Community Movement Commons

Summer 2025 Update

Happy Summer! We’re thrilled to be back in touch with updates from our last few months and the new direction for this project. Since the zoning setback in late February, our CMC partners have been in deep reflection and strategizing. We looked for new properties including historic buildings to rehab, continued meeting with community residents and stakeholders, and explored what changes we might make that would inspire more community buy-in and zoning board approval. And now, the partners of CMC—Center for Economic Democracy, Matahari Women Workers’ Center, Movement Sustainability Commons, Neighborhood Birth Center, Resist, and Sisters Unchained—are pleased to share that we’ve arrived at a creative solution that reflects the community feedback we received and honors our decade-long vision to co-own space and share resources as we work towards collective liberation. Welcome to CMC’s new multi-site, campus-style model (the “archipelago”) in which we plan to expand our offering across 2 parcels in Roxbury. Neighborhood Birth Center will redesign a smaller space (for clinical use only) at 14 Winthrop St, with increased parking and more green space. We are also in discussion with a land trust just 1/4 mile away from 14 Winthrop to build the movement center for the other nonprofit organizations with shared offices and public gathering spaces. Both properties will be collectively managed by Community Movement Commons. Our sincere hope is that this adjustment will assuage some Winthrop Street abutters’ concerns while giving all the organizational partners more work space, more parking, and more green space. This decision, arrived upon in a meaningful consensus process is deeply rooted in our values, in our vision, and in our belief about the future our ancestors dreamt of. We’re eager to share more details as they come to fruition over the next few months. Until then, we’re focused on meeting with abutters and community partners, and on developing the next steps of this plan with our architects. We’ve been steadfast in our belief that we can go further together—and that our collective thriving relies on the deep partnerships we’ve been nurturing. We are so relieved and excited, and look forward to being in touch later this fall with updates. And in the meantime, we are happy to connect 1:1 for questions. Fill out this contact form, and we will be in touch. Thank you for your years of support and commitment to our project—this has been a wild journey but with partners like you we know this vision is possible. In solidarity, Center for Economic Democracy, Matahari Women Workers’ Center, Movement Sustainability Commons, Neighborhood Birth Center, Resist, and Sisters Unchained (the partners of Community Movement Commons)

_____________________________________________________________________

After years of collaborative power building and strategizing, the Community Movement Commons (CMC) now owns a parcel of land in Boston’s historic Nubian Square!

Six partners – Neighborhood Birth Center, Sisters Unchained, Matahari Women Workers' Center, Center for Economic Democracy, Movement Sustainability Commons, and Resist – have invested enormous creative energy, time and resources to design and incorporate a collectively owned and governed legal entity (CMC) to identify and purchase this land.

This space will be a BIPOC led movement space for birthing new ideas, people and community. It will also serve as home to Boston's first freestanding birth center, Neighborhood Birth Center.

This project will require us to raise $12.5MIL = $11MIL already secured in grants, gifts, partner investments, and friendly loans PLUS anticipate qualifying for $1.5 MIL in New Market Tax Credits this Spring 2025. With this capital stack, we can break ground and begin construction Summer 2025.

BUT we still need the support from catalytic grants and gifts to help us create a new model for community-shared spaces and community birth centers - Opening Debt-Free and alleviating this burden on our grassroots organizations and their services & programming. By Fall 2026, when we open our doors, we are raising $1.7MIL to pay back our loans and support our initial building operations (property staff, maintenance, free community offerings and more).

Our Story:

Conversations about collective spaces for liberation and new world building began in 2017 among many community members and groups in Boston. After the pandemic started, small groups within the collective gained momentum and began searching for locations for various spaces. A first retreat center property in Western Massachusetts was purchased outright in early 2022. Toward the end of the year, a second Boston based property was purchased in Roxbury at the corner of Winthrop St and Kearsarge Ave. A third property was recently purchased in East Boston and Revere. This second property is called Community Movement Commons, is a bold vision, and is the sole focus of this capital campaign.

Who we are:

Our core movement organizations are working together to create a “love letter for our community” in the form of a beautiful home not just for us but for many movement organizations. Our six groups are:

o Neighborhood Birth Center: Boston’s first community birth center, 1st black led, 2nd in state

o Matahari Women Workers’ Center: working to end the exploitation of women and femme workers

o Sisters Unchained: connecting with girls, young women and nonbinary youth whose loved ones are currently or formerly incarcerated. We aim to work towards a world without prisons.

o Center for Economic Democracy: working towards economic democracy

o Movement Sustainability Commons: creating a sustainable movement infrastructure

o Resist: a community foundation 55 years young resourcing justice and liberation.

What we are doing:

We are creating a cooperatively owned, community governed movement space and birth center. A place where we birth babies and birth the new world we so desperately need.

How it will feel:

This space will feel like the future… sort of like entering a time machine into the future where people experience a culture of liberation, healing, joy and connection. A place where all people are nourished, land is green and sacred, and leadership is by those most affected by structural oppression.

Ways to help or connect:

We envision philanthropic partners as foundations, corporations, government entities, and families and individuals. Contributions can be in the form of grants, cash gifts, stock transfers, donor-advised funds, employee matching, etc. We are happy to connect around any form of giving listed above or others.

Please reach out to our campaign consultant Alison Yoder at alison@wrightcollective.co with questions or to set-up a meeting to discuss how you would like to support this campaign.

https://movementcommons.co/