As advocates for progressive social policy, we found it rare and promising good news when New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced in April that he plans to create a city-owned grocery in East Harlem, Manhattan.

The East Harlem store will be the first of five planned city-owned stores, one in each borough. And Mamdani aims to do it right — with union labor, lower prices on staple goods, and the absence of lottery and tobacco sales. Plus, the East Harlem store will be in a predominantly Latino neighborhood and, like all the planned stores, will bring affordable food to a low-income, low-access (LILA) community.

The project marks a system change approach to tackling the nation’s affordability and food insecurity crises. It is consistent with the vision of a more democratic economy that The Democracy Collaborative, a research-led change agent where we are fellows, has been pursuing for years.

A democratic economy approach — what we like to call a Next System— means that basic economic institutions are designed to serve the public........

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