Solidarity Economy Day
by Dana Kawaoka-Chen
Welcome GIA Readers:
The following is a transcription from a communication sent to us in the year 2065, at a point in the future in which the Solidarity Economy has become the foundation of daily life in the United States.
It draws on the work of six movement partners featured in this series, imagining how their leadership—rooted in culture, cooperation, and community governance—helped transform our economic system over the decades.
While told as speculative fiction, the pathways described are real and available to us now. We invite you to read the six successive articles in this edition of the GIA Reader not only as reflections of present-day work, but as building blocks toward a shared, liberated future.
September 29, 2065
Hello Ancestors!
This early morning transmission (Forgive me for its glitchiness: I would have sent a holo*, a 3D virtual communication platform we commonly use these days, but your pre-2035 technology doesn’t support it) comes to you across forty years of imagination, deep democracy, and trust. It is September 29, 2065—our newest federal holiday, Solidarity Economy Day. Thanks to generations of reflective and responsive interdependence between communities, we spend this day commemorating the shift that happened when the United States’ primary economic system went from Capitalism to a Solidarity Economy.
…
If you are receiving this transmission before 2030, I know that you are living in a dark chapter of our lineage—facing a global rise in authoritarianism, genocide, wars, extreme climate disasters, and a regression of rights. This letter from the future is meant to give you hope about what is possible and share how your decisions led to the emergence of a new economic system and thriving world. I am calling to you from a future you helped create and want to remind you that possibility is not lost.
My note of caution though, Ancestor, is to please not mistake hope for ease. Your generation will need to make some hard decisions about who should own, govern, and steward resources at an individual and communal level. These decisions will require courage and the belief that what you experience now in the world can be different and so much better.
I am recording this transmission to you from a large community amphitheater. Music of different regional genres can be heard on the holos from across the country. Scenes of communities having picnics, barbecues, rooftop gatherings, and ceremonies in sacred spaces fill the stage in front of me. As a West Coaster, our regional celebrations will start later in the day. For now, I am excited to catch a portion of the East Coast celebrations before they move westward. As local programs commence, their holo enlarges to take center stage and we can see and hear their event. We begin in Kentucky…
Ancestral homelands of the Osage nation | Louisville, Kentucky – Russell: A Place of Promise (RPOP)
In Russell, a community made up of nine historically Black neighborhoods facing the risk of gentrification and displacement in the mid-2010s, neighbors rebuilt wealth and power block by block. RPOP didn’t just construct buildings—they constructed trust. They showed that community-led development rooted in history and culture could inspire networks across a state, and that a Solidarity Economy grows fastest when many organizations adapt shared practices to their own communities rather than chasing scale for its own sake. It emerged when funders organized among themselves to redirect dormant wealth from stock markets into projects that built the economic power and self-determination of frontline BIPOC communities.
Ancestral homelands of the Osage, Miami, Shawnee, Cherokee, Yuchi, Catawba, Miccosukee, Coushatta nations | Appalachia – Waymakers Collective
In the mountains of Central Appalachia, a region that was persistently overlooked by philanthropy, Waymakers turned democratic decision-making into the foundation for resource stewardship. By the 2030s, young inheritors sought out funds like Waymakers to whom they could transfer their accumulated wealth instead of creating legacy foundations that serve as tax shelters, accelerating a shift in how wealth was held and shared. With more capital accessible to cultural practitioners, Solidarity Economy practices were really able to flourish. Artists reflected and socialized how communities could thrive in different kinds of relationships with one another, which really resonated with folks who had been the most impacted by climate change and the extractive economy.
Ancestral homelands of the Lenni-Lenape nation | Philadelphia – Kensington Corridor Trust (KCT)
Through a vision of decommodifying real estate and reclaiming control over a once-flourishing commercial corridor in North Philly, KCT proved that collective ownership of land and housing could stabilize whole neighborhoods. When disaster capitalism threatened to hollow out working-class and BIPOC communities, KCT offered a counter-model: development without displacement, mutual aid embedded in governance, and residents always present and engaged at the decision-making table. Initially, nearby urban communities began to collaborate with the work taking place in Philadelphia as a way to learn their practices. Over time, these relationships grew into vibrant trans-local networks across New England.
Ancestral homelands of the Jumanos, Mescalero Apache, Pueblos, and Lipan Apache nations | New Mexico – Moonsoon Fund
Created and led by Native women, the Moonsoon Fund redefined investment as relationship. They built economies around reciprocity—where capital moved at the speed of trust and projects were measured by their ability to nourish both land and people. Eventually, capital began to move at scale. Wealth that had long been locked in profit-driven markets was divested and redirected—thanks to persistent funder organizing—into community-led and -owned projects like those Moonsoon invested in. Each act of redistribution helped build a system where the people could lead, and where economic transformation was measured not by scale, but by depth.
Ancestral homelands of the Anishinabewaki and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ nations | Duluth, Minnesota – American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO)
AICHO transformed old, abandoned structures into homes, gardens, and enterprises that kept resources circulating within the community. They reminded us all that Indigenous leadership had been practicing regenerative economics for generations, modeling circular systems long before the term became policy. And that they continue to practice and lead the way today.
Ancestral homelands of the Osage, Miami, Shawnee, Cherokee, Yuchi, Catawba, Miccosukee, Coushatta nations | Appalachia – Waymakers Collective
Ancestral homelands of the Yakama, Okanagan, Chelan, and Walla Walla nations | Washington State – The Temple of Two Waters (T2W)
T2W became a sanctuary for QTBIPOC communities to rest, dream, and organize. In a time when land and nature had been fenced off from so many, it offered free access, safe harbor, and space for creative resistance—especially in the wake of climate disasters. Its gatherings seeded alliances that still guide us now.
“Grandma, I brought you some food. I thought it might be easier than having you navigate the food line in your personal transportation device.” (A note to Ancestors reading this transmission before 2030, personal transportation devices replaced wheelchairs in 2031.) As I sit in the community amphitheater, my grandchild hands me a plate filled with food made by a local cooperative, who sources their ingredients from local farms. Of course, everything is delicious.
As we eat together, I ask them, “What celebration were you most excited to see?”
“The Temple of Two Waters in Washington,” they say.
“Oh, why is that?”
In between bites of food and with a big grin, my grandchild responds, “They’ve been a sanctuary for local, regional, and national QTBIPOC communities as a venue for rest, retreat, creativity, gathering, and healing. Now they’re a hub for movement gathering and building that responds to emergent community needs - especially in times of disaster. After our relatives lost their homes to fires in California, I feel called to build with and learn from their network of artists and organizers.”
Their expression of excitement makes me smile. As their grandparent, I rest easier knowing that queer and trans people are now protected under both state and federal laws. To know that young people feel called to organize from a place of what they want to create in the world together, versus dismantling oppressive systems, makes me worry less about the world that their generation is inheriting.
While cryopreservation techniques are now popular with some of my generation, I’ve opted to let my body age naturally; I know that this lifetime of mine is close to sunsetting. I am sending you and other ancestors a transmission on this historic and auspicious day to offer you a glimpse into the future. (Honestly, of all the technology that we’ve developed in the 2050s, the coolest to me is that ability to transmit messages like this across time and space.)
Our collective ability to move from systems of extraction and exploitation to cooperation and care happened over time. The new economy didn’t happen overnight; it began with a few organizations in each community, whose practices spread to other organizations and communities because they were more sustainable, culturally relevant, and kept the resources made from the labor of the community internal. Once private philanthropies began to fully resource communities to own, govern, and steward resources, including land, real estate, and capital, locally controlled democratic loan funds became resource stewards in the proliferation of Solidarity Economy projects. This prompted the adoption of Solidarity Economy practices by more organizations in more neighborhoods, which created circular economies in small cities. Organizations connected by shared work led to the growth of translocal networks, which facilitated the growth of Solidarity Economies across larger geographies. Over time, investors divested from businesses and organizations that operated in a Capitalist model. The younger generations entering the workforce had no interest in taking contingent jobs when they could be a worker-owner of a local cooperative or be a part of a worker self-directed nonprofit organization. The growth of Solidarity Economies in the United States really took off when progressive federal legislation started to mirror policies in Ecuador and Bolivia, whose constitutions include Social and Solidarity Economy.
Ancestor, I invite you to learn about the amazing collectives that hosted Solidarity Economy Day celebrations in 2065, as all of them existed pre-2030. They need your courage and support to resource their efforts. I know you can do it!
From the future with love, and toward a Solidarity Economy,
Dana Kawaoka-Chen, your descendant
Dana Kawaoka-Chen, she/her, is Co-Executive Director of Justice Funders, where she uses her untethered imagination to dream of worlds yet to exist by being a part of a democratically-led Worker Self-Directed Nonprofit that partners and guides philanthropy to redistribute wealth, democratize power, and shift economic control to community. She lives on unceded Ohlone Territory in the San Francisco Bay Area.
This article of the GIA Reader is part of The Art of Redistribution: Culture in a Solidarity Economy, guest edited and curated by Justice Funders. The next articles — “If you trust us to do so”: A conversation on shifting power and capital to artists with The Waymakers Collective; Redefining Philanthropy Standards as Choices; Investing in People & Places: Arts, Storytelling, and Culture Work as the Foundation for Investment without Displacement; Rematriating the Economy: The Moonsoon Fund and the Power of Indigenous Women Reclaiming Capital on Their Own Terms; Dreaming Freedom, Finding Home; and The Act of Dreaming: Indigenous Arts & Building Values-Based Economy — will be published throughout the remainder of the year.