New Economy Coalition

NEC and many of its coalition members advocate for the “new economy movement,” a left-wing political-economic philosophy based on redistribution, environmentalism, and social justice.

NEC has a 1 out of 4 star rating at Charity Navigator, mostly due to a lack of financial and governing transparency. ²

History

In 1980, Robert Swann and Susan Witt founded the E.F. Schumacher Society to preserve economist E.F. Schumacher’s writings and promote left-wing economic theories based around localized self-sufficiency. The organization was renamed the Schumacher Center for a New Economics in 2012. ³

In 1986, a group of British “environmentalists, economic justice activists, and heterodox economists” founded the New Economics Foundation to challenge the free-market economics associated with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. ³

In 2008, after the financial crisis, the leadership of the E.F. Schumacher Society and New Economics Foundation created a separate organization, the New Economics Institute. In the same year, the New Economy Network was founded separately but on the same “new economy” ideological basis. Both organizations were active in the Occupy Wall Street movement. ³

In 2012, the leaderships of the New Economics Institute and New Economy Network met at the New Economy Conference at Barnard College. The two organizations merged into the New Economy Coalition. ³

In 2014, the New Economy Coalition held its first annual convention, CommonBound: Moving Together Toward a New Economy, for its coalition members and over 700 allied organizations. ³

New Economy Movement

New Economy Coalition “exists to support” what it calls the “new economy movement,” a left-wing political, economic, and sociological philosophy. ⁴

“Justice” is conceived as combatting “racism, imperialism, classicism, patriarchy, and other systems of oppression.” “Sustainability” refers to an economic system based on environmentalism. “Democracy” refers to a highly redistributive economic system. ⁴

Policies

The new economy movement supports the conversion of traditional corporate structures to worker-owned co-ops. To that end, the NEC promotes the creation of a Federal Office of Broad-based Worker Ownership in the National Economic Council to finance and research government-sponsored training programs to educate workers to take on the responsibilities of business operations. ⁵

The movement supports a major expansion of government-provided low-income housing and to convert a significant portion of current government-owned land to low-income housing. NEC promotes the conversion of current low-income housing to democratically controlled co-ops where tenants vote on management responsibilities. The NEC also supports the seizure of unoccupied private housing for redistribution to low-income individuals at below-market rates. ⁶

The new economy movement supports the dismantling and reorganization of the current financial system. NEC promotes breaking up big banks, reinstituting regulations separating depository banks from investment banks, providing government subsidies for more local financial institutions, and creating a formal mechanism for nationalizing the banking industry during financial crises. ⁷

The movement supports reorganizing the economy around combatting climate change. The NEC promotes extensive environmentalist energy subsidies, fossil fuel divestment, nationalization of the energy industry, and the establishment of local energy production co-ops. ⁸

The NEC also supports modern monetary theory (MMT), an economic hypothesis that claims that governments can infinitely finance deficit spending by printing money with no adverse effects on the economy. ⁹

Activities

New Economy Coalition runs programs that support its coalition members through conferences, education, and grantmaking. ¹⁰

Movement Support Program

NEC’s Movement Support Program is its primary grant disbursement program. From 2014-2019, the NEC gave $40,000-$55,000 to coalition members and campus organizations. ¹¹

New Economies Reporting Project

NEC’s New Economies Reporting Project provides paid instruction to journalists on radical-left economic policies like universal basic income, Medicare for all, and the Green New Deal. ¹²

Movement Voices

NEC’s Movement Voices trains activists working for coalition members for leadership positions. In 2018, the Movement Voices fellows came from:¹³

• Demos
• Democracy at Work Institute
• Center for Popular Economics
• Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive
• Resource Generation
• Cooperation Buffalo
• New Economy Project
• Boston Ujima Project
• Union Cab Cooperative
• Higher Purpose Co.

#NowWeOwn

NEC’s #NowWeOwn is a collection of credit unions and land trusts operated on the coalition-aligned radical-left principles. ¹⁴

Opposition to Nuclear Energy

In December 2021, the New Economy Coalition was one of more than 100 groups co-signed an open letter opposing the nuclear power production tax credits offered in HR 5376, the House of Representatives draft of the Build Back Better Act. The groups identified nuclear power as a one of several “unproven and unnecessary technologies” and “harmful energy sources” that “would extend demand for fossil fuels.” ¹⁵

Nuclear power plants produce no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, and as of 2021 accounted for 20 percent of American electricity production—the largest source of zero carbon electricity in the United States. ¹⁶  An October 2018 proposal from The Nature Conservancy noted that zero-carbon nuclear plants produced 7.8 percent of total world energy output and recommended reducing carbon emissions by increasing nuclear capacity to 33 percent of total world energy output. ¹⁷

Board Members

New Economy Coalition’s board includes members from numerous left-of-center and left-wing nonprofits which are part of the NEC’s coalition. Harper Bishop is the deputy director of movement building at People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH), a Buffalo, New York-based housing and environmentalism activist organization. Jordan Estavao is a senior strategist of People’s Action, the lobbying arm of the People’s Action Institute, an aggressive advocate of left-wing economic policies. Julia Ho is the founder of Solidarity Economy St. Louis, a local radical-left group. Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan is a staff-collective member of Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project, and launched the Black Liberation and Land Initiative projects for the BlackOut Collective. Kate Poole is the co-founder of Chordata Capital, an investment fund that invests based on social justice principles, and she’s a former employee of the Schumacher Center for New Economics. Aaron Tanaka is the co-founder of the Boston Workers Alliance, and the Boston Impact Initiative, a social justice-based investment fund. Chris Tittle is the director of organization resilience at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, an Oakland-based nonprofit law firm for low-income communities. ¹⁸

Funding

In 2018, the New Economy Coalition received $1,357,558 in grants and donations. ¹⁹ It received $934,200 from foundations, $233,630 in individual gifts, and $49,404 in community and corporate donations.

The NEC receives funding from numerous left-of-center nonprofits, including:²⁰

• Proteus Fund
• Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation
• Corporate Accountability International
• Germeshausen Foundation
• New England Grassroots Environment Fund
• Overbrook Foundation
• Park Foundation
• Trillium Asset Management
• Threshold Foundation
• Cloud Mountain Foundation²¹
• Elias Foundation²²