Dorothy's Place

About two years ago, I attended a conference with the intriguing title “Neighborhood Economics.” The event turned out to be a national meetup of practitioners, funders, and advocates, among them the three folks I interviewed for this conversation. Best of all, over the three days, I met three of the most innovative thinker-activists in the solidarity movement. I’ve brought them together here for a conversation about where their work is going lately. Michael Shuman is the publisher of the Main Street Journal and a well-known advocate for investing in local economies, Stephanie Swepson Twitty is the president and CEO of Eagle Market Streets Community Development Corporation in Ashville NC, and Kevin Jones is a co-founder of SOCAP and Neighborhood Economics. They share a passion for democratizing an area many activists tend to ignore as a power source: finance and investing. In our conversation, you’ll hear about this great work of devising ways to bring catalytic capital down to the grassroots level in order t