Transcript from the Community Self-Determination Symposium
Transcript from the Community Self-Determination Symposium
December 12, 1968
Senator Gaylord Nelson, Gar Alperovitz, John McLaughry, Senator Charles Percy, Minister Franklin Florence, Edward Finn, Senator Jacob Javits, William Hudgins, Manuel Sanchez-Rivera, Senator Fred Harris, Alex Mercure, Bruce Rozet, and Roy Innis
In the early 1960s, high levels of entrenched poverty were plaguing many communities in the US – both urban and rural. The combination of extreme economic inequality and continued racial discrimination and oppression had turned neighborhoods and whole cities into veritable tinderboxes just waiting to explode. Beginning in 1964, these started to catch fire, with violent urban uprisings occurring in dozens of cities over the next several years – resulting in widespread loss of life and destruction of property.
In response, policymakers and activists alike began to focus on the interconnected problems affecting communities and how best to address them. Like with all socio-economic challenges, this involved a “stew” of competing ideas, proposals, and visions. One of these was “community self-determination,” which had developed traction within some parts of the Civil Rights Movement, and which drew on the long history of experimentation with cooperatives, mutualism, and self-sufficiency in many parts of the US (especially in Black communities).
In 1968, proponents of community self-determination — including The Democracy Collaborative’s co-founder Gar Alperovitz — came together to create an innovative piece of federal legislation called the “Community Self-Determination Act” (CSDA). While not specifically using the term, the CSDA is one of the earliest attempts to implement Community Wealth Building (CWB) through public policy anywhere in the world.
The CSDA called for the creation of community-controlled organizations that would operate significant-scale businesses and use the proceeds to support local social services. Additionally, it envisioned local “Community Development Banks” that would provide capital to the community corporations as well as tax credits to private companies that would locate facilities in local communities and eventually transfer ownership to the community corporation. Another key feature of the CSDA was a specific focus on community control and democratic governance of these institutions.
In December 1968, architects and supporters of the CSDA came together at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. for a symposium to discuss the legislation. In his remarks to the gathering, Alperovitz stressed that the “critical impulse” for the CSDA came from the Congress for Racial Equity (CORE), which at the time was one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the country. After organizing the Freedom Rides and other efforts related to desegregation in the early 1960s, CORE had pivoted towards local economic development as the key to overcoming racial oppression and injustice. The organization would now focus on “rent strikes, urban renewal projects, the formation of cooperatives by ghetto residents and participation in local political activities”, its Executive Director James Farmer stated in 1964.1
Around the time the CSDA was being developed, CORE was experimenting with community self-determination and economic self-sufficiency in several cities. This included Cleveland, Ohio where they created CORENCO, an integrated development model consisting of community owned businesses and housing, worker ownership and participation, job training, and economic planning.2 Coincidently, 40 years later Cleveland would become the site of one of the first explicit CWB pilot projects – the Evergreen Cooperatives.
The transcript of the Community Self-Determination symposium is notable not only because it contains a detailed discussion of one of the first ever pieces of CWB legislation, but also because it demonstrates what can become possible when people realize and accept that traditional approaches no longer meet the scale of the problem they face.
While radical in its structural implications, the CSDA made sense to people from across the ideological and political spectrum. It was sponsored by a bipartisan group of more than 30 Senators and 50 Congresspeople. One of its chief architects, John McClaughry, was a Republican who went on to serve in the Vermont House and Senate for decades; another, Gar Alperovitz, was a former staffer to some of the most progressive members of Congress. CORE was, at the time, ideologically aligned with Black Nationalism. And the symposium included several supporters from the business community.
This lesson remains relevant today. In the more than 50 years since the CSDA failed in Congress (it was ultimately never brought up for a vote), billions of dollars have been “invested” in local communities through an array of market-based economic development schemes – such as New Markets Tax Credits and Opportunity Zones. Billions more have been spent on traditional welfare and other anti-poverty programs. Yet, many US communities still suffer from deeply entrenched poverty and economic inequality. And this lack of economic opportunity, combined with ongoing racial discrimination and injustice, continues to lead to periodic uprisings – like those that occurred in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd.
In short, just like in 1968 there is a growing understanding that the traditional approach to economic development is not, and cannot, lead to genuinely equitable, sustainable, and prosperous local communities. As it was back then, the alternative is an approach rooted in community self-determination in which local people take ownership and control of both their assets and their economic destiny. We call this community wealth building, and we are working every day to support communities that are implementing it.
Thomas Hanna
September 30, 2026
Notes
F. Clines, ‘Core plans role in everyday life will stress more political and social activity’, The New York Times (24 November 1964), available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/24/archives/core-plans-role-in-everyday-life-will-stress-more-political-and.html (accessed 19 December 2025).
N. Frazier, ‘The return of Black political power: How 1970s history can guide new Black mayors toward a radical city’, Truthout (27 July 2017), available at: https://truthout.org/articles/the-return-of-black-political-power-how-1970s-history-can-guide-new-black-mayors-toward-a-radical-city/ (accessed 19 December 2025).