Mary Timmel is Small Business and Consumer Organizer for ILSR’s Independent Business initiative, where she supports and develops the leadership of small businesses and consumers to win policy changes that check Amazon’s outsized power and address rising corporate concentration across the economy. Since joining ILSR, Mary has coordinated Small Business Rising — a coalition of over … Read More
Ron Knox is a Senior Researcher and Writer for ILSR’s Independent Business Initiative. A combined storyteller and antitrust expert, Ron is building our deep bench of reporting and research on the ways extreme corporate concentration has come to dominate and damage industries throughout the economy. Ron’s writing in The Washington Post deftly explained Congress’s momentum toward … Read More
Dr. Susan Holmberg is a political economist and the Associate Director for Research on the Independent Business team at ILSR. She writes on corporate power, small business, inequality, systemic racism, and climate change. For the Financial Times, Susan reported on how Big Tech is killing innovation, which Chief Economics Commentator Martin Wolf said was one of … Read More
Ron Knox explains how consolidation in the music industry, like the pandemic, has been disastrous for artists. The monopolization of three chokepoints in the distribution of music — record labels, streaming, and live venues — is making it impossible for the broad “middle class” of artists to reach listeners.… Read More
Stacy Mitchell joined John Fugelsang on SiriusXM’s “Tell Me Everything” to talk about small businesses as critical allies with labor in the fight to check concentrated corporate power. … Read More
In this policy brief, we argue that moving aggressively to rebuild small, independent businesses and reverse the concentration of corporate power would produce a more vigorous, equitable, and stable recovery. We lay out two dozen policy recommendations across a 6-point agenda to enable independent businesses to weather the pandemic and thrive and grow in its aftermath. … Read More
It’s hard to believe, but Democrats used to be the party of small business. In The Nation, Stacy Mitchell and Susan R. Holmberg argue that the left should once again embrace small business. Doing so is crucial to reversing inequality and rescuing democracy.… Read More
Stacy Mitchell talks to the Strong Towns podcast about how corporate power is concentrating during the pandemic, and what it would look like if Congress broke up Big Tech. … Read More
In the Washington Post, Senior Researcher Ron Knox explains Congress’s groundbreaking investigative report in terms of U.S. antitrust history. … Read More
