Community economic development as progressive politics: toward a grassroots movement for economic justice.

• Author: Cummings, Scott L.

INTRODUCTION

During the unprecedented surge of 1990s prosperity, community economic development (CED) emerged as the dominant approach to poverty alleviation, touted by politicians as a market-based alternative to outdated welfare policies and championed by civil rights leaders as a critical link to economic equality. (1) At a time of dizzying wealth accumulation, declining welfare rolls, and burgeoning budget surpluses, a consensus formed around the idea that market-based CED programs were necessary to revitalize the lingering pockets of poverty that blotted an otherwise vibrant economic landscape. Espoused by advocates of different ideological stripes, (2) the simple logic of market-based CED--that increasing for-profit initiatives in geographically discrete low-income neighborhoods could produce economic transformation (3) and community empowerment (4)--became an antipoverty axiom.

Over the past decade, the ascendance of market-based CED has fundamentally shaped the development of social policy, community-based practice, and legal advocacy. (5) At the national policy level, a private sector approach has defined the federal government's response to poverty issues, as support programs have yielded to market-based antipoverty initiatives, such as the Empowerment Zone Program and the New Markets Tax Credit. This federal agenda has been augmented by state and local efforts to adopt market-based programs to stimulate investment and business activity in low-income neighborhoods. (6)

Against this policy backdrop, CED professionals working to implement revitalization programs on the ground have also embraced a private sector model, reconfiguring low-income communities as underutilized markets with rich economic opportunities for businesses. (7) According to this model, effective CED involves identifying the competitive advantages of conducting business in inner city areas (8) and structuring the proper incentives to lure reluctant enterprises into neglected markets. (9) Advocates of this approach have therefore suggested that distressed communities revalue and promote indigenous assets such as public transportation and proximity to existing commercial centers. (10) Once these assets are identified and properly packaged for outside investors, (11) private sector capital can be channeled to poor neighborhoods through innovative financial tools, (12) bringing with it stable jobs and needed services. (13)

In response to this privatization of social policy and community action, poverty lawyers have increasingly incorporated market techniques into their antipoverty arsenals, altering the terrain of legal services delivery. In an effort to improve the physical infrastructure and strengthen the economic fabric of distressed communities, practitioners have provided transactional legal assistance in the areas of real estate, tax, and corporate law to community-based organizations engaged in neighborhood revitalization initiatives. (14) CED legal programs have created jobs for the poor through microenterprise and commercial development, (15) increased the stock of affordable housing units through tax credit syndication, (16) and expanded access to capital through the development of community-based financial institutions. (17) As a measure of its appeal, CED legal practice has attracted financial support from government agencies and private foundations, (18) resulting in the development of a significant number of CED legal services programs. (19)

However, the current consensus in favor of market-based CED obscures deep historical divisions about the appropriate relationship between market mechanisms and social change. In the United States, the roots of market-based CED can be traced to the rise of post-Reconstruction economic nationalism, (20) which focused on developing an independent African American economic base through the enhancement of job skills and the creation of black-owned businesses. (21) Proponents of this view sought to achieve economic gains for African Americans by emphasizing black market participation in conjunction with a strategy of political accommodation. (22)

Another version of antipoverty advocacy emerged from the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, one that, in contrast to the nationalist paradigm, attempted to use grassroots mobilization and political action to redress poverty. Groups such as the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) drew upon the rich tradition of civil rights protest to develop an alternative to market-based CED that relied on community organizing to redistribute resources to economically disadvantaged communities. (23) Instead of promoting business expansion in distressed neighborhoods, their approach focused on enlisting the political power of community-based coalitions of residents, labor union members, clergy, and other activists to challenge economic inequality and corporate dominance. (24) This movement marked a break with previous antipoverty efforts--signaling a shift from localized market strategies for economic development to broad-based political action for economic justice--and planted the seeds for an alternative vision of CED.

However, the momentum behind a large-scale movement for economic justice quickly dissipated. The conservative revival of the 1980s and the neoliberal policies of the 1990s ushered in a pro-business political consensus (25) that resulted in welfare reform, (26) attacks on affirmative action, (27) and cutbacks in traditional antipoverty programs. (28) This political shift placed economic justice activists in a defensive posture and elevated the importance of market-based reform strategies. During the same period, progressive scholars mounted a postmodern critique of conventional politics and traditional poverty law advocacy that de-emphasized large-scale social movements and privileged localized micropolitical struggle. (29) By the close of the 1990s, the changing political and intellectual environment had eroded economic justice activism. Market-based CED, which appealed both to conservative proponents of free market politics and progressive advocates of local empowerment, emerged at the forefront of social change efforts.

Yet even as the 1990s brought a period of market exuberance, economic justice activism continued to percolate, growing stronger by the decade's end. Spurred by the intransigence of poverty in the New Economy, (30) a core of progressive scholars and advocates have become increasingly critical of the apolitical, free market approach to CED. (31) In particular, they have questioned the efficacy of business development strategies that fail to address larger economic and political forces, (32) highlighting the role of market-based CED in facilitating the public financing of low-wage, dead-end jobs. (33) These critiques have influenced CED legal scholars, who have recently focused on the deficiencies of CED's traditional commitment to business development and local revitalization. (34) At the grassroots level, CED lawyers, in conjunction with their organizing counterparts, have begun to change the contours of CED advocacy by applying new techniques honed in reaction to the market approach.

Drawing upon this body of critical scholarship and oppositional practice, this Article outlines a new model of CED, one that reconnects CED to its politically activist roots and promotes economic justice over market expansion. It argues that that poverty lawyers must move away from the current emphasis on injecting capital into geographically discrete, racially homogenous communities, and instead embrace a politically engaged conception of CED that leverages the strength of multiracial coalitions to create greater equity for vulnerable workers. Under this new approach, CED is reconceptualized as a progressive political strategy that fuses legal advocacy and grassroots organizing to achieve broad-based economic reform. This model of CED is not a rejection of current practice; to the contrary, it retains a commitment to the central goal of market-based CED--better economic opportunities for the poor--while continuing to utilize the transactional skills familiar to CED practitioners. Furthermore, under this approach, market-based techniques are not abandoned; rather, they are subordinated to the dictates of a broader vision of economic justice.

Part I of this Article traces the historical development of CED as an antipoverty strategy and analyzes the theoretical foundations of market-based CED. Part II offers a critique of market-based CED, arguing that it inadequately addresses poverty, privileges market expansion over political reform, de-emphasizes the need for broad structural change, and impedes the formation of cross-racial alliances. Part III sets forth an agenda for reclaiming CED as progressive political action, highlighting how innovative practitioners are forging a new paradigm of CED by deploying transactional lawyering to support living wage campaigns, worker ownership drives, and organizing-based jobs initiatives.

1. ECONOMIC NATIONALISM, GRASSROOTS ORGANIZING, AND MARKET ACCOMMODATION: THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

   The history of progressive politics in the United States has reflected the dynamic tension between market-oriented and politically activist approaches to ameliorating poverty. Thus, the debate over the effectiveness of different types of CED strategies is deeply rooted in the history of indigenous movements by non-elite communities struggling to attain political, social, and economic parity. One of the dominant themes that emerge from a historical analysis of these movements is the recurrent effort to define the appropriate strategic relation between market reform and movement politics.

   The standard history of CED has omitted a discussion of this broader context. Instead, conventional analyses of the evolution of CED...