The Detroit Food Commons, a $22 million community project that will house shared use kitchens, a community meeting space, offices, outdoor vendor booths, and The Detroit People’s Food Co-op (a Black-led, community owned grocery store) broke ground in April 2022. Spearheaded by our member Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), the Detroit Food Commons is located on Detroit’s main street, Woodward Avenue in the historic North End neighborhood. 

Although Detroit’s population is more than 80 percent Black, before this year, the city hasn’t had a Black-owned grocery store since 2014. (The Detroit People’s Food Co-op is in development and the Linwood Fresh Market, a 1,200 square feet Black-owned grocery store opened earlier this year.) 

The Detroit People’s Food Co-op provides Detroit’s majority African American population with a chance to own a share of a grocery store. By building their own neighborhood’s food supply chain and marketplace, DBCFSN is creating a Just Transition, moving away from business models that extract wealth and toward a local living regenerative economy that supports thriving human ecosystems, addresses injustices, and builds community in ways that are sustainable for people and the planet.  

“In Detroit, as in most Black communities across the United States, the retail food economy functions in an extractive way. The stores are owned by other ethnic groups or large corporate interests. The wealth that is needed to build strong, healthy, resilient communities is stripped away to enrich others. We are striving to contribute to a more circular economy,” said Malik Yakini, Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. 

For 13 years, DBCFSN has worked in the community and with partners like Develop Detroit Inc., a non-profit developer, to raise the $22 million necessary to begin construction. Yet a $1 million gap remains to secure its opening. 

Despite the compelling nature of their work and the apparent need, why did it take a Black-led project within a majority Black city over a decade to raise seed funding? 

We hear stories of disinvestment like this from Climate Justice Alliance’s 89 member organizations and others in the movement who are building climate justice solutions all across the country. The excuses to not fund our work run the gamut (and come from investors and funders alike); they rely on myths that claim that community-led projects are not “ready” for financing or “financially viable, or that they are “too risky” or “too small in scale.” None of these myths account for the historic disenfranchisement, extraction, and marginalization that have made building wealth disproportionately challenging in frontline communities.  

Alarmingly, with the influx of Inflation Reduction Act and other federal monies funding towards “climate solutions”, we are concerned that the same myths will cause similar patterns of disinvestment in environmental justice communities as well as allocation to harmful techno-fixes, like hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, if strong guidelines and accountability structures are not in place to ensure justice, equity, and reparation of past harms. 

Ten years since the Climate Justice Alliance formed, we built the infrastructure for an economy that decentralizes wealth and power, developed our capacity to mobilize resources, and channeled those resources to frontline environmental justice communities that are building real solutions to the climate crisis. In April, we were able to invest $500,000 in DBCFSN’s Detroit Food Commons, through the Our Power Loan Fund, a collectively governed non-extractive revolving loan fund with 0% interest rates and flexible repayment terms. In total, we’ve been able to allocate $1.5 million towards six community climate solutions so far this year.  

Read the full article about philanthropy and the regenerative economy by Marion Gee at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.