Mission

Our mission statement is:

To assist labor, communities, and business to pursue the High Road of economic development guaranteeing the building of a strong, participative and productive economy, social justice and the equitable distribution of wealth.

In short, the High Road for development calls for:

• a vision of development in the context of the global economy;

• a fundamental change in economic policy to define leading roles for labor and community, premised on labor and citizen participation in all aspects of the economy, politics, and society;

• development that is environmentally sustainable, which means that companies make products and use processes and technology that are good for the health of workers, consumers, and surrounding communities; and that they restore rather than damage the environment;

• development that is economically sustainable, creating jobs and livelihoods that allow and encourage true human development. We want good jobs that can support a family and allow time for leisure, education, and social participation;

• development that is socially sustainable, with an objective of overcoming historic divisions and oppressions in society connected to race, gender, class, and national origin;

• a challenge to the limits of traditional redistributionist strategy for labor and community, recognizing that redistribution can best be achieved through popular control and leadership;

• a strategic alliance between the labor movement and the political, democratic, environmental, economic, new immigrant, and social organizations within the concept of "community;"

• recognition that labor and community must accept the responsibility to lead in creating wealth and developing productive capacity;

• recognition that the business sector includes friends and allies as well as low roaders, and that we must leave behind a simplistic "anti-corporate" analysis;

• identifying market forces as well as mass movements as our tools and terrain for change;

• being entrepreneurial--seeking to be leaders in the market place as well as in the social and political world-- and defining the essential connection between the two; and

• defining a clear role for government, including a responsibility to expand our civic structure and life and to measure success by progress at the company and community level.

Or as expressed by the Russian Anton Chekov:

We will
make a new garden,
more splendid 
than this one.
You will see it.
You will understand.
And joy,
	    quiet,
		   deep joy
will sink into your 
soul
like the sun
at evening.