A friend of mine recently shared the platform of the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists who are currently running for the Minneapolis City Council. In addition to defunding the police, the platform called for the end of capitalism. Business owners are vilified and there is a gulf between elected officials and the business community. As one who has spent a career in community development but has worked with corporate leaders and small business owners, I can say that this is the wrong approach. The business community can be a huge force for positive change, if they are allowed to be. Let me offer some personal examples that what happens when people fighting for positive social change and the business community come together.
We overturned the racist policies of the public housing administration in McKeesport PA, where authority staff routinely steered black residents into one project, Harrison Village, and whites into Crawford Village, the other project. When the authority bought new appliances, they went into the white project. When this became public, local businesses rallied attention and the policies were overturned.
T. Williams, the former director of the Phyllis Wheatley Center describes in his memoir, Rewind, how corporate leaders came together to fund starting the Urban Coalition after riots destroyed Plymouth Avenue in 1967. It was this organization that was instrumental in changing housing policies in Minneapolis and making real positive steps in reducing racism. Among the leaders Williams worked with were John Cowles (Owner, Minneapolis Star and Tribune), Donald Dayton (Owner, Dayton’s), Wheelock Whitney (Board member, Twins and Vikings), Steve Keating (Chair, Toro), Earl Ewald (Chair, Northern States Power), and Ray Harris (developer, Calhoun Square). The City is different today because of what these business leaders created.
I served as a VISTA Volunteer in McKeesport, Pennsylvania in 1968-69. As a community organizer, I brought dozens of mothers together to protest county cuts in funding for early child development programs. But a few dozen poor mothers were not enough to turn elected officials away from budget cuts. It was the business community who understood that those kids today are their workers tomorrow who brought pressure on elected officials. Soon after, elected officials voted to expand early child development programs because of the pressure from the business community.
I worked for Downtown Kalamazoo Inc in 1989. We asked Ted Cooper, CEO of Upjohn, to help find business leaders to buy and renovate the largest downtown hotel and conference center, creating hundreds of jobs in the tourism industry. This is an important industry to foster because it employs many immigrants and low-skill ed workers, helping many leave poverty.
I moved to Detroit in 1994, a city that was considered a “basket case” nationally. With the support of Detroit Renaissance, the corporate leadership group, I was able to assemble a sixteen acre site around the abandoned Hudson’s department store. That site is now the headquarters of Quicken Loan. Since then, its CEO, Dan Gilbert, has bought and renovated over 10 buildings in downtown, fundamentally changing the trajectory of Detroit. This has helped create dozens of small and minority owned businesses and literally thousands of jobs. Again, Detroit has fewer people in poverty because of these investments.
When I moved to Des Moines, in 1996, the Principal Financial CEO, Dave Hurd, was leading a corporate campaign to rehab blighted buildings and recruit businesses into downtown. This led to job growth, especially in high-paying jobs that bring money and more jobs and raising up everyone in the region.
What have I learned? Minneapolis has benefitted from capitalists more than we know. That people – from the smallest business owners to the heads of the largest corporations – are not the greedy capitalists portrayed in the DSA platform. They are often the people who give most generously of their time and resources to improve the community, create wealth for workers, and support worthy organizations. These are our neighbors, friends and associates. Demonizing them is a big mistake. Instead, we should honor them and the contributions they make and ask them to be our partners in making a better city.
