Archive

Opal Tometi Keynote, Marching in the Arc of Justice Conference

It’s para­mount that our soci­ety rec­og­nize the role of anti-black struc­tur­al racism in the US. And that our 21st cen­tu­ry mul­tira­cial social move­ments uplift and cen­tral­ize the issues of those com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who are impact­ed and are liv­ing at the mar­gins. We know that if we do, we’ll get clos­er to real jus­tice for all of us. Moreover, it’s been wide­ly doc­u­ment­ed that the gains made by and with the black com­mu­ni­ty have always led to bet­ter stan­dards of liv­ing for all of us.

Global Capital and Urban Land

For me a city…is a com­plex but incom­plete sys­tem. And in that mix­i­ty of com­plex­i­ty and incom­plete­ness lies the capac­i­ty of cities to have very long lives. Much longer lives than very pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions, which often are very closed systems.

Finance is not about Money

I think one first step is to dis­tin­guish between tra­di­tion­al bank­ing, which sells mon­ey it has (or it can bor­row very quick­ly, what­ev­er) and finance, which sells some­thing it does not have. And in that sell­ing what it does not have lies its cre­ativ­i­ty. It has to invent instru­ments. And secondly—and they go together—it has to invade oth­er sec­tors. Because it itself does not have what it needs to produce.