Don’t Get Fooled Again: Writing Our Own Economic Future

My neighbors and I know we can't go back to the old economy. But what can we do to build a new one?

by Sarah Byrnes

Common Security Clubs are local groups that practice mutual aid, learn about the economic issues that face them, and take collective action. Click here for more blog entries.

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On April 1, I sat down with a group of my neighbors—members of a newly formed Common Security Club in our Boston neighborhood—to watch Inside Job, the Academy Award-winning documentary about the 2008 economic meltdown. We were going for an April Fools Day theme: “Don’t get fooled again” by the bankers and executives who caused the crash.

For a lot of us, the theme hit home: “I have a feeling they are going to fool us again,” one person said. “We have the same CEOs, the same regulators. Are we just going to go around and around, from crash to a mild recovery to the next crash?”

It’s a level of vulnerability many of us just can’t feel comfortable with. In community centers, living rooms, and churches around the country, more than forty other groups gathered to view and discuss the documentary that day, seeking to better understand why the economic crisis happened—and how to make their communities more resilient in the future.