Break Fresno’s poverty by allowing Black and brown residents to sell legal cannabis

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” James Baldwin’s cutting insight is as true today in Fresno as it was in Harlem nearly a century ago.

Baldwin, one of America’s leading intellectuals and most important voices on race, learned poverty’s painful lessons firsthand, as have so many families here.

He felt the harsh irony of people living in poverty having to pay more for everything — mortgages, leases, rent, food, health care — not just as a percentage of income, but at higher rates and prices.

Despite such obstacles, the entrepreneurial spirit runs strong in struggling communities. People don’t choose to be poor. They seek a secure existence for their families and work hard toward that end.

The biggest challenge faced by such entrepreneurs is the lack of capital, due largely to a lack of assets, a condition shaped by decades of discriminatory policies and practices at every level of government.

But ask any business owner how they financed their startup or expanded their small operation, and you’ll hear about low-interest loans from the Small Business Administration, bank lines of credit, personal savings, home equity loans, credit card debt, investor relatives and more.

In short, they had access to capital because they or their family had assets with which to secure those lines of credit, if not invest directly.

But what if your grandparents’ post-World War II home, rather than appreciating, had declined in value relative to its north Fresno counterparts, because their neighborhood had been neglected, industrialized and overrun with truck traffic, the air too often filled with foul odors and toxic fumes?

What if from 1933 to 1968 your grandparents had been legally restricted to buying or renting a home there?

From the heavy industry allowed to shoot up around Calwa, including biomass and methane power plants, to west Fresno’s concentration of animal processing and waste recycling facilities, to south-central’s explosion in warehouse distribution centers, residents of these areas are hamstrung economically. Home values are not increased by diesel fumes.

And if your grandparents were of a minority deliberately excluded from federal home mortgages, then your family probably never bought and inherited houses. Intergenerational wealth was difficult to build, share and pass on.

For reasons often explored in The Bee, “redlined” neighborhoods have been subjected to over-policing and discriminatory rates of incarceration.

Laws targeting users and providers of this marijuana, a mild intoxicant that serves as an important medicine for many and a cocktail-like relaxant for others, became powerful weapons in a war against an unarmed opponent.

These issues are intersectional, meaning multiple sources of oppression targeting minorities, and in the case of the War on Drugs, specifically young black men with cannabis.

According to research from the American Civil Liberties Union, from 2010 to 2018 black people were 3.64 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession, despite comparable usage rates.

But now, after generations of economic disruption, city leaders have agreed to initiate an equity investment program funded by marijuana sales at city-licensed facilities.

If conducted with transparency and accountability, financial backing will reach entrepreneurs in these neighborhoods.

Rather than extracting the cash resources — and very lives — of its poorest people, Fresno will directly invest in them, returning to residents a percentage of cannabis tax revenue through nonprofits and economic development corporations providing startup loans, business mentoring, job training and more.

Yet Fresno should go further still. City leaders should prioritize ownership of cannabis production facilities and dispensaries by local minority entrepreneurs historically lacking in access to capital and credit.

Given that the city is strictly limiting the number of licenses, these operations are guaranteed a steady cash flow. Their permits are their biggest asset.

But in other cities, minority owners have been excluded or used as faces to disguise the fact that 80 percent of the industry is now owned by white men. Let’s flip that.

The City Council and mayor will soon finalize the permit applications and procedures. Fresno should commit to awarding 80 percent of cannabis permits to local, minority-owned businesses.

By doing so, they can lessen yet another of Baldwin’s “extremely expensive” conditions of poverty — the cost of fixing its root causes.