Ep. 2: Restorative Economics with Nwamaka Agbo
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Your co-host Nikishka Iyengar talks with Nwamaka Agbo about her framework: Restorative Economics. They discuss how our modern capitalist economy has its roots in slavery, and how the debate between reform vs. abolition that relates to the prison industrial complex also applies to capitalism as a whole.
Highlights
• Nwamaka shares her journey into this work of repair
• Lessons and insights for the field of social impact and impact investing
• Ways listeners might be able to begin to engage with deeper questions around the work of repair
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Nwamaka Agbo is the CEO of the Kataly Foundation and Managing Director of the Restorative Economies Fund (REF). In her roles, Nwamaka collaborates with the Kataly team to lead the foundation’s day-to-day operations, while holding the community-centered strategy and vision for the REF.
With a background in community organizing, electoral campaigns, policy and advocacy work on racial, social and environmental justice issues, Nwamaka is deeply committed to supporting projects that build resilient, healthy and self-determined communities rooted in shared prosperity.
Prior to her roles with Kataly, Nwamaka built an independent consulting practice guided by her framework on Restorative Economics. As a consultant, she provided technical assistance and strategic guidance to community-owned and -governed community wealth building initiatives like Restore Oakland, Black Land & Power and others. Her work with these community-driven projects led her to providing trainings and advisory services to donors, foundations and impact investment firms including institutions like The San Francisco Foundation and RSF Social Finance.
Nwamaka has served as a fellow for the Center for Economic Democracy and the Movement Strategy Center. She proudly serves on the board of Thousand Currents, Restore Oakland, Inc., Resource Generation, and Movement Generation. Nwamaka is an advisor to the Equality Fund and Solidaire Network’s Black Liberation Pooled Fund.
She graduated from UC Davis with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and African American Studies and holds a Master’s of Public Administration specializing in Financial Management from San Francisco State University.
Nwamaka lives in Oakland with her husband, where she can be found geeking out on the latest sci-fi, Afrofuturism novels or cheering for the Golden State Warriors. She likes her bourbon neat and her sake chilled.
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RSF Social Finance & Just Economy Institute Fellowships
Kataly Foundation & Restorative Economies Fund
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy
The Power of Multi-Solving, TED Talk by Elizabeth Sawin
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1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones
A People’s Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics, Hadas Thier
Winners Take All, Anand Giridharadas
Decolonizing Wealth, Edgar Villanueva
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Nwamaka Agbo 0:00
When enslaved people used to run off the plantation up north for freedom, they were quite literally tracking the stars, right? They were looking up into a starry night with the hope that stars would lead them to freedom. And so that is the same way that we're asking people to -- even though we can't fully articulate what an abolitionist state looks like -- to understand that there are stars guiding us. And if we're willing to kind of trust in something that is more just, something that is rooted in our collective liberation, then we can all get there together.
Road to Repair Theme Song 0:41
You ready, we gettin' down to business. Investing in existence. Shifting from a system steeped in extraction, that steady sappin' our peoples and planet to cash in, slashing. Widening gaps in our access to land, wealth, peace, satisfaction. Imagine basing relations on more than transactions. It's time for new pathways, and we need to shape them through our inner landscapes, our relations, our approach our dedication, we're on the road to repair as a commitment to transformation.
Show Intro 1:15
Welcome to the Road to Repair, a podcast exploring our journey out of a business as usual economy towards collective healing and liberation. I'm one of your co-hosts Nikishka Iyengar, and I'm joined by Andrew X and Jessica Norwood.
Nikishka Iyengar 1:35
In this episode, I got to talk with someone I'm lucky to call a comrade, a friend, a partner and an investor in my work at The Guild. Nwamaka Agbo is one of those people you meet, and one conversation can be completely life-altering, can change your perspective on something, and be just so inspiring and so affirming at the same time. I was lucky to meet Amaka in 2018 when she came as an alumni fellow to talk to my fellowship class at RSF Social Finance. We did the same fellowship, and were just a class apart. And actually my co-host on this podcast, Jessica Norwood was also part of the same fellowship. So this podcast episode is really just a suite full circle moment. Our fellowship was focused on creating strategies to move capital out of the extractive "business as usual" economy into the next economy, otherwise also known as the solidarity economy -- an economy that's centered on social and environmental justice and the liberation of all oppressed people. So very much aligned with everything we talked about on this podcast. During her presentation to our class back in 2018, Nwamaka had shared her bold vision to move $100 million out of this extractive economy, towards organizations and models that were led by Black, Indigenous and other people of color, that were rooted in restorative economics, a framework that she developed. Here's a little bit about that framework, in her own words from her website.
Nwamaka Agbo 3:10
So one of my earliest memories, involves one of my family trips to Nigeria, we would go to my father's village and in the village, one of the things that I was just so stunned by was to recognize that there is this whole community of people, and we were all relatives. We were aunts, uncles, cousins, husbands and wives all living in close proximity to each other. It really highlights the importance of governing and stewarding land together in a community, and recognizing the importance of land to sovereignty and self-determination and liberation, and being place-based with a community of people that share your values that are also invested in your well-being and happiness and wholeness. Those early experiences caused me to question: "Are there other ways of us to be in relationship to one another and with the land?" My work of restorative economics is being able to kind of challenge the model of individual wealth and figure out: can we create shared prosperity? Can we create community wealth? And can we do that in a way in which we are bringing groups of people, community members, friends and family together, around stewarding a shared asset, as opposed to control and ownership by one individual of an asset for exploitation of the profit. That's kind of the shift that I'm hoping restorative economics can create that as we are hopefully reinvesting resources back into the most disinvested communities, we're doing it in a way in which it allows them to have stewardship and governance over their local assets.
Nikishka Iyengar 4:59
Today, Amaka is CEO of Kataly Foundation and the Restorative Economies Fund, which is a part of the foundation. Kataly is a private foundation dedicated to supporting the economic, political and cultural power of Black, Indigenous and other communities of color. Amaka basically manifested the vision she had during her fellowship, and it has been really beautiful to see the evolution and deepening of her work with Restorative Economics. I should add the Restorative Economies Fund is a funder of my work at The Guild, and our initiative and forthcoming fund to seed models of community-owned real estate called Groundcover. Amaka's framework of restorative economics has been really, really foundational to the work that we do. And she has been an amazing inspiration and partner in this work. Restorative Economies Fund is also a funder of Jessica's work at Runway.
I should also add that this interview that we did together happened at the early stages of the pandemic, this was back in summer 2020. And so some of the conversation will remind you those times maybe, but of course, it's still very, very much relevant and the message behind everything Amaka shares and her model around Restorative Economics just continues to be more and more urgent. So I'm excited for you to hear this conversation.
I want to talk about your journey to the work you're doing today. You've been an activist and organizer, a consultant and now a funder. But before we dive all the way in, can you share more about your background, including when and how you got politicized?
Nwamaka Agbo 6:54
Yeah, my background is very much rooted in experience of racial, social, economic justice organizing work. And I would say that, you know, my politicization happened when I was in college, primarily through like written text, being able to like find authors and learn about African liberation leaders and civil rights leaders that really resonated with me. I think there's a way that we get politicized as young people in Black bodies early, early on, just through the experience of kind of navigating the world as a person of color. In my background, particularly as a first generation immigrant. So my parents came to the United States in 1979. I'm of Nigerian American background and was raised very much in a Nigerian cultural upbringing and household. And so with that, you're always navigating identities of culture, and then of race and then of society at large. When I was a student at the University of California in Davis, and I was a part of the Pan African student organization at that time, there was an active movement to really move imperialist colonized countries to forgive a lot of the debt that they had levied on African countries and countries of the African diaspora. So that was one of the first times I started to kind of engage in more formal structured organizing as it related to policy advocacy and pushing on elected representatives.
Since then have been actively engaged in a number of social movements in organizations kind of in the 501 C3 model. And after I graduated my undergraduate and moved up to the Bay Area, I quickly became engaged in organizations like the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the East Bay Alliance for Sustainable Economies. And that's where I kind of like sharpened my my toolset, if you will, around electoral organizing, direct community organizing, as well as policy advocacy work. When I started working at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, I was a part of a campaign called the green collar jobs campaign. And you may recall there was a movement over a decade ago now, where we were really working to advocate for the creation of entry level jobs into the green economy, and being able to leverage those jobs as a way to fight not only pollution, kind of having that environmental justice lens, but also fight poverty at the same time. And so starting truly look at the emerging green economy as an opportunity to support low income communities that are disproportionately impacted by environmental injustices across the country, being able to then create career pathways so that people could come in through a workforce development training program. And then, whether they were working in the renewable energy sector or the regeneration, urban gardening sector, be able to then have a career pathway towards more long term sustainable job opportunity.
Nikishka Iyengar 9:59
I want to pause a moment here. What Amaka sharing is an approach called multi-solving, where as the name suggests, you're addressing multiple social and environmental issues at once. The reason multi-solving is necessary in this work of repair is that most times structural and systemic issues are often inextricably linked. Housing justice is linked to poverty is linked to health outcomes, and so forth. Trying to solve for just one issue at a time, or taking a siloed approach, will not deliver the transformation that we need. In this next segment, Amaka talked to me about the missed opportunity the green collar jobs campaign she was working with dealt with, and what lessons we can learn from that.
Nwamaka Agbo 10:42
There was a moment when the green collar jobs movement became heavily under attack from right wing pundits, right people who actually don't want to transition out of polluting fossil fuels and towards a more renewable energy economy, because they hadn't yet figured out what does it look like to support that industry in transitioning. So we became heavily under attack. And one of the ways I think we could have been sharper in our analysis around a movement is that we had come to advocate for the creation of on the job training programs and entry level jobs. And so we were putting ourselves very much in a position where we were hoping that we'd be able to kind of organize and politicize business owners to then hire and employ these low income individuals coming out of deep East Oakland and the city of Richmond, and other communities impacted by environmental injustices. That was one of the places where we missed the opportunity to dream big and to really lean into a visionary stance around what does it mean to not necessarily just get an entry level job, even if it has a career pathway? But how could we have actually positioned ourselves to be the owners, the stewards, those people who are actually developing the businesses? How can we actually have a strict analysis around who owns and who gets to decide what type of businesses are needed in order to address the environmental harms that disproportionately impact the low income communities of color.
When we think about kind of back to our studies around Karl Marx, and we think about alienation from our labor, and we think about who gets to own the business and make decisions around it. I think, with the green collar jobs campaign movement, if we had really allowed ourselves to dream bigger, we would have had more control, in really responding to the attack that the the green jobs movement came under, some odd years ago. And so for me, ever since then, I've been kind of pulling on what does it actually take for us to have direct control and ownership of our labor, of our community assets, and how to do that in a way that it starts to move us away from an economic system that's very much rooted in individual riches, and towards a system that is actually really based in shared prosperity based in building community wealth. And so often communities of color are taught that we should just negotiate the social benefits, right, we should just negotiate how many jobs are being created. And we should just negotiate whether there's a community center in our neighborhood, and I think we get to go beyond just the social benefits and start to have very explicit and strict conversations around who's getting the financial return. The financial returns are actually the thing that either allows us to close the racial wealth divide or expands it.
Nikishka Iyengar 13:46
This piece is so critical, and often where most conversations around diversity, equity and inclusion fall short. Without shared ownership and control over the financial returns of a project or enterprise, there can be no equity. And unless we shift course quickly, and allow Black communities, Indigenous communities and Latin X communities, especially to have ownership over assets, whether that's land and real estate or businesses, unless we do that the racial wealth gap will continue to widen. As it stands. If we did nothing different, it would take over 200 years for the racial wealth gap between an average Black family and an average white family to close. Over 200 years. That along with multiple other socio-economic and environmental crises, makes the status quo quite frankly, just untenable. So it's time to move away from incrementalism, from reformist approaches, from the type of progress that just one administration can completely tear down. We need bigger, bolder systemic change. And the framework of abolition is one way to help us get there. In this next segment, I talked on Amaka about that. As I mentioned earlier, this interview happen at the height of the racial uprisings of summer 2020.
Nwamaka Agbo 15:07
You know, when you started off talking about what does it mean to reform the existing kind of militarized police force? And why some people have been like, well, we should just kind of reform it and and fix it around the edges and identify the bad apples and pull them out. I think what comes up for me right is, is this unwillingness or this failure to acknowledge that the system itself is fundamentally designed to create the level of violence, state-sanctioned violence, that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities, which we're all too familiar with. When we sit with the fact that the existing police system was founded off of slave patrols, right, founded off of individuals that were tasked with going out and hunting down, people that were stealing themselves to freedom, right? That is the ultimate foundation philosophy, ways that we've come to know modern day policing. And so this desire to say that we can just reform it, when it's inherently, fundamentally based on a system committed to the enslavement, oppression of Black people in this country, I don't know that we can reform our way out of something like that. And so that's why I think it is important to lean into a frame of abolition.
Where I see people get stuck with like, what does it mean to reform versus abolition is, is that people have a hard time imagining or dreaming into something that they can't fully articulate or touch. One of the reasons I think Black communities are still calling for abolition, even, you know, we have a rough sense of what it looks like. It's because we've had to cultivate the capacity to believe in something beyond ourselves. To believe in a system that was never designed or meant for us. And so there's this way that Black people have had to dream and had to kind of imagine and hope and build something that reflects their dignity and humanity. And so I would I would liken this to when enslaved people used to run off the plantation up north for freedom. They were quite literally tracking the stars, right? Like they were looking up into a starry night with the hope that stars would lead them to freedom. And so that is the same way that we are asking people to, even though we can't fully articulate what an abolitionist state looks like to understand that there are stars guiding us. And if we're willing to kind of trust in something that is more just, something that is rooted in our collective liberation, then we can all get there together.
Nikishka Iyengar 18:03
This reform versus abolish conversation is not just relevant to policing in the prison industrial complex, but to capitalism, as well. Over the last couple of decades, the field of social impact has grown and buzzwords and frameworks like conscious capitalism, inclusive capitalism, stakeholder capitalism have all been touted as solutions to all of the harmful impacts of capitalism. It's the 2020s, y'all. We are still going through a global pandemic, that global wealth inequality keeps growing. The racial wealth gap in this country is deepening and we're experiencing multiple crises, like I said, caused by climate change. Capitalism is the problem. So if you're someone invested in creating an alternative future, then you want to start with addressing the root cause. No amount of reform to capitalism can repair the harms it has caused. If anything, reform only tends to further entrench the system. In this segment, Amaka and I talked about how the social impact and impact investing field overall often still misses addressing this root cause, which is capitalism.
Nwamaka Agbo 19:08
I feel like with the field of impact investing, we've been tinkering on the edges of what does it mean to continue to make returns financial returns that go back to the investors but make it feel a little less bad, right? And I think so many of the books that came out, last year where we have Edgar Villanueva talking about decolonizing philanthropy and wealth. Where we have Anand Giridharadas, and his recent book that came out. The impact investing field has really wanted to sit in this space of doing well while doing good and has refused to fundamentally challenge a financial institution that is once again designed to oppress harm and profit off of Black and brown pain. And so when we look at the ways that we've had restrictive covenants that were for so long, designed to ensure that Black communities can't purchase homes in certain neighborhoods, when we look at the fact... the great work that Nicole Hannah did on the 1619 project, where she and her colleagues looked at the fact that modern day accounting was created out of the need to track the enslaved people on a particular plantation, how much it was costing to feed and clothe them what their assets and wealth were. So the very nature of our financial institution is once again rooted in the legacy of the enslavement of Black people and Black bodies. So when we have an impact investing field that wants to do well while doing good, but won't actually look at the financial system itself, and how it's designed to preserve wealth, and power for once again, whiter and wealthier communities and corporations, that's where we're missing up. And that is where the work of The Guild, the work of the Runway project by Jessica Norwood is so important, where people are fundamentally trying to challenge and redefine financial infrastructure that is rooted in our collective liberation, right? Financial infrastructure that recognizes people need access to capital in order to be able to build meaningful and dignified livelihood for themselves.
Nikishka Iyengar 21:20
Quick, friendly reminder here, capitalism is a system. Capital is a tool. We talked about the distinction between the two, and how there are so many non-financial forms of capital as well, that are always overlooked and undervalued.
Nwamaka Agbo 21:36
I always invite people to really sit with the fact that capitalism is a system, right? Capitalism is a system of how we choose. And it's a choice of how we choose to move money, goods and resources, throughout our communities across the country and around the world. Capital is a tool, it's an inanimate object, we ascribe as much meaning and power to it as we want it to have. The who...who gets to decide what meaning and power is ascribed to it. And who gets to decide how that tool is then leverage to either create healing, right when we talk about repair, or to enact harm in a punitive form, is what ends up making it capitalism. But money itself, capital itself, is not inherently bad. And so our work, I think, the invitation that we get to sit with Nikishka is, to truly think about how do we disaggregate capital from capitalism? And how do we start to use this tool in a way that allows us to reinfuse the vitality, the life, the vibrance back into the communities that have these dreams, right? They're looking up at the starry night, they can see their way into something that is more equitable, more regenerative, more just. What is the role of capital to help them get there?
And then how do we structure that in a way in which it's not just a transaction, right, not just a transaction around term limits and interest rates. It's a transformative conversation, where we're able to be active stakeholders that are also invested in the success of this vision. And so while as investors, we may be bringing a level of financial resources, also recognizing that the projects on the ground are bringing a level of non-financial resources, knowledge, capital, expertise, wisdom, culture, traditions, then when we bring all those financial, non-financial resources together, that's when we get to create something together. But being able to have those financial partners that are actively invested in the project, that are willing to share risk, that want to redefine risk so it's not just about the level of financial return to the investor, but it's actually rooted in what does this community need to thrive?
And how do we stay in that conversation, not just in the beginning when we're structuring a deal after it comes out of investment committee and the project is in repayment, but stay in conversation with them over one year, two year, three year seven years, ten years to understand what they're learning, how they're evolving, how we may need to kind of restructure or rethink the initial terms under which we gave them capital, so that we are active participants, right, and not people that are sheltered outside of it. And it's like we're standing on our rocky boat, we can't fully see land, we know what's it's there in front of us. But our role and responsibility is to stay rooted in our values, stay rooted in our integrity, and continue to share in the risk, but also in the vision and the dream and support the beliefs of those communities that have made their way out there, right, that are already trying to lead us to something that is not just about their own liberation, but our collective liberation. I think what a beautiful gift that we get to support and we get to bear witness and be in that emergent journey with such great visionary projects across the country.
But even in this moment where we see people having conversations around race and we see uprisings in the streets, we still actually need to grapple with anti-blackness, people fail to understand the anti-blackness, the particular policies and practices that are designed to disproportionately hurt and harm of Black communities. And so when we talk about addressing anti-blackness, it's with the understanding that, once again, a lot of our systems when we look at the mass incarceration system, the prison system, education system with Brown versus Board of Education, financial systems, like we just talked about earlier.... all those things were rooted in an intentional effort to oppress Black people. And so when we actually address anti-blackness and center supporting Black communities, and how we transform these systems, we create something that is fundamentally rooted on our rooted in our collective liberation, right? It's not just like rhetoric, it's an actual understanding of history and how anti-blackness has been the fulcrum for oppression. And so in order to change the equation, we have to fundamentally address the way in anti-blackness is rooted in every system, every way of being. And that is, then what allows us to move towards our collective liberation and, and I would say, anti-blackness, but also the ways the LGBTQ and trans community also are disproportionately impacted. Right.
And so and I would say that even as we see all these companies having statements and, and coming out with, like new products and brands, Black people are not asking for a rebranding, Black people are not asking for new products that would then once again, amass the company or the the wealth holder, more wealth, more riches, right? We're asking people to actively engage in the conversation, and I see people, even the companies that are kind of putting out the statements and the narratives, they're still challenged to have a direct conversation internally, and not a conversation that's just navel gazing, but a conversation that is actively about what actionable steps, what specific policies and practices can we implement to fundamentally shift things. People continue to drag their feet around doing the work, right. This is not just a social media moment. This is not just to show up for one rally moment. This is ongoing work that has been beyond your, in my lifetime, over decades, over centuries, over, you know, the last 400 years of Black people have struggled to get free and even longer than that, as we've seen the genocide of indigenous communities on their own native land here in the United States.
And so people have to actively do the work. It's not enough to give lip service. And what I appreciate, what does give me hope is to see financial activists and leaders that are also speaking up and saying, You know what, no, you actually need to do more. And we want to either work with you to help you figure out how you're going to do more if you are willing and ready to do the work. But if you are not, we can no longer continue to waste our time on your kind of like, reformist and rebranding strategies, because you don't actually want to wrestle with the root of what got us here. And I think that is where impact investing, our field will hopefully have a reckoning. Overall.
My work on restorative economics I started working on over six years ago, this was coming out of the 2008 recession. And so was really trying to understand what is the role of our broader economy, what is the role of capital and sustaining social movements, because it was right around 2012 when a number of organizations across the country but particularly in the Bay Area, started to experience the delayed impact of the 2008 recession. And so we started to see 501 C3 organizations that were then fundamental to how social movements were organizing and engaging with one another. These organizations started to lose funding, because philanthropies started to experience a hit to their endowments because of what was happening in the broader stock market. Then these foundations weren't giving as much to the organizations. Some had to lay off staff, go on furloughs, some even ended up closing down. And so I was really trying to understand how do we sustain our social movements, given how social movements are kind of tied indirectly to the economy, but we're not necessarily directly shifting or shaping the way our economic system works, even though we know that capitalism is a problem.
Fast forward. My work around restorative economics has been very much informed by organizing work both policy financial activism and others. And I was in spaces where I started to see like some of the new economy spaces in the global north, where some of the same like how habits and patterns of racism and sexism, you know, were just like, under the surface. There were undertones at some of these conferences and some of these gatherings and I was like, Oh, wow, these are people that are like really committed to cooperatives and think cooperatives are cool, but continued to kind of support and prop up white wealthy individuals, right? It's the the people who have the leisure time, the flexible capital and the risk tolerance, to kind of experiment with new business models, were those that were found themselves to be really successful in this new economy space. And those also happen to be white, wealthy male individuals, and, well, that's actually not the new economy that I want to be a part of. That's actually not a social movement that I want to be a part of.
And so what I have observed over the course of my organizing career, so when we tried to kind of jump into creating a new economy, but we haven't actually dealt with white supremacy, we haven't dealt with patriarchy, we end up replicating those same things. So restorative economics is this, I would say is in a moment as part of our just transition, and an invitation for us to be very intentional about how we go about creating the new economy. It requires us to sit with who are we investing in? are we investing in Black indigenous and POC communities that have been extracted from, exploited, enslaved? Or are we continuing to move capital and resources to communities and families that have come from historical wealth? It also requires us to sit with how are we investing in these projects? Are we investing in them in a way that continues to amass wealth for wealthy communities and widens the racial wealth divide? Or are we moving and structuring deals in a way that helps to close the racial wealth divide, helps to ensure that we're leaving more wealth behind in the communities that we want to support and serve. And then also to be intentional about what we are investing in, right? Are we continuing to invest in businesses and products that support more consumerism, that support more exploitation of natural resources? Or are we investing in those businesses that are very focused on regenerating the earth, that are very much focused in on creating shared prosperity and wealth.
Nikishka Iyengar 32:17
This invitation and line of questioning from Amaka is for all of us to sit with, especially if you're a funder, a social entrepreneur, or a nonprofit professional. In this next segment, Amaka talks about reparations and the restorative justice framework as a pathway to transition out of capitalism.
Nwamaka Agbo 32:37
For me, restorative economics is very much explicitly rooted in reparations. It's very much explicitly taken from what we've seen in the Global North, the way that restorative justice has been a framework that's come out of the circle keeping of indigenous communities. But restorative justice requires us to sit with first acknowledging where harm has happened, and then committing ourselves to actively engaging in a repair and reconciliation, so that the parties can actually come together and be in an environment, be in a community where we can move forward together. And I think that that is fundamental to how I think we need to move out of a really harmful capitalistic system and into something that is more regenerative, more just and more equitable....that we have to actually sit with acknowledging the hurt and harm that has been done to low income communities of color, Black indigenous POC communities, commit to reinvesting in them, making them whole. And through that process of reconciliation and repair is where we actually get to something that's more transformative, right? Because when you have to be held accountable, when you have to actually sit with the hurt and harm that you've done to a community, the hope is that, you know, unless you're a sociopath, right, that you would learn from that experience and not repeat the same thing.
Nikishka Iyengar 34:02
One way to practice what Amaka is talking about is to have your work rooted in and accountable to social movements. No matter what kind of practitioner you are -- investor, entrepreneur, worker, nonprofit worker, no matter what field you're in. This is the invitation. If you're in finance, especially, this part is so key. Sitting with the hurt and harm that the financial industry has done to Black people and Black communities, to Native people and Native communities and just other communities of color as well. And the environment. And not just historically, right? The industry is currently, actively, continually causing harm. So if you want your work to have the most social impact, if you want to create lasting systems change, you have to have your work and yourself be rooted in social movements. And Amaka talks about this portion next.
Nwamaka Agbo 35:00
And that these projects, these assets should be rooted in social movements, right? The fight against the North Dakota Access pipeline that really raised questions around who gets to own water? And where do we get to have sovereign spaces? And how do we honor that the social movements at the frontline of like pushing against militarized police force, these are the social movements that make it possible for us to then even see an entry point into a conversation about how we envision something that's completely beyond what we've had before. And so supporting community owned and governed projects that are actively building the political, economic and social power and our resourcing supporting and participating in frontline social movements, is all part of how I think this theory of change works, this theory of liberation and what's actually needed to start to really play with the levers of what it looks like to create a more equitable economy. And then within that, I look at models of like economic governance and empower redistribution and nested layers of human development and transformations. How do we hold the capacity to be able to do everything at once, while also kind of focusing on the mission at hand, it's been helpful to hold me accountable, and also allow me to be in right relationship with a larger ecosystem of movements and projects doing this work as well. Because I would say that I tried to apply the restorative economics framework not necessarily like rigidly and dogmatically, but really trying to hold it in. It's nuanced, and understanding that particular people and specific places under specific once again, social, political and economic conditions, the framework may look differently in Boston than it does in Oakland than it does in Atlanta, and that that's okay.
Nikishka Iyengar 36:54
The work of repair requires this nuanced understanding Nwamaka is talking about and sometimes it can get overwhelming or exhausting. I asked her if she had any practices that helped ground her and her work.
Nwamaka Agbo 37:09
I'm in an active daily practice of believing in myself, believing in the projects that I have the pleasure of partnering with and working with. And my colleague, Lynne Hoey, we get to explore and experiment and do this work together and hold each other accountable in it, right. Being able to believe in myself as a young Black Nigerian American woman, that oftentimes, you know, I am not the face of economics Nobel Peace Prize, but to say that I too have something to offer to a conversation around economy. And really being able to really shift the way that people think about economy is something of just dollars and cents and imports and exports and elasticity, but economy that is very much like the management of home. And I think groups like Movement Generation others really invite us to coming back to understanding our economic systems as the management of home, the cultures, their traditions, the ways of being and that I have value to offer into this conversation and how we rethink economy.
Nikishka Iyengar 38:19
How we rethink economy and economics is the work of this podcast, the work of the three of us co-hosts individually, and the work of our lifetime. What does the next economy look like for you? Send us an email or voice memo to hello@theroadto repair.com. We'd love to hear from you.
Show Outro 38:43
Thank you for joining us on the Road to Repair. Our greatest hope is that this show will have a transformative impact for those of you tuning in. The Road to Repair podcast is produced by Andrew X, Nikishka Iyengar and Jessica Norwood, with amazing post-production support from FRQNCY media. Music for the show was produced by Andrew X in close collaboration with artists and sound designer Zachary Seth-Greer and the luscious vocals and original poetics of Naima Penman. Shout out to sofahood for all of the amazing artwork. You can check out more of all of their great work on their website, which you can find links to at theroadtorepair.com We always love the social media shout outs and you can help this message ripple out to those who might really benefit from it by rating this show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts. And if you feel called to you can make a donation to support the show at www.theroadtorepair.com. Thanks again for tuning in and stay tuned for our next episode.
Road to Repair Theme Song 39:41
We stand with the land. We are far more than a commodity. We join with the water, our bodies are not property. We're reclaiming our shared sovereignty and shaping an economy based on reciprocity, cooperative, accountable ground in justice and ecology. The Empire is toppling who want to be about this prophecy. We've been summoned to the summit, trust, we here for something. What is now possible? Who are we becoming?
