History

Accountable Development

JwJ’s focus on accountable economic development as a core issue of our work began in 2003. It was then that we began to house and coordinate the TRADES campaign, that we formed our first working group on economic development and added its chairs to our Board of Directors (Annette Bernhardt of the Brennan Center and Brad Lander of the Pratt Institute).

In 2004, JwJ’s staff and accountable development working group began researching ways to impact an important aspect of economic development, government subsidies. At the same time, JwJ organizers met with organizations around the City engaged in various “economic development” efforts to gain an understanding of the progressive work happening in the City (and how people were defining it) and to gauge interest in further networking and coordinated educational opportunities.

Out of that research and organizing came the Subsidy Accountability Strategy Sessions in the summer of 2004. Forty-one community, policy, labor, housing, environmental and advocacy organizations came together for three sessions organized by JwJ and guided by members of the working group to develop a broader understanding of economic development in New York City and the role that government subsidies play in promoting certain types of economic development. Through a series of monthly meetings, we developed the policy possibilities that laid the foundation for a campaign to promote progressive reform of the City's main economic development subsidy-granting agency, the Industrial Development Agency (IDA). Additional research led us to the IDA state enabling legislation and the potential for reform of the entire state-wide system.

At the same time as we developed the state IDA campaign, we continued our efforts within the working group to network the people and organizations doing economic development work in the City in order to develop tools—educational, policy, organizing, messaging—that would promote a progressive understanding of the issue and enhance the work happening throughout the City. In the spring, the working group developed a concept paper that formalized these goals and became the basis of what we are now calling ReDefining Economic Development (RED NYC).

These two efforts—the state IDA reform campaign and the NYC Accountable Development Initiative—in addition to our TRADES collaboration and HCSA campaign represent a multi-front progressive accountable development program at Jobs with Justice. The multiple fronts include coalition building, educating, framing & messaging, and policy development, all of which operate through the unique strategic alliance model of NY Jobs with Justice. For more information or to get involved in these initiatives, check out the following links: