Penn is a senior lecturer and director of community practice at Tufts University’s Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning. With Sarah Jimenez, he wrote the 2017 report “Solidarity Rising in Massachusetts: How a Solidarity Economy Movement is Emerging in Lower-Income Communities of Color.”
Capitalism Is Not the Only Choice
To escape this “capitalocentrism,” we need to broaden the definition of economy beyond capitalism. What if, instead, economy is all the ways that we meet our material needs and care for each other? And what if it’s not a singular thing? Then we would see that beneath the official capitalist economy are all sorts of thriving non-capitalist economies, where there may not be a profit motive or market exchange.
November 15, 2017
Land Trusts Offer Houses That People With Lower Incomes Can Afford—And a Stepping Stone to Lasting Wealth
Community land trusts diversify our concepts of property ownership.
September 21, 2015
Land, Co-ops, Compost: A Local Food Economy Emerges in Boston’s Poorest Neighborhoods
From a community land trust that preserves land for growing, to kitchens and retailers who buy and sell locally grown food, to a new waste management co-op that will return compost to the land, a crop of new businesses and nonprofits are building an integrated food economy.
November 11, 2014