Neoliberal urbanism entails the capture of governmental power by the developer class to produce space and place that myopically serves for-profit business interest. In post-bankruptcy Detroit (2013 – present), the nation’s largest majority Black city, local government has become a target for and more vulnerable to neoliberal control.
Detroit People’s Platform (DPP), a community organizing group, employs co-governance and placemaking strategies to position low-income and working-class majority Black residents as co-producers of the urban landscape. The webinar will illustrate how these co-governance strategies, including Community Benefit Agreements (CBA) and Participatory Budgeting (PB), have resulted in more just and inclusive outcomes for majority-Black Detroit.
Over the past five decades Linda S. Campbell, director of DPP, has served in a variety of professional and leadership roles in public health and the nonprofit sector at both the local, state and national level. Her early accomplishments include supporting the organizing and leadership of local Detroiters in the formation of the nation’s first Black grassroots AIDS service organizations where members led one of the most successful HIV harm reduction models in the nation.
Her later work in Detroit informed the seminal publication, Social Service and Social Change, a capacity-building model that fosters service constituent power building and community change. Ms. Campbell served as co-author and national lead trainer along with her Building Movement Project (BMP) national colleagues. The guidebook remains one of BMP’s most frequently requested publications and is used by many community-based, health and human service organizations across the U.S.
Ms. Campbell currently leads the Detroit People’s Platform (DPP) where the work focuses on community organizing, resident leadership development and public policy. DPP has organized successfully with Detroiters to win groundbreaking public policies including the nation’s first Community Benefit Agreement Ordinance and creation of the Detroit Affordable Housing Trust Fund expanding affordable housing for housing insecure families.
Ms. Campbell is a founding member of the newly formed Transforming Power Fund, Detroit’s first Social Justice Fund providing grants to increase funding of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) led grassroots organizations. DPP co-authored Changing the Conversation aimed at encouraging philanthropy to increase investments in BIPOC led organizing groups. Ms. Campbell serves as founding board member on several other social and economic justice organizations in the Detroit area. She is co-editor of the award winning A People’s Atlas of Detroit published in 2020 documenting the recent history of organizing and movement building in Detroit.
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Linda is a proud graduate of the Charles Sumner High School, founded in 1875 as one of the nation’s oldest and remaining historically Black high schools. Ms. Campbell also holds a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) from the University of Michigan, School of Public Health
Theo Pride is the organizing and operations manager with Detroit People’s Platform (DPP), a community-based organization committed to racial justice for majority Black Detroit.
Theo’s organizing work focuses on challenging the investment of public resources into private economic development projects by advancing alternative policy strategies that support equitable development and collectively owned solidarity economies. To that end, Mr. Pride leads the Detroit Budget Justice Coalition which annually seeks to win increased municipal budget allocations rooted in participatory decision making driven by local residents. He also co-leads on DPP campaigns aimed at winning key community benefit concessions from publicly funded corporate developers.
In addition, Mr. Pride holds a Master’s Degree in Urban Studies and a Ph.D. in Sociology and brings his unique experience as a teacher/researcher of Black liberation movements to his organizing work.