Care for the People

Join us for our next session: Abolitionist Care Ethics

The Austin and Los Angeles uprisings against ICE, the national guard, and police are exemplary of the abolitionist practices we can engage with to build the just world we require. We encourage you to join our next session of ‘Care for the People’ with Bridgette Simpson, for a powerful reflection on individual freedom and collective liberation. Together, we’ll learn more about the entangled roots of state-sanctioned violence and how we can further embody abolitionist care ethics. 

Care for the People is an intimate space for the New Economy Coalition network to explore and ground in lessons from historical and living movements. In these sessions, changemakers and organizers become teachers for a day, supporting participants in shaping creative collective solidarity. Each participant will walk away with a resource list with material from the discussion and related topics.

It is blatantly clear that we have to rely on each other with deeper and more radical care after years of organized abandonment from the state and resource hoarding institutions. This series highlights concrete ideas, strategies, and practices for creating solidarity and conditions where care is centralized.

If we are to resist policies of violence and economies of war, what are our alternatives? How can we expand our ideas? How can we encourage collective consciousness and reject apathy and individualism?

Let’s answer these questions together.

We Care for Us

Care is political and an expression of economics. However, collective care disrupts our dependency on exploitative and extractive institutions– it reminds us of our humanity and power.  Therefore, care is a prerequisite for solidarity.

One of the key impacts of fascism is alienation, and we believe care-making and caretaking are detrimental counterforces. When we take a more radical approach to community care, we find dependable strategies for sovereignty, self-determination, communal health, safety, and building power.

Download this list for multi-media explorations from decolonial feminist, disabled, Black, Indigenous, and radical scholars and organizers. Their work sharpens our strategies around care work and tangible resources to reshape organizational culture and policies. There’s no other way to build a world where we prioritize meeting the needs of the people.

 Early Lessons from the Wellness Fund

On May 21st, we launched the Wellness Fund pilot to support members and former grantees who’ve been impacted by structural anti-Blackness. We created this offering to honor the folks who submit their life and legacy to movement and community building… and often go without ‘benefits’ like healthcare and savings. From our own lived experience and the research, we knew that we’d receive immediate applications for a breadth of issues, from covering the financial cost of medical racism and political repression to parenthood. We didn’t, however, anticipate the demographic trends we’d see. Just one week after launching, 10 out of 13 applications were from Black queer femmes. Sixty percent of these individuals are also justice-impacted. These numbers mirror other economic statistics we’ve all become unconsentingly familiar with, but we should not become desensitized to who among us suffers the most. This Pride and Abolition Month, we challenge organizations with an annual operating budget over $1 million and individual donors to either donate to our Wellness Fund or increase their regular giving to LGBTQIA+ people. This fund is an act of care and gratitude, so we are committed to swiftly reviewing and paying eligible applicants. Our thank yous will be cut short if individual donors like you cannot chip in to keep it going. Consider making a one-time donation to the Wellness Fund so we can keep making weekly gifts up to the end of the year as planned. 

 Apply to be Our New Communications Director

We are hiring a Communications Director!! We’re looking for a tech-savvy, collaborative, well-experienced, and strategic communications worker with an organizing background in the solidarity economy movement or related communities. We envision a worker with plenty of tools on their belt to develop and refine our communications infrastructure and strategies. Our ideal candidate is someone who can collaboratively lead communications projects, demonstrate knowledge of digital trends and engagement analytics, and manage various calendars and workflows.  This full-time, remote position (32 hours/week) is central to leading our strategic communications work. NEC uses a staff-affirmed transparent compensation calculator to determine exact rates. Salaries are non-negotiable and are calculated from the same base rate for all positions, with adjustments upward for factors like geographic location. Most salaries currently range between $75,000 and $90,000 a year. We also offer a generous benefits and PTO package, including fully paid health insurance and an automatic 3% 401(k) employer contribution. Applications are due by July 8, 2025, at 11:59 PM ET.

 Rooted in Culture, Rising Together

It’s official! This year’s Annual Member Meeting is from August 26 to August 28th, on Zoom and Gather.  We are prepared to host our members, our members’ members, workshop hosts, performers, and network partners. We also have a schedule of in-person and virtual events open to newsletter readers (like you) all through the Labor Day weekend. We landed on the theme ‘Rooted In Culture, Rising Together’ to investigate how our multi-racial and intersectional solidarity economy movement can struggle and co-govern together in 2025 and beyond. Our commitments to anti-racism and North Star leadership are an unwavering practice that’s generated abundant camaraderie and unrelenting rigor. Join us for 3+ days capturing lessons, celebrations, co-governance, workshops, roundtables, relationship building opportunities, and fun! Stay tuned for more information on how to join or host the associated events.

Black and Indigenous Land Sovereignty

You are invited to join our newest working group, Black and Indigenous Land Sovereignty. This working group is for BIPOC folks in the solidarity economy on a mission for Black and Indigenous land sovereignty, land back, and reparations. While we do not yet know the formal shape of this group, we know that it has come time to gather together and collaborate on personal learnings, share knowledge of financial and legal resources, and discuss ideological and political underpinnings to land land-based work and movements. We also know and believe that to do any of that well, we must engage in cultural shares, providing space for care, joy, and grief related to land (in)justice. 

If you are interested in learning and sharing more, you are invited to join our interest meetings on:

Thursday, June 16th 1:30-2:30 PT / 2:30-3:30 MT / 3:30-4:30 CT / 4:30 – 5:30 ET

Monday, July 14th 11-12 PT / 12-1 MT / 1-2 CT / 2-3 ET

Summer Office Closure

NEC is closed for the summer from June 19, 2025, to July 6, 2025. We will return to the office on July 7, 2025, and will do our best to reply to your emails to info@nec.palantetech.coop in a timely fashion.