Anthony Cook - Breaking Barriers: Racial Capitalism and the Unfinished Work of Martin Luther King Jr
Next System Speaker Series: Anthony Cook
Thursday, March 20, 2025 1:30 PM to 2:45 PM EDT
Anthony Cook is the second Next System Speaker for 2025.
Please be certain to register here: https://actionnetwork.org/events/breaking-barriers-racial-capitalism-and-the-unfinished-work-of-martin-luther-king-jr?source=direct_link&
Despite notable progress in some areas since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968, the racial wealth gap between Black and white Americans is wider than ever.
In his talk, “Breaking Barriers: Racial Capitalism and the Unfinished Work of Martin Luther King Jr.,” Professor Cook will dive into how racial capitalism has shaped the landscape of Black progress in America and what this has meant in particular for the systemic theft of community wealth from Black communities. Using Dr. King’s life and legacy as a guide, he will explore what King’s vision for racial justice means in today's world and what we can do to bring it to fruition.
Anthony Cook is the Reynolds Family Endowed Service Professor of Law at Georgetown University. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University and earned his law degree from Yale Law School.
For more than a decade, his Georgetown Law and Entrepreneurship Practicum has provided pro bono legal and business planning support to local businesses and community development initiatives across the Washington, D.C. area.
He is the Founder and CEO of GateBridge Community, a Research and Development nonprofit that partners with local communities, governments and mission aligned businesses to develop community wealth-building ecosystems and enterprises in low-wealth communities. The goal of this work is to increase the resilience of these communities by creating economies of shared prosperity where income is generated and recirculated to build the wealth of those communities rather than extracted to build the wealth of other communities.
GateBridge’s inaugural initiative, Rosie’s Grocery, is a worker and consumer-owned grocery store with multiple locations planned for the DMV. The initiative will provide fresh food to underserved communities, create a community owned asset, build wealth through profit sharing, and address health disparities linked to Structural and Social Determinants of Health (SSDoH).
Professor Cook was one of the founding stakeholders of the Critical Race Theory movement. A former national officer of the country’s oldest community development organization, the Community Development Society (CDS), Professor Cook was named its 2024 Innovative Program recipient for his pioneering work around Community Wealth Building. The American Bar Association recognized him as one of 21 Lawyers Leading America into the 21st Century, highlighting his “unique synergy of thought and action.”
Hosted by Next System Studies at GMU.
