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Solidarity Commons Protocol

Local Economy Knowledge Graph

A local economy knowledge graph is a shared map of the institutions people actually live with: businesses, cooperatives, landlords, public agencies, elected districts, organizers, unions, community lenders, licenses, inspections, leases, filings, campaigns, and service areas.

The point is practical. Enclosure often begins as scattered facts. A manufactured-home park is listed for sale. A clinic changes owners. A vendor sunsets a product. A restaurant loses control of its building. A utility seeks a rate increase. A license, inspection, lease, merger filing, or procurement agenda appears in a public system few residents watch. If those signals remain isolated, the community learns too late.

Basic Pattern

Section titled “Basic Pattern”

Amplify’s Datalane announcement is useful because it names the commercial version clearly. Datalane is building a proprietary data layer for offline local businesses. The post says it draws from Google Maps, Yelp, Facebook, review sites, government licensing data, health inspection records, franchise disclosure documents, lease agreements, and digitized paper records. It then turns that graph into sales workflows: audience building, enrichment, ownership-change triggers, CRM sync, and outbound campaigns.

Solidarity Commons Protocol should learn from the shape, then change the purpose.

A solidarity local-economy graph asks different questions:

  • Who owns this place, who depends on it, and who works there?
  • Which public agency, regulator, district, elected official, lender, union, cooperative, community land trust, community development financial institution (CDFI), or organizer could act?
  • Which ownership change, fee increase, closure, merger, product sunset, procurement event, or inspection result creates a moment to intervene?
  • Which residents, workers, members, or users have authority to speak for the affected community?
  • Which solidarity vehicle could preserve the asset: cooperative conversion, resident-owned community, land trust, public-interest rescue acquisition, public utility, or community-benefit agreement?

That turns a data product into organizing infrastructure.

Why It Matters Here

Section titled “Why It Matters Here”

A protocol for solidarity institutions cannot only model internal governance. It also has to help communities find each other across the local economy.

The graph can make these workflows possible:

  • A threat radar for manufactured-home park sales, private-equity roll-ups, vendor sunsets, utility rate cases, hospital debt events, and local business closures.
  • A rescue packet that connects ownership history, public records, affected residents or workers, elected districts, financing options, legal vehicles, and public commitments.
  • A solidarity market directory that helps cooperatives, worker-owned firms, community-owned groceries, local farms, and values-aligned vendors find one another.
  • A public accountability map that names who regulates, funds, represents, inspects, procures, or can intervene around a given institution.
  • An organizing handoff that routes a signal to the right resident group, union, co-op developer, community foundation, CDFI, elected office, or public agency.

The useful unit is not a lead. It is a public-interest situation with people, assets, authority, risk, and possible next steps.

Records The Graph Needs

Section titled “Records The Graph Needs”

A local-economy graph needs more than entity names. It needs records that make trust and coordination possible:

  • entities: places, firms, owners, branches, cooperatives, agencies, districts, campaigns, funds, properties, licenses, and services.
  • relationships: owns, leases, funds, regulates, represents, employs, buys from, supplies, governs, organizes, endorses, and shares services with.
  • signals: openings, closures, ownership changes, product sunsets, rent or fee changes, rate cases, merger filings, license changes, inspections, enforcement records, procurement agendas, and campaign milestones.
  • provenance: source URL, public record identifier, collector, date seen, confidence, freshness, and correction history.
  • access rules: public facts, member-only notes, organizer-only strategy, sensitive personal data, redactions, and consent.
  • coordination records: outreach, meetings, mandates, pledges, filings, bids, referrals, public commitments, and follow-up duties.

These records should be portable enough for local groups to use different tools while sharing stable references.

What Software Should Not Flatten

Section titled “What Software Should Not Flatten”

The dangerous simplification is turning community knowledge into another proprietary customer database. Datalane’s commercial lesson is that local-economy data is valuable. The solidarity lesson is that value has to remain governed by the communities that create and depend on it.

Solidarity Commons Protocol should not treat organizers, residents, workers, or vulnerable families as sales contacts. It should preserve source provenance, consent, visibility rules, community review, and the right to correct or remove sensitive claims.

It should also avoid pretending that a graph is neutral. Public records are incomplete. Corporate ownership is often hidden behind LLCs. Organizing relationships are earned, not scraped. Some information is useful precisely because it is not public. The protocol should make uncertainty, authority, and privacy explicit instead of hiding them behind a clean graph view.

Section titled “Read Next”