By Andy Morrison
We can’t build a just economy when our current system allows corporations to exploit working people and extract wealth from communities of color, with impunity.
At New Economy Project, we employ a fight-and-build strategy: challenge economic exploitation while building new institutions, like public banks and community land trusts (CLTs), that put wealth and power in the hands of communities.
That’s why we’re so fired up about the NYC POWER Act, which Council Member Harvey Epstein will introduce today on behalf of Mayor Zohran Mamdani — marking the Mayor’s first formal legislative proposal in the City Council since taking office.
POWER — which stands for People and Organizations Winning Economic Relief — gives workers, tenants, small businesses, and community organizations a powerful new tool to challenge unfair and abusive business practices.
Every day, low-income and Black and Brown New Yorkers face a gauntlet of financial predators. The deed thief who manipulates a homeowner into signing away a house that’s been in the family for generations. The lender who ensnares a struggling small business owner into a triple-digit interest rate debt trap. The slumlord who tacks bogus fees onto tenants’ rent each month. The abuses are relentless, draining money from New Yorkers’ pockets, and making an already crushing affordability crisis even worse.
Too often, these abuses go unchecked. Government enforcement agencies can take on the major cases, but they simply do not have the resources to pursue every instance of economic exploitation.
That’s where POWER comes in. The bill would give New Yorkers a private right of action — essentially, the ability to haul bad actors into court themselves, rather than waiting for the government to intervene.
But here’s the really important part: The greatest impact of POWER may be the abuses that never happen in the first place.
When bad actors know they can cheat people without consequence, they have no incentive to follow the rules. POWER changes that calculus. It makes them think twice before trying to take someone’s home, their savings, or their hard-earned pay. That’s deterrence. And it means honest businesses won’t have to compete on an uneven playing field with companies that profit from ripping people off.
Will POWER, on its own, bring about a just economy? Of course not. But POWER can give New Yorkers a fighting chance to stop the bleeding. Alongside measures like rent freezes and expanded free child care, it can help turn the tide on the city’s affordability crisis.
Stopping the bleeding, though, is only half the battle. We also need strategies that squarely confront rising inequality and put communities in control.
Measures like the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or COPA, can help take land and housing off the speculative market and into democratic community ownership through CLTs. A public bank can put public money to work for the public good, investing in community credit unions, social housing, worker cooperatives, and renewable energy.
That’s the task at hand. Fight economic exploitation while building people-powered institutions rooted in community ownership and democratic governance.
Fight and build. People have the POWER.
TAKE ACTION! Call your Council Member and urge them to sponsor and pass the NYC POWER Act: fairdealny.org/power