Welcome to ILSR's complete library of resources and publications. Use the filtering tools below to find just the content you're seeking. Bookstores and Local Power with BLP’s New Host, Danny Caine ...

What is Local Self-Reliance? Local self-reliance means that we, the people, are free to exercise power over our lives — how we provide for our families, how resources are shared and allocated in our ...

Toledo’s Dorr Street bears the deep scars of federal policies that stripped away Black economic power and prosperity. Once a thriving center of Black business, Dorr Street was decimated by ...

Community-based composting can happen at schools, churches, community gardens, farms and other community venues. It is an effective way to engage youth, gardeners, and other members of the public in ...

Christopher Mitchell is the Director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) in Minneapolis. Mitchell is a leading national expert on community ...

When the Washington Post, at Jeff Bezos’s command, declined to endorse a presidential candidate, people instantly reacted by cancelling their Post subscriptions en masse. But soon the mood shifted as ...

The destruction of Dorr Street in Toledo, Ohio isn’t just a story of physical destruction; it’s about the dismantling of crucial social infrastructure that once allowed residents to communicate, ...

Where are community composters operating? Which cities, counties, and states support a distributed composting infrastructure through their policies and programs? ILSR’s Composting for Community Map ...

Composting can take place at many levels – backyard, block, neighborhood, schoolyard, community, and regional – and in urban, suburban, and rural areas. There are many methods and sizes. Large-scale ...

The first bookstore Danny Caine fell in love with was a suburban Cleveland outpost of a mega-chain. Since then, he has not only fallen in love with independent bookstores and other local businesses ...

Sean Gonsalves is a longtime former reporter, columnist, and news editor with the Cape Cod Times. He is also a former nationally syndicated columnist in 22 newspapers, including the Oakland Tribune, ...