Humanity Rises
Community Wealth-Building 101
Community Wealth-Building 101
A bridge from extraction → shared prosperity
The Big Picture
Our current economy concentrates wealth and risk. Community wealth-building (CWB) flips the script: keep value rooted locally, owned by the people who create it.
Core Building Blocks
1) Cooperatives (Co-ops)
Member-owned businesses that share control and surplus.
- Worker co-ops: employees own & govern.
- Consumer/producer co-ops: buyers or makers own the enterprise.
- Why it works: aligns incentives with community, not distant shareholders.
2) Mutual Credit Systems
Communities issue credit to each other, interest-light or interest-free.
- How it helps: smooths cashflow for small businesses; keeps commerce circulating locally.
- Think: LETS, time banks, business-to-business (B2B) mutual credit networks.
3) Doughnut-Aligned Economies
Meet everyone’s needs within planetary boundaries.
- Inner ring: housing, health, education, income, voice.
- Outer ring: climate, biodiversity, water, clean air.
- Target: thrive between the two — not overshoot nature, not undershoot human dignity.
Why It Matters (Fast Benefits)
- Local resilience: More anchors, fewer fragilities.
- Good jobs: Profits recirculate; quality work replaces churn.
- Lower leakage: Spending stays in town; multipliers rise.
- Inclusive ownership: Wealth built by the many, not the few.
- Climate alignment: Circular design and regenerative practices by default.
️ How Communities Start (6 Steps)
- Map the leaks: Identify where money exits (energy, food, procurement, rent).
- Pick a wedge: Start with one high-leak category (e.g., school meals, transit, retrofits).
- Stand up a co-op: Form a worker/consumer co-op to fill the gap; bake in open books & democratic bylaws.
- Add mutual credit: Launch a small B2B credit circle (e.g., 20–50 local firms) to keep purchases in-network.
- Align to the Doughnut: Set simple social & ecological guardrails for each project.
- Anchor demand: Partner with “eds & meds,” city agencies, and large buyers via local-first procurement.
What to Measure (Simple Dashboard)
- Local multiplier (LM3): $1 spent → $X re-spent locally.
- Ownership share: % of workers/households with equity or patronage rights.
- Leakage ↓: % decline in out-of-town purchasing.
- Living-wage jobs: net new positions meeting local living-wage benchmarks.
- Planet metrics: energy saved, emissions avoided, waste diverted, biodiversity gains.
Myths vs. Facts
- Myth: Co-ops can’t scale.
Fact: They scale via federations, shared services, and anchor contracts. - Myth: Mutual credit is “funny money.”
Fact: It’s a clearing mechanism for real goods/services; reduces cash strain. - Myth: Doughnut economics is anti-growth.
Fact: It favors qualitative growth (health, learning, biodiversity) over resource overshoot.
Quick-Start Use Cases
- Community energy co-op: Finance rooftop solar + heat pumps; repay from bill savings.
- Local food hub co-op: Aggregate farm produce for schools/hospitals; pay via mutual credit netting.
- Retrofit brigade: Worker co-op for building upgrades; city fronts demand via green procurement.
- Care co-op: Member-run home-care with living wages; surplus funds training & benefits.
Governance Cheatsheet
- 1 member = 1 vote (not 1 share = 1 vote).
- Transparent books (monthly dashboards).
- Patronage dividends tied to use/work, not capital alone.
- Conflict of interest rules + community ombudsperson.
- Mission lock: charter guards against extractive buyouts.
Risk & Guardrails
- Capital gaps: Blend community shares, municipal guarantees, CDFIs, mission investors.
- Capability gaps: Shared back-office co-ops (HR, finance, IT) + training academies.
- Capture risks: Term limits, recall votes, participatory budgeting, open meetings.
- Greenwashing: Independent audits against Doughnut indicators.
Glossary (30-second)
- CWB: Strategy to localize wealth and decision-making.
- Co-op: Member-owned enterprise with democratic control.
- Mutual Credit: Reciprocal credit lines within a network; balances settle over time.
- Doughnut: Framework balancing human needs and ecological limits.
- Anchor Institutions: Large, place-based buyers (eds/meds/city) that commit to local procurement.
✳️ Call to Action
- Join/launch a co-op working group (workers, small biz, anchors, city).
- Pilot a 90-day mutual credit circle among 25 local suppliers.
- Adopt a Doughnut scorecard for the next city procurement.
- Publish a Local Wealth Dashboard and report quarterly.
MobilizedNews.com — telling the stories that turn community wealth into common practice.
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© Mobilized News • A Public Media Commons
MOBILIZED NEWS • PUBLIC MEDIA COMMONS
The Breakdown — and the Opportunity
Why it matters:
Our systems are failing in real time—politics, media, and trust. The deepest crisis is informational. A well-informed public is the most valuable natural resource—and it’s being polluted by noise, spin, and pay-to-play distribution.
The big picture
- Outrage economics crowds out truth and context.
- Platforms throttle visibility; communities lose power.
- Real solutions exist—buried under clicks and chaos.
The shift
- From media monopoly → public commons.
- Evidence-based stories, open collaboration, civic action.
- Independent, community-owned distribution.
What we’re building
- Mobilized News: a participatory Public Media Commons.
- Systems-level journalism + community intelligence.
- Knowledge → Action: toolkits, hubs, local-to-global studios.
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Introducing Flip the Script
A fast, fact-forward feature show that:
- Exposes who benefits from broken systems and how narratives are manipulated.
- Surfaces proven solutions and the people building them now.
- Ends with clear, doable actions—today, where you live.
Storylines
Democracy: from disinfo to digital self-governance
Food: Big Ag vs. regenerative systems
Energy: policy, grids, and community power
Media: taking back the signal from the noise
Format
- Short editorial segments, myth-busting, explainer visuals
- Expert voices + community reporters
- Action steps and toolkits per episode
Who it’s for
- System-thinkers, educators, journalists
- Community organizers & policy innovators
- Young leaders ready to act
Join the Movement
How Our Information Systems Got Captured — And Why We Must Build a Media Commons
Why it matters: Whoever controls information controls the story—and whoever controls the story controls the future. Today, our information systems—mass media, independent journalism, and social media—are captured by financial, political, and ideological power. The result? Truth is optional. Manipulation is scalable. Democracy becomes theater.
The Big Problem
Our media no longer serves the public. It serves power.
- Six corporations control 90% of U.S. media (Comcast, Disney, NewsCorp, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros Discovery).
- Platforms like Meta and Google decide what the world sees, not editors or public interest journalism.
- Information has become an extraction industry—mined for profit, weaponized for influence, and sold to the highest bidder.
- Narrative control has replaced journalism—public opinion is now engineered.
As Noam Chomsky warned: “The smart way to keep people passive is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion.”
How We Got Here
| Era | What Changed | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Deregulation (1980s–90s) | FCC & media consolidation laws gutted | News became corporate product |
| Digital Ad Boom (2000s) | Google & Meta hijacked journalism revenue | Local news collapsed |
| Algorithm Era (2010s) | Clickbait + outrage = profit | Truth lost to engagement |
| Narrative Warfare (2020s) | AI propaganda + troll farms | Reality now contested |
This didn’t “just happen.” It was engineered.
- Rupert Murdoch built a propaganda empire from Fox News to Sky to The Sun.
- Cambridge Analytica exploited Facebook to psychologically profile voters.
- Edelman PR runs influence ops for fossil fuels, Big Ag, and political elites.
- BlackRock & Vanguard own major stakes in nearly every media conglomerate.
- US & UK governments funded Operation Mockingbird–style media influence for decades.
Hannah Arendt warned: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or Communist but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists.”
The Result
- Truth has no distribution system.
- Independent media is starved by platform algorithms.
- Public trust in media has collapsed to historic lows.
- Communities are divided by design—polarization is a business model.
Root Cause
This is not a crisis of content. It’s a crisis of control.
- Media is privately owned infrastructure.
- Algorithms are trade secrets.
- Information flows are centralized.
- Public knowledge has no public steward.
So What Do We Do?
We don’t “fix” corporate media. We replace the operating system of media.
✅ Build a Media Commons
A participatory, transparent, public-interest information network where truth competes fairly with lies—because access, distribution, and verification are shared.
A Media Commons is built on:
✅ Public-led, not corporate-led, information flows
✅ Local-to-global media cooperatives
✅ Open-source publishing + federated distribution
✅ Transparent sourcing + verifiable knowledge
✅ No censorship—but no algorithmic manipulation
✅ Shared intelligence networks for solutions
Enter: Mobilized News
Mobilized News is building a global Media Commons—a collaborative information ecosystem that connects journalism + education + public intelligence.
- No paywalls, no corporate capture
- Real experts + local storytellers
- Open syndication + federated publishing (ActivityPub)
- Systems thinking over clickbait
- Media built as public infrastructure
Buckminster Fuller said: “You never change things by fighting the existing model. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”
The Bottom Line
This is not just a media upgrade—it’s a civilization upgrade.
If we can’t trust information, we can’t organize truth.
If we can’t organize truth, we can’t solve anything.
The future is not owned by Big Media.
It belongs to the people who build better systems.
Call to Action
Build the Media Commons with us
→ Publish. Contribute. Syndicate. Investigate.
→ MobilizedNews.com
