⇨ Substantial increases in percentages of city contracts awarded to union, Black, and POC  

     contractors

⇨ Policies favorable to worker and union rights

⇨ Incentivizing worker-owned cooperatives

⇨ Community benefits agreements to ensure that new city projects benefit working people

 

All Knoxvillians should benefit from their labor, rather than putting wealth into the hands of an elite few.  We all deserve good jobs with safe workplaces and living wages. And we all have a right to live in a city with strong unions and an empowered working class.

 

To create the communities and jobs we need, Knoxville must have a strong, local economy. We deserve a Knoxville that invests in our economies and workers through a variety of ways, including increasing the city contracts given to Black and PoC owned contractors, unions, and cooperatives.

 

Furthermore, Knoxvillians need businesses and local government to be accountable to its workers and the community.  Much of downtown already sits on fossils of pre-Urban Renewal Black Knoxville, and we continue to see Black and working class neighborhoods being gentrified and eventually replaced as downtown grows. It’s time that people who live in communities benefited from the development in their communities, instead of the corporate and privileged few.