The Organization

The Black Dollar Task Force is a 501(c)(3) organization founded in Seattle, Washington in November of 1988 with the intent of promoting the principles of self-help and self-determination through economic justice. The members and supporters of the Task Force are confident in our movement to decrease social service dependency through the revitalization of our community.

We firmly believe that national and local policy regarding America’s inner-cities will be forced to change as people refuse to continue to accept handouts and displacements as an acceptable way of conducting business in the inner-city. To this end all Task Force programs are designed with community empowerment and dignity in mind.

All approaches to development are rooted in the organized community and safeguards are put in place to prohibit developers from using community-based development organizations to achieve their own self-interests.

Understanding the critical need for cooperative efforts, the Task Force brings together low-income African Americans who suffer from societal neglect; members of the Jewish faith who suffer from hate crimes and desire to bridge the gap between our races; those of European and Asian decent who have recently moved into the geographical boundaries of the inner city; and all those who have long proclaimed that as long as one societal group remains disproportionately locked out of this country’s opportunities, we are all locked out.

The Task Force brings the community together and asks each participant what they can contribute to their own empowerment. We know that African Americans have extraordinary gifts, resources and intelligence, and that African Americans must be at the front of combating their community problems.

Approach to Organizing and Development.

In designing the Black Dollar Days Task Force as an organization that embodies both traditional community organizing and development, our founders courageously set forth on the road to redefining legitimate community-based development. We have been successful in our community.

As community developers we establish people-based institutions that house development professionals who achieve the goals set forth. As community organizers we mobilize structures that protect the people from the institutions we create. Restated: Most often, qualified developers generally do not have the capacity to create grassroots institutions from which to operate.

The sins of the past have shown us that a large percentage of community development efforts have been created in a manner which feathers the nest of the developer and outside speculators, as opposed to providing wholistic economic development to serve the needs of the people.

The Black Dollar Days Task Force approaches development through a four-step process:

1. Going to the people
2. Creating the institution
3. Hiring expertise to run the institution
4. Subjecting the institution to monitoring systems of the people

Thus, authentic, people-based institutions are born with people-based coalitions in place to safeguard the interests of the community.