Imagining and building more equitable and democratic systems: lessons from Bay Area organizations

Abstract

America’s democratic system has been built atop politics of exclusion and oppression. While strides have been made in enfranchisement and inclusion, communities continue to be systematically marginalized, dispossessed and disempowered. Processes illuminate the often invisible purpose and values that underlie systems, but as this research discusses, an overemphasis on process as the problem and solution has limited the potential to create substantive change.

To build a true democracy requires both imagining and building alternative political and economic systems that rest on the premise of equity and collective power. Social movements are at the forefront of transforming oppressive systems, and marginalized communities in particular are often on the frontlines of the struggle for justice. Collective and cooperative organizations have emerged within and alongside movements as explicit infrastructures that both embody and support social change. They form to respond to unjust material conditions in their communities related to land, labor, wealth and housing, while simultaneously being embedded in sustained movements, coalition building and policy advocacy efforts to address the root cause of these injustices.

Through numerous conversations with organizations located in the San Francisco Bay Area, this research highlights how systems that foster shared power are not only imaginable, but are being built. In sharing learnings from these organizations, this research tells the story of their challenges and visions, their various approaches to enacting change, and how they are linked to broader networks of mobilization. As microcosms of a truer democracy, collectives and cooperatives have implications for reshaping the relationship between people and power, at the individual, organizational, and societal level. Ultimately, this thesis presents these models as a pathway for transitioning from an extractive to a regenerative economy, and from concentrated to collective power.