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!

Five partners – Center for Economic Democracy,Movement Sustainability Commons, Neighborhood Birth Center, Resist and Sisters Unchained – 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 ($10.5 MIL already secured or anticipated) and we are seeking catalytic grants and donations in addition to new market tax credits to help us reach our goal.

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 purchasaed 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:

We are five core movement organizations 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 five groups are:

o Center for Economic Democracy: working towards economic democracy

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

o Movement Sustainability Commons: creating a sustainable movement infrastructure

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

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

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.

Update March 2024: o City Life/Vida Urbana: a housing justice organization and former partner in this project remains a supporter, will no longer be housed on this site due to the site's capacity and CLVU's desire to move more slowly with itts members.

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.

What we’ve done so far:

• We’ve put in $2.5 million of our own reserves, and raised an additional $3.5 million in gifts, $2.5 million in 0% interest loans, and have confident in an additional $2 million in New Market Tax Credits.
• We’ve purchased land in Roxbury’s Nubian Square.
• We’ve created a new entity called Community Movement Commons - a unique structure designed for cooperative ownership and community governance of a community space by movement organizations.

Where are we now:

• We are engaging with local community as well as movement partners/ grantees/ sponsored projects to invite them into the project and to also call the space home.
• We are working with Mass Design, a world renown architecture firm to design this beautiful space.
• We are raising additional capital. We have $8.5 million in hand, with an additional $2 million anticipated through New Market Tax Credits.

Ways to help or connect:

To acquire the additional $2 million to build the project, and $4.5 million to open debt free, we are seeking community and philanthropic partners.

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 Hello@movementcommons.co with questions or to set-up a meeting to discuss how you would like to support this campaign.

https://movementcommons.co/