Rising Up for Justice for Small Business Owners

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FEATURING RICHARD TRENT - Our nation and our world is overrun by billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power.

This week on Rising Up for Justice, Richard Trent, Executive Director of Main Street Alliance joins us. He has a long history of fundraising and organizing for progressive causes. Main Street Alliance is a national network of 30,000 small business owners organizing to reclaim economic and political power for local communities.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Let me first ask you to explain a little bit more about Main Street Alliance. We often hear politicians tout these words, "Well, yes, we are worried about Wall Street, but what about Main Street?" And it's become this word or phrase that has referenced mom-and-pop businesses. How do you describe this alliance to people who've never heard of it? 

Richard Trent: So small businesses are the thing that make communities worth living in, places worth visiting, and they're unbelievably special and crucial for contributing to the dynamism of the spaces that we inhabit. But small business owners haven't ever really been organized for economic or political purposes in super intentional ways. 

I'm saying this with a clear understanding of the fact that the chamber system is quite well-known. The issue is that the chamber system really speaks for some of its largest members when shaping policy and advocating. But the fact of the matter is 80% plus of small businesses in this country are actually really, really small, surviving on less than $200,000 in revenue.

And so that means that there's a different issue set that needs to be addressed when dealing with the vast majority of the small business owners in our country that really contribute to our local economies.