A New Foundation seeks a more abundant and dignified future where wealth is a tool for catalyzing human flourishing and honoring intrinsic prosperity.
This editorial ensemble examines the language and systematic realities of generational wealth building through the lenses of homeownership and business starts and growth. Anchoring in the six Homeownership and Business Ownership cohort cities, we utilize qualitative and quantitative data to analyze racist systems and generations-old inequities in wealth. Living Cities partnered with Gumbo Media to curate nuanced, dynamic storytelling about the history and impacts of race across six U.S. cities: Albuquerque, NM, Austin, TX, Memphis, TN, Minneapolis, MN, Rochester, NY, & St. Paul, MN.
These stories engage in discussions of economic equity through the lenses of community justice, the creative economy, homeownership, and small business. Featured web walkthrough story by Emem Esther in Rochester, NY titled The Unreasonable Man: Meditations on Progress, Loss, and Community. Published in 2024.
Reckoning With Race is an initiative of the Closing the Gaps Network, a ten-year initiative that brings together leaders from cities across the country who are committed to imagining what an anti-racist society might look like, and to playing an important role in building it through the transformation of government policies, practices and operations.
Each of the stories in Reckoning With Race is unique, ranging from a personal account of how highway construction in Austin, TX, has pushed Black folks out of their homes to a work of magical realism in which a Black organizer in Minneapolis is visited by the spirits of recent ancestors slain by the police. They each represent just one among many stories of race in each city, but together, they reflect how anti-Blackness is foundational to the structures that harm Black, Indigenous, and people of color in the United States and how communities of color have embodied hope even in the face of that harm.
Featured walkthrough story by Brandon Stroud in Rochester, NY titled Blooming in the Flower City. Published in 2021.
Produced by Ashley O'Shay
Art Direction by Qurissy Lopez
Directed by Chan C. Smith
Edited by Rubin Daniels Jr.
Photography by Matt Marion
Music by Chris Ivy
And special thanks to Nike Chicago