In today’s Economic Democracy Weekly, we examine the connection between power building and the pursuit of economic justice. First, our latest State of the Movements column profiles a national solidarity economy conference that seeks to build power to both resist authoritarianism and advance a liberatory economics. Next, two former fund directors discuss lessons learned from a failed effort to shift economic power from the Global North to a Global South through impact investing—and how those learnings are informing a new effort in the same direction. 

We follow those articles with two news stories. One is on the State of the People Power Tour, which launched a 10-city tour in Chicago in April 2025 to support community organizing. Finally, at REI, the nation’s largest co-op, a story of how, after two labor-backed candidates were kept off the ballot, the union organized 115,000 members to reject a Board-backed candidate slate, giving a shot in the arm both to internal co-op democracy and the union contract campaign.