Ed Whitfield, Fund for Democratic Communities

ED WHITFIELD is originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, and was a long time social justice activist from the Black Student Movement and the Black Power Movement before becoming involved in cooperative development and philanthropy. He now spends most of his time trying to help communities build self-reliant economies to meet their needs and elevate the quality of life. Ed is Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director of the Fund for Democratic Communities (F4DC) and serves on the board of the The Working World (TWW) and the New Economy Coalition (NEC) while chairing the board of Southern Reparations Loan Fund (SRLF), a network of Southern, place based loan funds that are part of Seed Commons: A Community Wealth Cooperative. Ed spent 9 years as Board Chairman of the Greensboro NC Redevelopment Commission while at the same time working full time in industry as a machinist, electronics technician and then an electronics specialist before becoming involved with the cooperative movement and the world of democratic non-extractive finance. Ed has begun writing recently about comprehensive approaches to community economic development and the need to build “liberated zones.”