Black Awakening in Capitalist America. But there's a short, super, short book by a guy named William Tabb called, The Political Economy of the Black Ghetto and he basically introduces the like internal colony thesis into an urban political economy framework. And then he did an update some years later to ask “is this still valid? How do these things play out? What does this look like?”
And he basically said something I thought was funny where he was like, everyone says, like it's a chicken and an egg problem with building culture and improving the economy of the ‘Black Ghetto’ and he was like, there's no f****** chicken and egg, we just need the institutions. And if you build the institutions, the culture will change around them. And if people own them, if people own those institutions and they're popular. And in some sense, it's not even about building the specific institution necessarily, but about people's power over those institutions, which I think connects well to what you were saying. And in his follow up that is called, “What Happened to Black Economic Development?” he talks about Black Capitalism and CDCs, and how Black Capitalism was a doomed idea from the beginning and how CDC got co-opted into not doing anything transformative. I don’t know what you think about that.
Nicholas: To start off, I'll pick off and echo something you just said. If we do not develop the capacities for people, then this idea of self-determination does become very difficult. I think we have to have the institutions and a power available to build self-determination. The question of how you get that power is separate. But the idea that people don't have the ability to do these things is an inadequate response because the reality is, if we give them that ability they certainly could do many things for themselves as a community.
It's like this question I know I used to see in reading Michael Albert. He has a book on participatory economics [Parecon: Life After Capitalism]. And it's a different model for the economy. And he has this idea where he's like in the early sixties all your doctors would have been white males. Now is this because all white males are just maybe better trained or are there inherent aspects to it that make it so white males are the only adequate doctors? No, it's because women and people of color were not given entry into those careers, right? So, it's very similar today with other things. For people to govern, we don't have to professionalize public administrators, and we don't have to see them as the end all be all. We can actually have, instead of this very bureaucratic set up, something that is participatory, and have people engage with it. That's part of it.
Austin: If there's any other things you want to mention feel free.
Nicholas: Off the top of my head, I'll hit on it again because I think you brought it up. There's such a value to organizing on the local level and having municipal knowledge of how you run things in the city and taking that into your organizing. I think there's a lot of value for organizers. And I think more organizers should actually get into city planning and economic development not to be involved in these things in this way forever, but to understand what we're doing, so that when we do obtain power in different ways, we are equipped to hold it and govern. These institutions already exist, and just knowing, for example, how to distribute water and how to utilize the financial system to yield outcomes that we want is important. Because if we have all the ideas of liberation and organizing strategy and revolutionary history that's great, but we do need to know how to distribute [resources]? And that's what actually has led me to pursue public administration.
And I think people see making change at the national level as insurmountable. Now, I don't think it is, but change at the local level is more than in our grasp. If we win a couple of city council seats, or a mayorship, then all of a sudden you can implement many of these things because you have the inside-outside strategy, with legitimate popular support if you came from a grassroots level. I think there is value and viability, and like local organizing with the municipality and seizing power that way, and taking over charters or changing charters, seizing budgets, there's so much potential there. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it — if that was our strategy.
There’s organizations and political parties that we're both aware of that are always running national campaigns. There's Independents that do this, too, that have large names, large resources. If you put a fraction of that money in a local election in one city, you could have your idea modeled and you could be a model for the nation. But instead, people are always trying to win the Presidency. I don't know why that is. Take that money, win a local election, and I promise you’ll be able to model what you wanted. Then you would inspire those around you and you would have what they call policy diffusion. At a high level it would be like one community seeing the idea and saying “Yo, they got all this. We want that too!” So, I'll leave it at that. More energy to the local, more energy to the municipal.
Nicholas Richard-Thompson is a human rights organizer and cultural worker. He is the Director of Communications for the Illinois Black Advocacy Initiative, a founder of the Aurora Participatory democracy Hub and the Midwest Regional Organizer for The Black Alliance for Peace.
Austin Cole is a graduate student in City Planning and Business Administration. He is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, the MIT Graduate Student Union-UE Local 256, the MIT Black Graduate Student Association, and BLM Boston.
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