emotional charge), he doesn't mean a group of Soviet-style commissars and technocrats handing down production quotas from Washington. Rather, he foresees thousands of local planning boards acting as conduits for citizen participation. Decisions would trickle up from below, forming a barrier against the sort of bureaucratic monolith that most people equate with planning," as well as with corporate capitalism. Alperovitz has said his work is influenced by his studies at the University of Wisconsin with historian William Appleman Williams, at Cambridge University with post-Keynesian theoretical economist Joan Robinson, and by his work with Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, an early environmentalist and the founder of Earth Day. Building experimental economic centers and developing community, regional, and related system altering legislation Alperovitz's interest in developing alternative economic models based on community wealth building began while he was in the federal government. Over 40 years, he has worked to create several institutions to develop an expansive theory and to implement principles on the ground. In addition to those noted at the outset, he co-founded The Cambridge Institute and The National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives. In 1964, while working in the Senate, he was the principal architect of legislation to create several regional planning commissions that might lead to efforts similar to the Appalachian Regional Commission as part of the Johnson Administration's War on Poverty. Along with John McClaughry, he co-authored the Community Self-Determination Act of 1968, sponsored by a bipartisan coalition of 26 senators, which introduced an expansive ownership-oriented conception of already established Community Development Corporations (CDC) as a new institutional form. In 1964 Alperovitz met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and in 1967 he began work with King and high-level aides Andrew Young and Bernard Lee to explore a possible community-building economic strategy that might also build political power. This work was cut short by King's assassination in 1968. Youngstown activism Alperovitz is recognized as the leading architect of the first modern steel industry attempt at worker ownership. In 1977, after failing to invest in the modernization of its production machinery, the holding company that owned the large steel manufacturer Youngstown Sheet & Tube shut down its plant in Youngstown, Ohio, and laid off more than 4,000 workers in a single day—still known in the community as Black Monday. In response, these steelworkers and a broad-based community coalition decided to attempt to reopen the mill under Alperovitz's comprehensive plan