Partners for Dignity & Rights

Co-Governance and Participatory Democracy in Action Across the Country

CO-GOVERNANCE WITH PUBLIC AGENCIES is one of a number of strategies community and worker-led organizations across the country are exploring to build the power needed in policy-making and governance to realize a multiracial political and economic democracy. Co-governance is a collection of participatory models and practices in which government and communities work together through formal and informal structures to make collective policy decisions, co-create programs to meet community needs, and make sure those policies and programs are implemented effectively. This map offers organizers and governments a range of examples of community governance structures.

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Worker-driven Enforcement in Minneapolis

Starting with the need to enforce workers’ right to paid sick and safe leave, workers’ rights advocates and organizers pushed for the creation of the City of Minneapolis Labor Standards Enforcement Division. This expanded the purview of an existing department to focus exclusively on workers rights policy. But like all labor rights enforcement bodies across the country, the core of the work at the division is complaint-based enforcement of worker protections. A fundamental challenge is that the most vulnerable workers, including workers of color and low-wage workers, who are most frequently and egregiously exploited, are also the least likely to complain. One of the most effective solutions to this systemic challenge is collaboration between labor enforcement agencies and community-based worker centers, which raise awareness of workers’ rights amongst the most vulnerable workers. In line with this collaboration, “standards boards’’ are industry-based standard- setting structures. In Minneapolis, the Workplace Advisory Committee was created which is essentially an informal standards and enforcement board consisting of a minority of business representatives and a combined majority of worker, community, and public representatives. One of its key stakeholders and designers is the powerhouse organization Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha (CTUL). Recently, the Committee created a worker-led subcommittee, a structure through which workers directly influence the rules and enforcement related to COVID-19 that the Committee advances in collaboration with the city. The committee is in charge of outreach—the city talks to the bosses and CTUL talks to the workers— and was active in the push for an increase of the minimum wage to $15/hour. The ultimate goal is to build a worker standards board to make policy, whereas most others across the country just make recommendations.

Worker-driven Enforcement in San Francisco

Over the last 20 years, the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) in San Francisco has been organizing workers and partnering with city and state government to improve enforcement of low-wage workers’ rights, building a new model of co-governance in the process. Employers often violate low-wage immigrant workers’ legal rights because workers feel too vulnerable to speak up and don’t have strong structures of support behind them to counteract employers’ power. In response, CPA founded a worker center to organize and educate workers, and set about building a first-of-its-kind model of labor “co-enforcement” in which government enforcement agencies partner with worker centers and other community-based organizations embedded in low-wage worker communities to enforce labor laws, leveraging the unique capacities of each partner to achieve better enforcement outcomes. Over the years, CPA has worked closely with San Francisco’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement and California’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement to meet workers’ needs and strengthen these institutions. For more details, read our case study.

California Fast Food Council

The California Fast Food Council was created when the FAST Act was signed into law in 2023, after a years-long campaign waged by the Fight for $15 movement and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The law creates a Council of employer and employee representatives, and one independent member of the public, to set minimum wages and employment standards for the fast food industry. When the original FAST Act passed in 2022, fast food owners organized a ballot measure to override the law, while labor advocates readied a new law to make fast food franchisors jointly liable for labor violations at their franchisees’ establishments. Governor Gavin Newsom mediated a compromise, killing the referendum and securing a $20 minimum wage for workers beginning in April 2024, which the Council can raise annually subject to a yearly cap, in exchange for paring back some of the Council’s powers and ditching franchisor liability. Even in its weakened state, this represents a big win for fast food workers in California, who got an immediate raise and will now have a seat at the table in setting their wages and work standards moving forward.

Domestic Workers Standards Boards

The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights was passed in 2018 in response to organizing by the Seattle Domestic Workers Alliance (SDWA), which brought together nannies, house cleaners, and home care workers to advocate for their rights. The Bill of Rights established that domestic workers enjoyed the same rights as other workers in the city, including the city’s minimum wage, meal and rest times, and protection from employers retaining personal documents, like passports. It also established the Domestic Workers Standards Board. The 13-member board is composed of employers, community representatives, domestic workers, and representatives of worker organizations who are also domestic workers. Together the Board makes policy recommendations and sets industry standards to improve labor conditions. Most importantly, the City Council is required to respond to the board’s recommendations within 120 days. The Standards Board normalizes workers’ expertise, creates a formal space for domestic workers to collectively mobilize around to advance their visions and demands, and build relationships with and directly negotiate with employers and the government.

Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership

The Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership (MassCEO) was created in 2022 and is the state’s primary office charged with promoting employee ownership of businesses in Massachusetts. Employee-owned businesses like worker-owned coops and employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) prioritize workplace safety and wellness over profits, share profits among workers, promote democratic decision-making within businesses, and increase business’ ties and commitments to local communities. MassCEO provides information and resources on employee ownership, promotes the benefits of employee ownership in businesses and expands and enhances employee ownership opportunities. Advocates and organizers won strong bylaws for the new office, including an emphasis on transparency, participatory decision-making and benefits sharing – a big win as the office was not familiar with having such a standard for participation and centering of worker ownership stakeholders needs and vision in the development of governance practices and policies. The Advisory Board on Employee Ownership includes members representing ESOPs, worker-owned cooperatives, organized labor and trade associations. In 2024, the Coalition for Worker Ownership and Power (COWOP) – which includes the Center for Economic Democracy – organized and lobbied successfully to secure $200,000 in state funding for MassCEO, with an additional $300,000 that rolled over from the previous year’s Executive Office of Economic Development budget.

Jackson People’s Assembly

In a city marked by centuries of exclusionary politics, Black organizers have built People’s Assemblies to bring local residents into direct democracy as they grow their leadership, shape priorities, and build community power. Assemblies are open public forums in which residents come together to identify and discuss community priorities for government and community organizations. The Jackson People’s Assembly (JPA) has been held since the late 1980s by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and is now coordinated by four organizations: People’s Advocacy Institute, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, and One Voice Mississippi. In contrast to civic assemblies that are convened by governments and social-movement assemblies that work totally outside of government, the JPA was created and is coordinated by community organizations with direct lines of accountability to residents. But since first electing Chokwe Lumumba to city council in 2009, and then the mayor’s office in 2013, the assembly has also wielded significant influence with city officials, helping drive public action on fixes to the city’s ailing water infrastructure and promoting community care and safety. Its power is limited, however, by Jackson’s lower-income tax base and an often-hostile state government that limits funding to the City of Jackson. For more details, read our case study.

Comprehensive Plan Assemblies

In 2024, the City of Seattle convened two assemblies to solicit public input on updates to the city’s 20-year plan that guides its ongoing land use and development. The assemblies grew out of a previous co-governance effort, the creation of the city’s Green New Deal Oversight Board (GNDOB) in 2019. The GNDOB is designed to enable community representatives to advise city agencies on advancing environmental goals, and to help facilitate public engagement. In response to a GNOB recommendation that the city pilot assemblies to deepen community engagement in updates to the city plan, Seattle’s Office of Sustainability & Environment announced that it would commission two pilot assemblies, and contracted with MLK Labor (the county labor council) and the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle to host the assemblies. It also contracted with a third organization, People’s Economy Lab, to help with design, capacity-building and evaluation. The assemblies were convened over three evenings each in September and October of 2024. Assembly participants were asked to weigh in on how the city should support community climate-resilience initiatives and help build an equitable clean energy sector that cuts emissions while facilitating community wealth building by supporting climate careers for people of color, youth and women.

Environmental Justice Council and Community Assemblies

In 2021, Washington’s legislature passed two major environmental bills: the HEAL Act made environmental justice an official priority for state agencies and created an Environmental Justice Council to provide community input and oversight in environmental governance, and the Climate Commitment Act created a carbon cap program to limit industrial emissions and raise revenue for HEAL Act programs and other climate investments. In 2024, the state legislature and governor granted the Department of Social & Health Services (DSHS) $2 million to contract with community groups to pilot four “community assemblies” to directly engage low-income communities and communities of color who are inadequately served by existing policy-making processes in informing the state’s policy, program and budget decisions. Both initiatives were driven by years of earlier co-governance efforts by the Just Futures coalition – a collaboration between Front and Centered, Statewide Anti-Poverty Network and People’s Economy Lab – and collaborators in DSHS and other state agencies. The assemblies will be held between September and December of 2024.

Civic Assembly on Youth Homelessness

In 2024, the Central Oregon Civic Action Project (COCAP) and Central Oregon Youth Action Board (YAB) teamed up with nonprofits, foundations and local governments in Deschutes County to hold the Civic Assembly on Youth Homelessness. Thirty local residents were chosen by sortition as Delegates. The Delegates met over five sessions, and delivered policy recommendations to city and county officials, who committed before the Assembly to receive and publicly respond to the recommendations. The YAB—which is a community advisory board of young adults with direct experience of homelessness who advise local governments on policies and programs—helped shape content for the Assembly, was the first to be presented with the Assembly’s recommendations, and co-presented the recommendations to local officials alongside Delegates and COCAP. COCAP is a partnership between the Laboratory for the American Conversation at OSU–Cascades, Democracy Next (a global platform for democracy innovation), Healthy Democracy, and the MIT Center for Constructive Communications. The assembly was funded by The Rockefeller Foundation, Omidyar Network and local funders, and the YAB was started with a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program.

COVID Equity Action Circle

Early in the pandemic, Ramsey County, which includes St. Paul, Minnesota, formed an Equity Action Circle (EAC) of community members to co-develop strategies and solutions to support racially and ethnically diverse communities in addressing the impacts of COVID-19. The goal of forming the EAC was to address the racial disparities in the county, while also improving the county’s systems and processes in delivering its programs by building co-design, implementation, and evaluation processes that center communities most impacted by systemic racism. The members represent diverse communities and experiences and are compensated at $50/hour for their work on the EAC. They have developed recommendations to the county covering priorities including families and youth, healthcare, housing, and workforce, as well as county policies and procedures—all with a focus on the impacts in communities due to COVID-19. The county is now in the process of implementing some of the recommendations, including a culturally specific family coaching program for Black and American Indian families. The Board of Commissioners has supported continued funding of the EAC.

Office of Community Wealth Building

The Office of Community Wealth Building (OCWB) was established as a permanent city agency in Richmond, Virginia, in 2015 to provide anti-poverty strategy and policy advice to the mayor and to implement municipal poverty reduction initiatives and systemic changes around housing, education, and economic development. The OCWB emerged from an intensive investigation within Richmond by its residents into drivers of structural poverty and inequitable distribution of city benefits and the identification of solutions to redress these challenges. OCWB’s efforts to maintain a vital leadership role for community members living in poverty and to amplify their voices throughout Richmond city government are ongoing.

Public Banking

Demos completed a case study on the New Economy Project’s efforts through the Public Bank of New York City (PBNYC) coalition of over 40 community, labor, and cooperative groups. The New Economy Project and the PBNYC coalition are developing an alternative to profit-driven private banking in New York with a public banking institution that centers economic, racial, and environmental justice and that supports solutions like worker- owned businesses, affordable housing, and community solar projects. There are few models for public banks, but momentum is growing in multiple communities for a publicly accountable and community governed banking solution.

Baltimore Affordable Housing Trust Fund

In November 2016, Baltimore voters approved a voter-initiated city Charter Amendment to create the Baltimore Affordable Housing Trust Fund to finance affordable rental and homeownership housing for very-low and low-income households. The initiative was spearheaded by the Housing for All coalition, which was coordinated by United Workers and included Baltimore renters, homeowners, persons without housing, community development advocates, nonprofit developers, community associations, faith institutions, policy advocates, lawyers, and academics. The Fund is overseen by a 12-member commission that is weighted to the low-income community, with 4 seats reserved for low-income persons and 3 others for advocates. The legislation provides a long-term source of funding through bonds plus an excise and transfer taxes on expensive properties that together raise $20 million a year.

Baltimore Children & Youth Fund

The Baltimore Children & Youth Fund (BCYF) was created in 2016 as a response to deep public anger over injustices for young Black people in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. The Fund was backed by local organizations, put on the ballot as a charter amendment by the city council and overwhelmingly approved by voters. In 2017, the City convened a task force of community leaders, youth program service providers, City government representatives, and other key community representatives to make recommendations on the Fund’s governance and operations. The task force stressed the importance of racial equity, community empowerment and participation by community members and youth leaders as core principles to guide the Fund’s design, strategy, grantmaking priorities, and grant decisions. In July 2020, the City formed a new nonprofit to manage the Fund, and appointed an Interim Board of Directors, comprised of committed community members and experts in nonprofit operations or philanthropy, to oversee it. BCYF is funded through an annual appropriation of 3 cents on every $100 of assessed value of all Baltimore City properties. It awards grants to organizations that provide programming to thousands of Baltimore’s young people ranging from academic support and science exploration to dance and photography and more. It has disbursed $23 million since 2021 to 101 organizations.

Equitable Development Initiative

In the 2010s, with Seattle’s residents of color being displaced from the city, community organizations formed two coalitions: South CORE and the Race and Social Equity Taskforce. They worked closely with city staff in the Office of Planning & Community Development and Office of Civil Rights to incorporate a strong focus on racial equity, anti-displacement and community-led development into updates to the city’s development plan, and together developed a community advisory board, an equitable development framework, an implementation plan, and a financial investment strategy. They got the mayor and council to establish the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) to fund community investments under the Advisory Board’s guidance, and to earmark $16 million in startup funds plus millions of dollars in additional annual revenue from rental income and a new payroll tax. By March 2024, EDI had provided technical assistance and over $100 million in funding to organizations including Africatown Community Land Trust, the Duwamish Tribe and Ethiopian Community in Seattle to develop 56 cultural centers and affordable housing projects in historic neighborhoods of color. In 2024, a more conservative city council and mayor threatened to defund EDI to plug the city’s budget gap. Community members organized to oppose the cuts and won a reprieve, but EDI’s future remains contested.

Justice50 and the Climate Protection Fund

In 2020, Denver voters passed a ballot initiative to create the Climate Protection Fund (CPF) to “eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, and adapt to climate change” with a focus on investing in “communities of color, under-resourced communities and communities most vulnerable to climate change.” The Office of Climate Action, Sustainability, and Resiliency (CASR) manages the CPF and promulgates any rules necessary for its proper administration. The fund was the brainchild of local climate activists and put on the ballot by the city council. Drawing revenue from a 0.25% sales tax, the Fund invests some $40 million in six key areas: workforce training for green jobs, renewable energy, neighborhood-based environmental and climate justice programs, climate adaptation and resilience, affordable clean and safe transportation, and energy efficiency of buildings. City staff managing the fund work with the city’s Sustainability Advisory Council, which was created in 2010 to enable community and environmental advocates to advise the city on environmental policy and programs, to guide the Fund’s strategic planning and grantmaking and help hold the city accountable. Over the long-term, CASR must endeavor to invest 50% of the CPF money “with a strong lens toward equity, race, and social justice.” Three years in, the Fund’s investments reduced Denver’s carbon reduction emissions by 331,154 metric tons (the equivalent of removing 80,000 gas-powered cars off the roads for a full year), planted over 1,000 trees in low-income neighborhoods at risk of extreme heat, delivered workforce training to 850 people and funded dozens of solar projects.

Portland Clean Energy Fund

A coalition of community and environmental groups led by the Coalition of Communities of Color won a ballot initiative in 2018 to create the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF). By 2023, the Fund had invested $145 million in energy efficiency, renewable energy, transportation decarbonization, the tree canopy, neighborhood climate resilience infrastructure, green jobs, regenerative agriculture and nonprofit capacity-building. It draws its funding from a gross receipts tax on major retailers, and is projected to invest another $750 million by 2028. As required by the ballot initiative, the city convened a committee of residents, community leaders and issue experts to help oversee the fund. This PCEF Committee has the power to make recommendations to the mayor, city council and Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (which oversees the fund) on PCEF’s funding strategy, grantmaking, a contractor equity plan and any changes to the law. It also monitors and evaluates the Fund’s operations and outcomes, and works closely with city staff to create a Climate Investment Plan in 2023 that now guides the Fund’s investment strategy. The city has also convened advisory councils and working groups to engage labor unions, contractors and other stakeholders in shaping the fund’s grantmaking strategy, and created a mini-grant program to help build organizational capacity in low-income communities of color.

Care First Community Investment Fund

Los Angeles’ County’s Care First Community Investment Fund was passed by voters in 2020 to invest in “Care First, Jails Last,” approaches to community safety that address the root causes of crime, provide alternatives to incarceration and support racially just community-led solutions to safety. The law amended the county charter to require at least 10% of the county’s budget to go to care-first programs. County supervisors placed the initiative on that ballot in response to a campaign led by a community coalition, Reimagine L.A. County, that built significant power during and after the mass protests against police violence in the summer of 2020. The law requires the county to convene the Re-imagine LA Advisory Committee, which brings community and labor representatives together with staff from county departments and residents appointed by county supervisors to advise the county on its budget and programs and help provide accountability, but ultimate decision-making power is held by the county’s chief executive officer, who is appointed by the county supervisors. The county supervisor and CEO have been dragging their heels on fully investing in care-first programs. Reimagine L.A. County continues to organize, but because the Advisory Committee’s powers are merely advisory and the broader political climate has swung back toward law-and-order politics since 2020, they face an ongoing struggle.

Whole Home Repairs Program

The Whole-Home Repairs Program exists because of the organizing of a coalition of housing and energy advocates, community organizers, Pennsylvania residents, and legislators, including Make the Road PA, POWER Interfaith and Philly Thrive, who worked for over a year engaging deeply with their communities to ensure that the policy would make a positive impact on the communities who needed it most, and then succeeded in getting the program signed into law in July 2022 with a $125-million appropriation in the state budget. This is a drop in the bucket of what is needed, but a huge victory nonetheless. Dozens of stakeholders were involved in drafting, editing and finalizing the program logistics. With some of the oldest housing stock in the nation, Pennsylvania has hundreds of thousands of homes across the Commonwealth with moderate to severe physical inadequacies, including leaky roofs or windows, blown fuses or exposed wiring, unreliable heat, or the lack of a flushing toilet. The Whole-Home Repairs Program establishes a one-stop shop for home repairs and weatherization. It is housed within the Department of Community and Economic Development and is administered at the county level so that individual counties can maximize their resources and address the needs of their residents. The program is a housing security initiative, an energy initiative, an anti-blight initiative, a jobs initiative, and a community safety initiative. While it enjoys bipartisan support, the funding has yet to be renewed.

San Diego Community Schools

The San Diego Community Schools coalition, anchored by the Center on Policy Initiatives with the San Diego Education Association, is a group of community organizations, youth groups, and educators, who came together in 2018. One of the coalition’s campaigns is to reshape neighborhood schools into community schools that center community needs and integrate values like racial justice into the visioning, decision making, and everyday life of schools. In July 2020, the campaign won a major victory when the San Diego Unified School District Board of Trustees unanimously adopted the coalition’s Community Schools Resolution, creating the structure and mechanisms to develop and implement community schools in the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD). The resolution established the Community Schools Steering Committee as the main entity that carries out the implementation of community schools. This committee of teachers, parents, students, community members, and district staff has been responsible for reviewing applications from school sites, recommending schools to join, and selecting the District Community Schools Coordinator and the first Community Schools Site Coordinators. So far, there are fifteen community schools, with ten more selected for the 2024-25 school year.

Restorative Practices in Paterson, NJ Schools

Parents, grandparents and community members have worked with the Paterson, NJ, school district to replace a punitive disciplinary system with restorative practices that center the learning and well-being of all children. Two local nonprofits, the Paterson Education Fund (PEF) and the Parent Education Organizing Council (PEOC) advocated and organized with parents, grandparents, students, teachers, principals, administrators, and the district superintendent over a decade to win support and collectively build a new approach to school discipline. With support from Dignity in Schools, they successfully introduced restorative practices in every public school in the district, and in so doing, changed both the policy and the culture around school discipline in Paterson. Today, Paterson families hold meaningful power by sitting on multiple task forces and teams that drive decision-making within the school district, which has led to a genuine responsiveness by school district officials and an expansion of its vision for restorative practices.

Anaheim Community Schools

The community schools movement in Anaheim is flourishing, in no small part due to the efforts and shared leadership of Anaheim Secondary Teachers Association (ASTA), Anaheim Union High School District, students, parents and community partners. Community Schools include collaborative leadership and active family and community engagement while working to expand learning opportunities and wraparound services to their students. To date, 16 of 21 middle and high schools in AUHSD, whose students speak almost 50 languages in their homes, have transitioned to community schools. Anaheim’s community schools began and are based within the school district, but the community has a strong voice – and a vote, using a fist-to-five consensus protocol for decision-making – through the Steering Committee, which includes 21 members representing the district, the teacher’s union, families, students and representatives from various community based organizations, including the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance. The district-wide Steering Committee and Community School Site Teams, which also include representatives from all major stakeholders, have proved effective models of collaboration and leadership.

Cincinnati Community Schools

Cincinnati Community Schools has been one of the first, and most successful, communities to implement community schools, and serves as a model for the rest of the country. Community Schools include collaborative leadership and active family and community engagement while working to expand learning opportunities and wraparound services to their students. In 2001, Cincinnati passed a school board policy to turn all of their schools into community schools, called Community Learning Centers. By 2006, nine schools had hired site coordinators (through a lead agency model), done a deep community engagement process to identify needs and assets with the local communities, and brought partners into the schools through site based governance with choice at the local level. The Cross Boundary Leadership Team is where all the major stakeholders come together, including the district and the teacher’s union, to focus on capacity building and best practices. Research shows the move to community schools resulted in significant improvements, with reduced racial achievement gaps, higher enrollment and graduation rates, and 98% of third graders passing the 3rd grade reading guarantee. Not only have the schools improved their academic achievements, but they also serve the whole community, with partnerships that serve all community members, providing primary health, vision and dental services, as well as partnering with Habitat for Humanity and other housing partners to help families secure stable housing, and Welcome Centers, focused on stability and advancement for families, with the Immigrant and Refugee Law Center providing legal services for immigrant families.

Los Angeles Community Schools

The Los Angeles community schools initiative was born out of the UTLA teacher’s strike of 2019. After six dramatic days of protests and rain, the UTLA emerged victorious, and won a huge slate of demands that went well beyond better wages and benefits for their teachers. One of their most important victories was a memorandum of understanding with the district to create community schools using funding from the district and the state, with the goal of 70 schools in the following five years. Community Schools include collaborative leadership and active family and community engagement while working to expand learning opportunities and wraparound services to their students. The resulting Steering Committee has acted as a model for how the district, teachers’ unions, and the entire community can collaborate effectively to provide an outstanding education for their children that addresses all their needs through wraparound services and extended school time. Each school has created its own leadership council that includes the principal, the community schools coordinator, teachers, parents, students and staff so that they can make critical decisions together. In the process, they have pushed back on a growing charter schools movement, showing LA and the rest of the country how a district and a union can work through a difficult history to come out on the other side with a model of collaboration and shared decision-making.

Our Water Campaign

The Our Water Campaign led by Pittsburgh United, a coalition of community organizations including labor, faith, and environmental groups, organized an inside-outside campaign to address high lead levels in drinking water, prevent customer shut offs, and keep water infrastructure a public good. They fought against efforts to privatize the local water authority and engaged the Pittsburgh community through organizing efforts like door-to-door canvassing, distributing water filters, and helping people address water bill problems. They worked with the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Agency to form community advisory committees and in 2019 won an agreement to keep the water agency a public entity. As detailed in a case study by Demos, their message throughout the campaign was clear: “The way out of this crisis was greater accountability through public control, not an abdication of government responsibility through privatization.”

Green Zones – Minneapolis

Green Zones are a collaborative, community-based approach to repairing environmental injustices in polluted neighborhoods. In 2018, the City of Minneapolis created two Green Zones, the Southside Green Zone and the Northside Green Zone, to address environmental hazards stemming from a history of policies harming the health and environment of local residents, most of whom are Black, Indigenous and other people of color. The Southside Green Zone Council and Northside Green Zone Council are comprised of local residents, youth, members of the Environmental Justice Coordinating Council, and non-voting city agency staff. Six years into the project, council members feel the Green Zones have helped build environmental leadership in their communities and awareness of the issues in city hall, but have also raised concerns that they are underfunded and lack the necessary power to have a voice in policies that directly affect their neighborhoods.

Maine Lobster Co-Management

In 1995, Maine introduced a new type of management in the lobster industry, known as “co-management,” or lobster zone councils. The law created lobster management policy councils, comprised of local lobstermen and their elected leaders, allowing them to share authority over the industry. Each council co-manages one of seven zones along the coastline, and regulates trap limits, time and day of fishing allowed, the number of traps per string, and “entry laws” – how many lobstermen are allowed in a zone. Zone council meetings are open to all license-holding lobstermen. However, only lobstermen licensed to fish within the specific zone that is being convened are allowed to vote. Rules are passed by a vote of two-thirds of the lobstermen in a zone, and then become regulation if the Commissioner of Marine Resources deems them reasonable. Lobstermen know their zones best and are able to guide and vote in their zone’s best interest. The Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the collective voice of Maine lobster fisherman, helped establish the zones, and now supports the co-management process as a mediator when needed.

Hāʻena Community-Based Subsistence Fishing Area

On August 4, 2015, Hāʻena was designated as the first Community-Based Subsistence Fishing Area (CBSFA) in the State of Hawai’i, overseen by the Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources. In Kaiāulu: Gathering Tides, Mehana Blaich Vaughan describes the decades-long organizing effort, led by fishing families in the community of Hā ʻena alongside advocates, organizers, academics, and scientists, to reassert a measure of local community governance over the fishing waters the families had stewarded for generations. The new fishing rules are designed to perpetuate subsistence fishing traditions and nearshore resources of this area, for both current and future generations. Since Hāʻena was designated, two more rural Hawaiʻi communities achieved CBSFA designation, driven by long-time area fishing families in both Miloliʻi on Hawaiʻi island and most recently Kīpahulu on Maui in 2024. These Hawaiʻi fishing communities are part of a broader movement across the island chain to care for lands and waters at the local level, including over 200 different community groups caring for and restoring traditional agricultural systems, fish ponds, and other cultural sites, along with forests, coastal areas, farms and even entire watersheds.

Elevated Chicago

Elevated Chicago brings together community residents, the public and private sectors, and local government to promote more equitable development of public spaces, buildings and vacant land around Chicago’s public transit infrastructure. Elevated Chicago is led by a Steering Committee representing regional, local and community voices and organizations that work on issues of equity, affordability, health, culture, and climate resilience. While the City of Chicago has incentivized development near transit since 2013, the South and West sides, which are poorer and home to most Black and Latine residents, have benefited only from 10% of new transit-oriented development. The 2020 Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (ETOD) Policy Plan was co-created by Elevated Chicago and the City to address these disparities. In the years since, Elevated co-led the passage of comprehensive ETOD zoning reforms in the 2022 Connected Communities Ordinance and advocated for a historic $10M City investment in ETOD grants with a matching technical assistance program. Elevated was initially formed as part of the national SPARCC (Strong, Prosperous, And Resilient Communities Challenge) program.

California Air Resources Board

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is charged with protecting the public by reducing air pollution and developing programs and actions to fight impacts of climate change. Assembly Bill 32 requires CARB to convene an Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (EJAC) to advise the Board in developing a Scoping Plan on environmental justice and racial equity to ensure the most impacted communities see improvements, gain climate resilience and avoid increased air pollution exposure. The law requires the EJAC to be comprised of representatives from communities with the most significant exposure to air pollution, including minority or low-income populations. The first EJAC was formed in 2007, and in March 2023, after years of advocacy, EJAC and CARB approved a new charter giving the two bodies more detailed guidance on goals, accountability, transparency and building working relationships together. In addition, in 2018 the state legislature passed AB 617, which called for state agencies to consult environmental justice organizations when developing statewide strategies to reduce air pollution disparities. CARB responded by launching the Community Air Protection Program (CAPP) and convening the multi-stakeholder AB 617 Consultation Group, which includes environmental justice groups, local air districts, industry, academia, public health organizations, tribes and local government.

Maui Water Authority Boards

In November 2022, residents overwhelmingly passed a ballot initiative to authorize the creation of community water boards in Maui County that would take back local control over water. Community members, generational Hawaiian families, local politicians and environmental groups developed and passed the ballot measure largely out of anger over backroom deals that gave plantation owners cheap water while charging local farmers exorbitant prices. Once the ballot passed, the first community to create a board was in East Maui, where a Canadian Pension Fund owns half of a 74-mile water system. The County council has approved funding for the board, and the East Maui Water Authority Board now has its members – some picked by the mayor, some by the council – and includes residents of the watershed area with a mix of water expertise. The Water Board now has the authority to negotiate the water leases and will hopefully focus on providing fair access to water based on traditional ahupuaʻa land management principles – “from the mountains to the sea.”

Petaluma Fairgrounds Advisory Panel

Petaluma, California, a city of 60,000 people near San Francisco, wanted to redevelop its old city-owned fairgrounds as a mixed-use development, and needed to build public consensus behind a plan of action. The city manager and city council decided to commission a lottery-selected civic jury of local residents—California’s first—to deliberate and provide recommendations to the city on the future of the fairgrounds. They called it the Petaluma Fairgrounds Advisory Panel, and hired Healthy Democracy to help them design and run the panel. Through 90 hours of meetings over two months, the panelists heard presentations from the city and different stakeholders, deliberated about varying visions for the fairgrounds, and together wrote three documents for the city manager and city council: a prioritized list of values, decision-making criteria, key interests, and important activities that the final recommendation should take into consideration; a collection of multiple visions and possibilities for the fairgrounds; and a final report with recommendations for the city. Although the panel didn’t deliver a single cohesive redevelopment plan to the city, it helped capture community visions and provide a ranking of community priorities, and participants and city officials were mostly positive about the process and the results.

Wisconsin Conservation Congress

Founded in 1937, the Wisconsin Conservation Congress (WCC) provides residents a participatory channel through which they can advise the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to “responsibly manage Wisconsin’s natural resources for present and future generations.” It has a participatory leadership structure in which county residents attend local assemblies each year to elect five delegates to the statewide Congress and propose policy resolutions. The Congress submits final resolutions to the DNR; collaborates with Department staff on public education, research, policy, enforcement and other efforts; seats Congressmembers on DNR committees; and conducts surveys and holds open houses in every county to engage and stay accountable to the broader public. The Congress has sometimes been a site of contestation. In the 1980s and 1990s, sometimes brutal fights played out around proposed mines and Ojibwe treaty rights to spearfish. And in 2023, environmental and progressive organizations raised concerns that the Congress has been captured by a small group of hunters and ideologues and become “an authoritarian, anti-democratic, and dysfunctional organization” that “operates at the behest of recreational hunters and trappers, without regard for ethics, science or public values.”

Green Development Zone

In 2008, PUSH Buffalo, an organization in Buffalo, New York, founded the Green Development Zone (GDZ), “an area that PUSH is making more environmentally and economically sustainable,” in a 30-square- block area of Buffalo’s West Side, where many communities of color reside. Understanding that communities can combat gentrification when 30 percent of buildings and neighborhoods remain affordable, PUSH purchased vacant properties in the GDZ before developers turned them into luxury apartments. They were then able to assemble a community-controlled land bank of properties to be repurposed for affordable housing and worked hand-in-hand with the community to determine GDZ priorities that best served all community residents in the area. Through a community planning process, the GDZ planted the seeds of green, efficient, and affordable housing by transforming vacant land into public parks, rain gardens, and community spaces. Using a community congress model, residents identified priorities and goals, which determined the process and strategy to move toward these goals.

Housing Code Enforcement

Home is Where Our Health Is: Strategic and Supportive Code Enforcement, is a collaboration between Tenants Transforming Greater St. Louis (TTGSTL), Vacancy Collaborative, and the City of St. Louis Buildings Division to enforce building codes in rental housing in order to keep tenants safe and healthy, and to protect them from being pushed out of their homes. It is illegal for landlords not to keep their units up to code, but some landlords, especially in St. Louis’ Black neighborhoods, fail to keep up with maintenance and repairs both to pinch pennies and to effectively evict tenants. Unsafe, substandard rental housing can affect the physical health and mental well-being of residents. But with hundreds of thousands of rental units across the city, the Buildings Division is not able to figure out which landlords are violating building codes on its own. TTGSTL and the Vacancy Collaborative began by working with the Buildings Division and university partners to research housing quality and health outcomes, map the code enforcement process, analyze best practices for code enforcement, educate community members on the pain points, and recommend solutions to Buildings Division’s leadership and the city council on how to improve code enforcement and housing quality. The collaboration has worked together to pass legislation such as the Rental Registry, Impacted Tenants Fund, Safe Temperatures in Rentals and a Mold Ordinance. TTGSTL has also coordinated technical assistance for the Building Division to implement new policy and employ their operations recommendations.

Seattle Participatory Budgeting

In 2020, grassroots coalitions King County Equity Now and Decriminalize Seattle called for the City of Seattle to fund a community-led research process that would create an explicitly pro-Black participatory budgeting process. They worked with the Participatory Budget Project (PBP) to develop a visionXT for citywide participatory budgeting in the creation of the city’s public safety budget with a strong racial equity framework, which took nearly two years to begin implementing. The city gave a grant of $3 million to the Black Brilliance Research Project to produce a report documenting how people were being affected by police violence, contracted with PBP to administer the program, and committed to giving communities control over how to spend $30 million, a sum that will make Seattle’s effort the largest participatory budgeting initiative in the country to date.

Boston Participatory Budgeting

Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a democratic process where community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. In Boston, Youth Lead the Change (YLC) was established in 2014 as the first youth-led Participatory Budgeting initiative in the United States. Boston resident youth aged 12 to 22 are able to decide how to spend $1 million of capital dollars for the benefit of their communities. In 2021, a grassroots coalition, the Better Budget Alliance, with the support of the Center for Economic Democracy, successfully amended Boston’s charter to give city councilors more power to shape the municipal budget (not just the mayor) and to establish an Office of Participatory Budgeting (OPB), allowing everyday residents 11 years old and up to have a direct say over how a portion of the city’s operating budget would be spent. The OPB, in conjunction with a 9-member community Oversight Board, is tasked with using an equity framework with a focus on projects that engage all Boston residents, including priority populations such as residents who cannot or do not participate in local government decision making and residents who have been historically excluded or underrepresented. Through yearly PB cycles, residents will be able to propose creative new ideas to address local needs as well as to help inform priorities for the City’s annual budget process. While the Better Budget Alliance has been advocating for at least 1% of the operating budget to be determined via participatory budgeting, the first cycle has $2 million allocated, and begins in July 2024 with an Idea Collection Campaign, and which will culminate with its first vote in January 2025.

Participatory Budgeting Grand Rapids

In 2022, Grand Rapids, Michigan, set aside $2 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for participatory budgeting. The city received technical assistance from the Participatory Budgeting Project, and followed their best practices for municipal budgeting. The City Commission decided to distribute funds through graduated dispersal of $2 million across the City’s three wards, with each ward forming a Steering Committee that included two residents of each ward. The process allowed for investment based in part on the distribution of demographic and economic factors in each ward in order to help address historical disparities across the wards. Two dozen neighborhood and community partners pledged their support to help engage residents in the Participatory Budgeting Grand Rapids (PBGR) process. The PBGR Committee formed partnerships with nonprofits in all three City wards to encourage outreach and engagement. Votes by ward took place Sept. 30 through Oct. 5, 2022 online, in-person at Grand Rapids Public Libraries and at a series of neighborhood events. Residents 13 years of age and older were eligible to vote and 2,081 residents participated in the voting process. Projects that were funded included $350,000 for Mental Health Community First Responders and $500,000 for Lead Water Line Replacement.

Phoenix School Participatory Budgeting and Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council

School Participatory Budgeting (SPB) empowers students to “learn democracy by doing” by deciding how school or district dollars are used to improve their campus communities. The process prepares young people to be active, informed, and engaged participants in civic life. Arizona has been at the forefront of SPB implementation and experimentation since 2013 when Bioscience High School in Phoenix became the first school within the U.S. to pilot a participatory budgeting program. By 2016, Phoenix Union High School District adopted the nation’s first district-wide SPB process in partnership with Arizona State University Participatory Governance Initiative (PGI), Center for the Future of Arizona (CFA), and the Participatory Budgeting Project. Beginning in 2019, CFA and PGI have worked with the support of the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council to expand more inclusive practices and fully engage students with disabilities in this work. SPB is now implemented in 62 Arizona schools, engaging over 70,000 students every year.

Building Emissions Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO)

Buildings are one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Boston. For more than two years, ACE-Alternatives for Community & Environment has been a critical participant in the development of a community-centered process to create strong performance standards for building emissions. ACE partnered with the City of Boston, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and One Square World, in an effort to bring climate adaptation advocates and activists to the table with their counterparts in the housing justice world, including organizations in the Right to the City coalition. Through that process, community members and residents discussed the impacts of the Building Emissions Reporting and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO) and possible improvements to better serve residents and abutters impacted by emissions from buildings throughout the city. ACE co-facilitated a series of virtual gatherings over the course of 2020 and drew more than 80 participants to each meeting. ACE and Right to the City, along with the Green Justice Coalition, pushed for a standard that did not include the purchase of carbon offsets as a compliance mechanism—a hard no for the community—but did include a review board with a two-thirds majority of members nominated by community-based organizations with an expertise in housing, environmental, and climate justice. As a result of this collaboration, BERDO 2.0 was introduced by Councilor Matt O’Malley, was unanimously adopted by the city council, and was signed into law by Mayor Kim Janey on October 5, 2021. ACE continues to work closely with the city to shape the regulations and implementation of the ordinance.

Community-led Recovery

In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Texas Organizing Project (TOP) organizers went door to door in Harris County and learned how deeply the Black and brown community was suffering from badly damaged housing conditions, including mold that was impacting the community’s health. TOP organizers realized that to have the power to direct the federal recovery aid toward communities that had been neglected, they needed representation on the county’s boards and commissions. As a Demos case study reports, “They then embarked on an electoral strategy to ensure that the area’s most vulnerable communities had decision-making power within these historically exclusionary institutional bodies—in the process, unseating a longtime incumbent county judge and electing an equity-minded successor, and implementing a racial equity-based governing framework.”

Climate Action Plan

In 2019, the city of San Francisco launched an Office of Racial Equity and undertook a process of addressing equity throughout its agencies and offices. On the heels of this initiative, the Zero Cities project, offering the support of several racial justice and technical partners, engaged the San Francisco Department of the Environment to create a roadmap to the twin goals of equity and zero carbon emissions in the buildings sector. The city’s community partner in the effort was the environmental justice organization People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights- San Francisco (PODER). PODER created a joint outreach plan with the city and engaged an array of stakeholders from different sectors including labor, tenants organizing, building owners, workforce training organizations, the municipal utility, climate organizations, and others. Out of a series of activities, a 25-page document of strategies and potential actions that came out of the process was used to inform the climate plan update led by the Department of the Environment. In 2021, PODER was on the Community Climate Council for the Climate Action Plan update. PODER conducted outreach and advised the Department of Environment on the Climate Action Plan update. Following this work, advocates have been working with the Board of Supervisors to enact legislation for an inter-agency task force that convenes government agencies with community and labor, to address gaps and develop next steps for the implementation plan for updated Climate Action Plan, starting with equitable building decarbonization.

Zero Cities Project

With the groundbreaking mobilization that led to the Portland Clean Energy Fund in 2018–fought for by the Portland Clean Energy Fund coalition and administered by the city of Portland—partnerships between the city and community organizations were already established when the Zero Cities project, offering the support of several racial justice and technical partners, engaged the city on the task of creating a roadmap to zero carbon emissions in the buildings sector. The environmental justice organization Verde had already been on the city’s radar when the Zero Cities team recommended them as a community partner. Verde convened a coalition of BIPOC organizations called the Climate Justice Collaborative to help advise and steer the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. Verde brought residents together through convenings and participatory action research to define the problems they face and identify solutions, which eventually informed the city’s thinking on the intersections between anti- displacement and energy cost burden, as well as its zero-carbon policy roadmap. The work has become a model for the city of Portland to defer to community self-determination. It is using the experience to create a next-generation Climate Action Plan under the terms of community, as well as an ordinance on energy efficiency standards for rentals.

Community Choice Aggregator

The Local Clean Energy Alliance (LCEA) spearheaded Ava Community Energy, a Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) with a commitment to investing into local clean energy development. The agency serves two counties in the East Bay Area and San Joaquin county. CCAs are formed by local city and county governments as nonprofit utilities that purchase energy for their jurisdiction, while leaving the big regional private utility (in this case, PG&E) to operate the electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure. CCAs have public meetings, where the public can engage with their local elected officials around their energy choices, giving local communities decision-making power on everything from where they want to get their energy from to how they want to spend their local development business plan budget ($25.5M in 2023-2024 fiscal year) and any surplus revenue they may accrue annually ($181.6M 2023-2024 fiscal year). Now that Ava Community Energy is well established, LCEA is working to make sure that Ava Community Energy invests in local clean energy programs and projects centered in equity to reach vulnerable communities. When the community pays Ava Community Energy for electricity, it should be reinvested back into the community to finance projects residents want, such as batteries to store excess energy, and away from projects that serve business interests or do not align with the community’s values, such as nuclear energy. LCEA is committed to a just transition that uses a democratized energy structure that is accessible to everyone, including renters, poor folks and everyone else who has historically been shut out from their energy choices.

Sacramento Racial Equity Council

The Sacramento Racial Equity Council (RE Council) is a multi- stakeholder body of community-based racial equity groups, organizations, and designated leaders who are deeply connected and in relationship with communities of color across the city. It is working collectively to guide the city of Sacramento in establishing a plan to equitably partner with and be accountable to communities of color by shifting the culture of government so that it becomes a producer of racial equity in its practices and policies. The RE Council guides the city to transform how it governs and works to achieve racial equity, defines the role of the RE Council so that it has decision-making power and mechanisms to hold the city accountable when needed, guides the city council on development of an effective community engagement/community partnership program as well as a racial equity assessment, and guides the city in the creation and implementation of a racial equity assessment tool. The Racial Equity Council works in close partnership with, takes leadership from, and is accountable to the Racial Equity Leadership Network, a network of representatives that constitute the various groups and organizations working for a shared, bold racial justice vision in Sacramento.

Reparations – Asheville

In July 2020, under pressure from a coalition of local groups, including Black activists who organized as Black AVL Demands, the Racial Justice Coalition of Asheville, and other organizations, the Asheville, North Carolina city council passed a resolution supporting community reparations for Black Asheville and committed to “establish a process within the next year to develop short, medium and long term recommendations to specifically address the creation of generational wealth and to boost economic mobility and opportunity in the black community.” Buncombe County followed suit with a similar resolution a few weeks later. In 2021, the city convened the Information Sharing & Truth Telling Speaker Series, bringing together local and national speakers to talk about how government policies and private practices have driven racial disparities in Asheville, and to facilitate “discussions with community members about past policies and practices, present trends and disparities and future initiatives.” In 2022, the city and Buncombe County convened an all-Black reparations commission to make recommendations to address local public policies that have driven racial disparities across housing, economic development, public health, education, public safety and justice. The city budgeted $2.1 million to go toward the reparations effort. (The first $365,000 went to pay consultants to facilitate the process; no money has yet been allocated to reparations). The County Commissioners and City Council have added $1,000,000 annually, in perpetuity, to future reparations budgets. The commission is tasked with issuing a report in 2023 offering concrete short, medium and long-term recommendations that the city and county could take to repair racial harms. Its success will hinge on how committed elected officials in both city and county governments are to following through on their reparations pledges, since the Reparations Commission has no implementation or enforcement power. It remains to be seen how effective this effort will be. Community members have come together to create the Reparations Stakeholder Authority of Asheville, a community-led reparations finance authority.

Reparations Fund – Evanston

Evanston, Illinois, is the first city in the nation to pay reparations to its Black residents. The initiative began in 2019 through the city council, and was then spurred on by the 2020 uprising. The reparations are an attempt to address specific and quantifiable harms that were a result of discriminatory housing zoning ordinances from 1919 through 1969. A housing program was prioritized as the first program to be funded by the Local Reparations Fund after the initial community feedback reported by the Equity and Empowerment Commission in 2019. The Restorative Housing Program focuses on preserving, stabilizing, and increasing Black homeownership. The first 16 recipients were awarded housing grants of $25,000 each, designed so that they did not have to pay taxes on the money. However, there was pushback from the community, and recipients can now decide how they want their grants – as tax free grants towards housing expenses, or taxable cash. Initially, the grants were to be funded through a new tax on marijuana sales, but revenue fell short of expectations, so the city has pivoted to a real estate transfer tax. The Reparations Committee, composed of both local politicians and community members, has shown a willingness to be flexible and responsive to the community, and the initiative, with a dedicated revenue stream, continues with 80 recipients in 2024.