Enacting democracy
This week I attended the 10-year anniversary celebration of Detroit’s Community Benefits Ordinance. More than 100 people gathered to reflect on the grassroots movement that culminated in a victory over billionaire developers in our city. The event was hosted by the Peoples Platform and members of the Equitable Detroit City Wide Community Benefit Coalition that led the initiative. The coalition was formed in 2013, in the midst of the darkest days of emergency management. Reforming as Rise Together Detroit they successfully mounted a campaign to pass a ballot initiative requiring a city ordinance requiring direct negotiations with community members by developers who received tax breaks or public subsidies.
In the long struggle for this ordinance much of the more visionary aspects were stripped away, but the basic principle held. People who live in an area impacted by large scale developments have a right to a share of the benefits from that development and to determine the nature of those benefits.
The initial proposal asserted that development projects over $3 million be subject to requirements for public investment; that residents, local businesses and community organizations be involved in direct negotiations; and that the agreements would be legally binding, enforced by withdrawal of public funds if corporations failed to meet their responsibilities. Each of these tenets was watered down by corporate interests with the help of compliant city council members. For example, the floor for required community negotiations was raised to $75 million. But the idea that the community should directly benefit from publicly subsidized development has been codified. In 2021 this ordinance was strengthened and over the last decade the community has continued to organize to influence specific development projects.
The Peoples Platform has documented some of the successes of the CBA process.
Nearly $9 million for affordable housing and home repairs
$500,000 in rental assistance grants
$4.7 million in neighborhood grants controlled by community groups.
$660,000 in student scholarships
$350,000 to arts and cultural programs
$520,000 to public schools
First of a kind community land trust as well as greenspaces and park improvements.
The idea that communities have a right to engage with and limit the choices of developers who are supported in part by public funds has a long history in this country. The development of racial capital began with community resources and wealth being extracted for private agricultural and industrial development. By the 1880’s, the need to limit this kind of extractive practice was widely understood, and over the next century, the US developed a series of laws to require direct citizen engagement in corporate decision-making.
Many of these efforts were designed specifically to counter the effects of racism and structural inequality. For example, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 requires financial institutions to give credit to urban communities, the US Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration is required to assist in providing federal money to poor agricultural areas, and the Environmental Protection Agency has a robust requirement for community engagement.
The Detroit Community Benefits Agreement drew on this heritage and helped spur widespread municipal actions of a similar character. Today, nearly half the cities in the US have some sort of community benefit process.
The tenacity and continued reinvigoration of the CBA process in Detroit offer insight into the unfolding struggles around Data Centers across our state and around the nation. Working together with clear and concrete goals, we the people are able to limit corporate power, to define what is best for our communities, and to engage the force of law to ensure our own protection. We are able to imagine different forms of development, based on principles beyond profits, to consider what is best for our people and our planet.
We have both the right and the responsibility to establish collective decisions over the choices made by “private” capital. Direct, collective actions are essential now to stop destructive developments. In the process, we are reinventing a new kind of democracy.