This book’s unyielding focus on community wealth building is provocative and timely. The strategies offered here are actionable at multiple layers of our republic and are simultaneously practical and profound. This is a necessary antidote to the growing disparities that divide our country, erode our democracy and impair the potential of individuals and communities.

— Bruce Katz, Founding Director, Nowak Metro Finance Lab, Drexel University 

The aspiration of our founders was to form a more perfect union, based on a simple but profound idea that we all come to the table of democracy as equals and have the right to share its greatest gift of freedom. From our nation’s founding, though, we have been divided by design.  Melody Barnes, Thad Williamson and Corey D. B. Walker persuasively push us to consider how we could start anew to rebuild trust in our institutions and finally deal with America’s deep-seated racial challenges.  “Community wealth building” is an intriguing concept worth exploring to return power to the people and address racial equity once and for all. 

— Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, Founder, E Pluribus Unum Fund

How do we address housing, community development, environmental pollution, public education, crime, and other issues facing U.S. cities?  Inspired by “community wealth building” taking place in Richmond, Virginia, the editors and contributors of this path-breaking volume explore the theoretical and empirical realities of 21st century American democracy.  To make democracy really work we need creative approaches, fresh ideas, and new voices.  Melody Barnes, Corey D. B. Walker, and Thad Williamson have gathered in one volume a rich collection of essays covering social movements, racial justice, voting and ballot access, leadership capacity, and more.  Increased political polarization and widening economic inequality have many Americans asking if democratic reform is possible.  This welcomed and remarkable volume highlights “community wealth building” as a policy paradigm that could provide some answers. This is an important book for anyone interested in the possibilities of making democracy work for everyone in the United States.

— Marion Orr, Frederick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science Brown University, Editor,
Transforming the City: Community Organizing and the Challenge of Political Change  

At a time of partisan strife and political impasse, Melody C. Barnes, Corey D. B. Walker, Thad Williamson, and colleagues offer a promising path toward democratic renewal.  The “community wealth building” approach they propose starts from the ground up, in local communities, to promote racial justice, economic development, and civic empowerment.  This volume gives us a hopeful yet practical vision of active citizenship that can help redeem the promise of democracy.”

— Michael J. Sandel, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government, Harvard University
Author of The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? 

I underlined, asterisked, and cheered at almost every page of Community Wealth Building and the Reconstruction of American Democracy: Can We Make American Democracy Work? It is a book and a practice that could not be more timely or essential for what America and every community within it needs right now. Finally, a framework that combines elements of New Deal liberalism with federalism and localism, recognizing that only at the community level can Americans achieve the inclusion and participation we need to rebuild trust, democracy, and lasting prosperity for all.

— Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America

We don’t need to wait for overturning capitalism and the racial injustice it inflicts. We don’t need to argue for a Black Capitalism that relied on a Neo-colonial critique. Instead, real change to combat the racial inequities of contemporary American capitalism is possible right now starting at the local level. This volume edited by Melody Barnes, Corey D. B. Walker and Thad Williamson brings together a strong group of scholars who provide insightful theoretical perspectives and pertinent empirical information, illuminating how the community wealth building approach can show us how racial progress is indeed possible and achievable. Moving well beyond the despair that can overwhelm us today, this volume provides much needed hope in dark times.

— Sanford Schram, co-author of Hard White: The Mainstreaming of Racism in American Politics