Re: Gulf Coast reconstruction & broadening ownership

[Michael Bindner <iowaequity@yahoo.com>]

I would think that organized labor might wish to be a stakeholder in such projects - especially if they are participating with local workforce investment boards.

 

I disagree with Lynn that funds need to be directed entirely to organizers.  Organizers might deserve a small share, however by and large these facilitators should be publicly funded using WIB and economic development funds rather than funds set aside to recapitalize businesses.  Any consulting COG can do could be done through these entities.  FEMA funds could be used to supplement the normal budgets of these entities.

 

The long and the short of it is that some form of high level consortium is necessary to carry this thing off.  It should include the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Commerce, HUD and Labor, as well as FEMA and the Federal Reserve (if we can convince them to provide loan assistance at the Discount Window - although if direct funds are available, they should be used).

LynnRWilliams@aol.com wrote:

John -

 

Your memo is, as one would expect, a marvelously creative piece.

 

A key element in bringing such a concept to life, it seems to me, would be to have people working on the ground - organizers, facilitators, agents, whatever - who would know how to put it together, to chase government and other programs, to raise money, etc. etc. all the bits and pieces.

 

Where could such people be found - in the networks you have all developed over the years, both in the U.S. and abroad - among the people you know who have been involved in successful projects.

 

And it seems to me, the focus of the networks efforts to help would not be to raise the capital for the enterprises, but to raise the money necessary to put these organizers in the field.  Where from ?  Ourselves, sympathetic funds like the Heartland fund, Gene Keilin's fund, foundations, Co-op America, NCEOC, successful progressive enterprises, Ben and Jerry, sympathetic wealthy liberals, the church, sympathetic unions etc. etc.

 

I know I have more etcs. in this little piece than solid ideas but it does seem such an opportunity to me, and such an interesting place, with its own special character that the whole country would like to preserve, and a people desperately in need of an instrument or they will simply be pushed aside.  One thinks of Mandragon immediately, in that it developed to serve a need in an impoverished section of the country - New Orleans surely has the need and the impoverishment.  Can we find the will and the means?

 

Enough - you are undoubtedly way ahead of me in thinking about how to meet this challenge, this need, this opportunity.

 

Lynn

Michael Bindner

http://www.geocities.com/iowaequity/index.html