In the wake of the financial crisis, Americans are turning more and more to community wealth-building institutions

Five years on from the beginning of the financial crisis, inequality in the U.S has risen to levels not seen for more than a century. With austerity the new normal, greater public expenditure on social programs is now a political impossibility. Joe Guinan looks at how in the central neighbourhoods of some of America’s larger cities, more and more people are fighting back against neoliberal austerity policies by turning to economic alternatives in which new wealth is built collectively and from the bottom up.