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When working class people realize we DON'T have to choose between gaining workers rights (unionization) and ownership

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I wanted to share out this video that Repaired Nations showed at their recent conference about their visit to New Orleans and Jackson this summer.

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Travel Recap Q and A about our travels Jackson, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana

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Radio documentary on Mondragon, in case folks like podcasts  

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Radio documentary on Mondragon, in case folks like podcasts  

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The second episode in our Worker Cooperative series takes a deep dive into the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, the largest network of federated cooperatives in the world. We take listeners on a journey through the Basque region of Spain where Mondragon is located, and explore Mondragon's successes and challenges through candid conversations with several worker-members at Mondragon headquarters and at various cooperatives within the federation.

​

After presenting an in-depth exploration of the recent and mixed history of Mondragon from multiple perspectives-including a Marxist analysis-we travel across the Atlantic to Jackson, Mississippi, where an ambitious initiative is just getting underway. Cooperation Jackson is part of the same trans-local organizing movement that inspired Cooperation Richmond, which was featured in Episode one. Cooperation Jackson aims to be the Mondragon of North America.

​

Kali Akuno- Co-Founder and Co-Director of Cooperation Jackson

Professor of Political Science at York University (retired)

Andoni - Worker/member at Fagor Ederland
Chris Zabriskie
The Johns
Will Stratton
Mississippi Sheiks

​
Transcript

Many thanks to Phil Wrigglesworth for the cover art, and thank you as to well to Ellie Llewelyn, Kenneth Rosales, and Neda Raymond for assistance with translation and voice over.

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The second episode in our Worker Cooperative series takes a deep dive into the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, the largest network of federated cooperatives in the world. We take listeners on a journey through the Basque region of Spain where Mondragon is located, and explore Mondragon's successes and challenges through candid conversations with several worker-members at Mondragon headquarters and at various cooperatives within the federation.

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A huge number of limited equity housing co-ops in NYC formed from squats. Granted it was the 1980s and height of divestment but it’s still a tactic that can get the goods - Cheyenna

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A huge number of limited equity housing co-ops in NYC formed from squats. Granted it was the 1980s and height of divestment but it’s still a tactic that can get the goods - Cheyenna

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Preserving the history of people-powered housing.

HDFC co-op shareholders hold a rich history of resistance, cooperation, and democratic community control. Since the 1970s, co-op shareholders have literally rebuilt their neighborhoods to create lasting affordable housing. UHAB is building an archive to preserve the history of our movement.

This effort was made possible through a collaboration with Interference Archive, as well as the many co-op members and community groups that donated time and materials to share their stories.

UHAB was created in 1973 to assist New Yorkers in creating their own cooperative housing. Learn more about our history here.

Interested in preserving your HDFC's story? UHAB works with HDFC shareholders to record their histories. Our homesteading oral history program can help you archive the rich history of your HDFC, or work with a neighboring HDFC. Contact info[at]uhab.org to learn more.

Explore the Archive

Poster, "A Series of Forums About Self-Help Renovation of Abandoned Buildings", 1975
This early workshop series led by UHAB staff and HDFC residents across the city disseminated practical advice for self-help housing in the context of abandonment and uprisings.

Demolition Handbook, UHAB, April 1978
Caption: In the early years, residents in the self-help housing movement did an enormous amount of construction to make buildings livable again. UHAB provided support through trainings and handbooks

Rally flyer, "$250 Now", 1977

Photo, cake at Nina Dunn HDFC, date unknown
The text reads: "Longfellow Ave 1670 / Dave did it / from the tenant league"

Clipping, "Squatters: Staking a Claim", publication unknown, date unknown
Squatters, urban homesteaders, and other community-controlled responses to housing disinvestment made national headlines throughout the 1970s.

UHAB Holiday Card and Invitation, 1986
UHAB threw yearly holiday parties for the self-help housing community.

Yearbook, 504 West 139th St. HDFC, 1996
Every building has its own story. Many cooperative buildings shared their accomplishments and community through booklets, zines, and photographs.

"Tilting at Windmills" Daily News, late 1970s.
Using their windmill, residents of Heartstone HDFC fed electricity back into the grid and watched the meter spin backwards. Con Edison sued them but was ultimately forced to accept their homegrown electricity, a landmark case that brought net metering to New York City. This decision still makes local electricity generation possible in New York City today.

The Harlem Renigades, a youth gang in East Harlem, formed the Renigades Housing Movement as a response to disinvestment and abandonment in their neighborhood. With support from UHAB, they took over a tenement building and turned the ground floor into an office for the movement. Gang members who participated in renovations received a stipend and job training. Forty members eventually moved in and received low-cost housing.

"Tenants Tilting at Windmills - and winning" The Christian Science Monitor, 1977
Caption: Residents of Heartstone HDFC took control of their energy and installed New York City's first windmill and solar hot water heater in 1977. Several community groups collaborated on the project, including the Lower East Side's Energy Task Force and Adopt-a-Building.

This is a living archive! If you'd like to donate materials or be interviewed about your experience with cooperative housing, reach out to us at info@uhab.coop.

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HDFC co-op shareholders hold a rich history of resistance, cooperation, and democratic community control. Since the 1970s, co-op shareholders have literally rebuilt their neighborhoods to create lasting affordable housing. UHAB is building an archive to preserve the history of our movement.

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Squatting is a powerful force for land and housing reclamation in Spain 💥

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Squatting is a powerful force for land and housing reclamation in Spain 💥

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Who has enough? Who needs more? Who needs to give something up? 

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Who has enough? Who needs more? Who needs to give something up? 

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Art by Loisse Ledres

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What values come forward in this community? What's missing? What feels right? 

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What values come forward in this community? What's missing? What feels right? 

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if we had
a different economy
I would join
a traveling circus 🎪
theater 🎭
for the people
Elon Musk
failed to launch
a new moon 🌕 today
again
my dog’s 🐶 sweater
a hilarious terror
like rabbits 🐰 honking
no more
capitalism
with my coffee ☕
tomorrow we used to fear
student loan debt 💸
until we sailed
the Salish sea 🌊
to Jubilee Jubilee
no more borders
to cross
just laughing children 🚸
who feast upon
fruits of revolution
food with friends
consensual hugs 🤗 hey Upstream
i love Mondays again
we are after
the work of living
with basic needs met
we see you Worcester
we build the south
with a Nolia Clap 👏🏾 do I hear David Ferris
leading song?
we are electrified 🔌
to reclaim democratic
movements
from seed to acorn
sapling to tree 🌳 while Esther
orbits East Bay
taking up space 🌌
for joy
for culture
for pleasure
post growth
post capitalism
post carceral if we had
a different economy
an abolitionist economy
we would find
the breakout rooms
open to creative wildfire ❤️‍🔥 burning or maybe we’d just go 🐡ing

By Mike Strode

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How do we inspire our people to be excited about governing, expressing agency, and making self-determined choices? 

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How do we inspire our people to be excited about governing, expressing agency, and making self-determined choices? 

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What are lineages, stories, myths that need to be brought forward to anchor us? 

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What are lineages, stories, myths that need to be brought forward to anchor us? 

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What is important that we center and develop in our leadership?

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What is important that we center and develop in our leadership?

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What cultural methods, rituals, and practices hold us in repair and move us reparative action?

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What cultural methods, rituals, and practices hold us in repair and move us reparative action?

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How do we get mastery in agility and adaptability? 

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How do we get mastery in agility and adaptability? 

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What values hold us together as a network and a movement? 

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What values hold us together as a network and a movement? 

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Art by Chiara Galimberti

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Excited to offer the New Way Radar this January! A personal development workshop series for cooperators. :)

-Rebecca from Round Sky Solutions

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Round Sky. Personal Development workshop 2022 (1)

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Shout out to the people of New Orleans and Cooperation New Orleans for this beautiful description of the worker cooperatives here.

-Rebecca Fisher-McGinty

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Recently, to make ends meet as my rent increased and the prices of and have climbed, I have begun busing tables on the weekends. There are holes in my floors and holes in my shoes and a flock of cooing pigeons living in the eaves of my shotgun palace, yet someone must earn money, for the pigeons cannot.

I find myself in good company: Nearly everyone in this city has worked in the service industry in some capacity, the grinding engine of New Orleans' economy, often only to leave work after a long shift thinking of bills and debts yet to be paid. It's also true that in New Orleans it is all too common to see large and faceless corporations masquerading as local institutions-be it the "boutique hotel" affiliated with , the Airbnbs owned by (villian locals, that is-the company is based out of San Francisco ), or the restaurants that are part of larger restaurant "groups," all the while reaping massive rewards from their exploitative relationship with New Orleans' workers.

Thanars heard a new bar and restaurant called Velveteen was hiring, and went in for an interview. While she was there, the owners explained that the stylish spot-on the corner of Bayou Road and Broad Street, formerly home to Pirogues -had been founded with the express intention of becoming a worker-owned cooperative. If her trial period went well, the position could lead to part-ownership of the business. She left the interview with a new job and literature on cooperatives that the founding owners, Amber Rowley and Brendan Gordon , had given her.

First, a primer. Worker-owned cooperatives are businesses that are, you guessed it, owned by the workers. Workers often pay a membership fee which is returned to them if they leave the cooperative. Aside from legal ownership of the business and its property, workers participate in decision-making and accrue "patronages"-i.e. profits, which are divisible based on a formula devised by the cooperative. Worker-owned co-ops may also follow the seven cooperative principles : voluntary and open membership; democratic member control; members' economic participation; autonomy and independence; education, training, and information; cooperation among cooperatives; and concern for community.

In the past two years, Bellegarde Bakery (purveyor of the highly-sought-after picnic baguettes, and other glutenous delights) has joined the ranks of Pagoda Café , which is currently transitioning to worker-ownership, and , a new business co-founded by a former employee of Pirogues. In the older guard, New Orleans East is home to , a growers and marketing cooperative active since 2011, and Uptown resides , a tech support company (and ANTIGRAVITY advertiser) established in 2002. While these are only a tiny collection among the massive array of businesses in New Orleans, the recent swelling in number suggests a renewed interest in co-ops, and perhaps the promise of more to come.

For many trying to uplift worker-owned co-ops, the sphinx in the path of co-op proliferation is the lack of awareness of the cooperative model.

In Cooperatives of New Orleans , which looks at the history of co-ops in the Crescent City, author Anne Gessler argues that the social aid and pleasure clubs that have existed in New Orleans for centuries also fit into this cooperative framework, as well as mutual aid groups and even community gardens, which function as part of a cooperative economy focused on sharing resources rather than centering profit above all else.

" There's myths that cooperatives aren't profitable, that they're pet projects, that only white people use them, or that they're isolated to consumer co-ops like grocery stores. But there are so many ways that you can do cooperative practices in businesses that create shared equity. And those models can be very successful ," says Tamah Yisrael . Yisrael runs a values-driven financial management and accounting company, and works with Cooperation New Orleans .

Cooperation New Orleans helps with loan applications for fledgling collectives, offers training, and conducts community outreach and education around cooperatives. They also have a loan fund run in partnership with Seed Commons , a national organization that provides collateral-free loans to community and worker-owned cooperatives.

"I think one of the biggest issues I find with our work is that business owners just don't know this is an option," says David Gray , who works for Project Equity , a nonprofit that helps established businesses (including Bellegarde) transition to employee ownership. Gray, a kind and patient worker-cooperative expert, spoke with me via Zoom after spending a long day in meetings. He says that many people he works with are interested in transitioning to cooperatives, but are not aware of legal pathways to do so. "They [business owners] think, how are their employees ever going to find the money to [buy them out]; or they might think, I don't know how to structure this ," says Gray.

Surprisingly, in this gristle-and-bone strewn capitalist wasteland, there are ways for businesses to finance transitions from traditional ownership to worker ownership without burying the new owners in debt. "What occurs when the business owner sells to the employees, that business takes out a loan to pay off the selling, and the profits from the business pay down the loan. And so there's oftentimes no requirement for personal guarantee. The employees are not financially liable and they don't need to come up with the money," says Gray. In fact, he reports there is often not a need for credit checks from the employees.

Bellegarde Bakery used Project Equity's service to conduct a feasibility study on the bakery's potential for longevity, profitability, and debt capacity, and the nonprofit connected them with Mission Driven Finance for the loan they needed to buy out the previous owner. The feasibility study ensures that the new cooperative has the resources to succeed post-transition.

Mollie Sciacca , the general manager at Bellegarde, described herself as "vaguely familiar" with cooperatives prior to Bellegarde's transition. She got involved with the process during the feasibility study, then helped facilitate the conversations with the rest of her co-workers once the study found that selling to the workers was a viable option.

"I think the biggest thing initially was helping everybody to understand what was going on," says Sciacca. The conversations apparently went well, as all five eligible employees signed on to become part owners. Two more are on track to become worker-owners next year.

Alex Valore , the lead bread baker at Bellegarde, says his part of the transition involved "a lot of practice and patience... trying to decide how we wanted to structure things and how we wanted to self-govern our own company." Valore had thought of starting his own business, but like many service-industry workers, assumed that this was a distant dream. Now he is the part owner of a successful, established bakery that sells bread to clients all over the city.

While paying down their loan, Bellegarde is working towards meeting internal goals for their emergency fund and worker capital accounts. After that, the employee-owners can receive dividends based on the patronage formula they worked out with their accountants. "Everyone has this renewed sense of pride of ownership in their jobs," says Sciacca.

"I didn't want to sell Pagoda to strangers," says owner Shana Sassoon , "and I didn't want to just shut it down [during the initial stages of the COVID pandemic] and profit from the real estate. I wanted to recognize the way staff has helped shape our business. I met with the staff and proposed that I was willing to reopen if there was interest in moving towards a worker-owner model, and luckily there was."

Sassoon got in touch with Cooperation New Orleans, who provided Pagoda with meeting facilitation, training on cooperative structures, assistance with their loan application, and connecting Pagoda with other cooperatives.

"For me, I'm doing what I love in the neighborhood I was born and raised in," says future employee-owner Kenionne Marrero, who's worked in New Orleans' service industry since 2005. Marrero's first job was working at the City Park Burger King location.

Claire Morgan adds that the transition has involved "Taking on responsibilities that our current owner was handling mostly by herself... figuring out who would be involved and how we wanted the business to operate."

The loan that facilitated the sale to the new worker-owners will be structured as a property loan on Pagoda's two buildings; the co-op will pay a monthly mortgage and manage the loan.

Only one block over, Velveteen started their cooperative from scratch. Founders Amber Rowley and Brendan Gordon started Velveteen together with the express intention of onboarding employees as new worker-owners. Funding their new venture, however, was difficult.

"Money would have helped," says Rowley. Rowley's mother was an early investor in the business, while Gordon used his savings and liquidated his retirement fund (a resource many people in this country are ) to fund the business and renovations to the space, much of which Gordon did himself. Rowley continued working outside the bar until Velveteen opened its doors, since the business had no income until that point. Rowley worked at Pirogues for two years until it closed during the pandemic.

"I've been interested in land grants, land trusts, and the collectivisation of community assets for a while," says Gordon. In many ways, neighborhood spots like Pirogues community assets. T heir kitchens cook food when the power goes out , and they function as meeting places when there are vanishingly few spots to hang out for cheap (let alone free). Accordingly, Velveteen gives discounts to their regulars who carried over from the Pirogues days. "They call it 'the clubhouse,'" says Rowley. Some of the regulars have been coming to the bar for years.

Though the new employees (Velveteen opened in spring: All of its workers are new) are not yet fully worker-owners, they are going through an accelerated process to become legal co-owners, with about eight employees on ownership track. In the meantime, Velveteen is attempting to practice direct democracy and holds regular meetings where staff vote on major decisions, including rate of pay. All staff earn the same wage, regardless of their role.

"U sually dishwashers make nothing," says Aubin Leroy, who runs the Velveteen kitchen. Advancement in that role is rare, despite its inarguable necessity. "If you don't have prep, you don't have a line. And if the dishwasher doesn't show up, you're in a mess," Leroy adds.

With long hours on your feet each shift, working through sweaty and stressful conditions to make money for the owner, many people with talent and passion burn out of the job. Leroy was previously considering leaving the industry. "Even if a place is paying you decently, it will never be place," says Leroy.

By contrast, Leroy says the horizontal model allows workers more freedom to advocate for themselves. "If we want to do something, let's vote on it and do it. It's everybody's space. I can grow in the space and it leads to something... I think that's important. As opposed to making the rich richer."

Thanars, one of the new bartenders, adds, "I feel like it does work better. It makes people feel like they're not being taken advantage of, [like] they're being heard."

Cooperatives explicitly have the goal of benefiting their employees. Yet, lest you think that the free market will doom such soft-hearted enterprises to failure, there is evidence that cooperatives can withstand stressors better than traditional businesses. One showed that worker-owned cooperatives experienced fewer layoffs during the pandemic-instead, they reduced hours or worker pay in order to keep their employees, or redistributed funds. And there is some evidence that worker co-ops can have higher profit margins than traditional businesses-one small showed that "in 2013, the average private firm had a profit margin of 5.9%, while the margin for worker cooperatives was 6.4%."

"Most groups of friends work cooperatively together all the time. We were just codifying it in the hiring and business structure," says Brite. "I was looking for alternatives to the current corporate system we have. We had already started as a business, but when the U.S. Federation of Worker Co-ops started, that was a big help."

C4 is considered a founding member of the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) and Anna Boyer , one of C4's worker-members, serves on the federation's board. Because C4's product is technical know-how, the company did not require outside capital to get its start. "The primary expense was labor, and in those early days, our workers did not pay themselves very much or very often. This is a privilege that most workers could not manage today," says Boyer.

C4 utilizes a non-hierarchical structure, where most decisions are made with a majority vote. Everyday decisions in the company's sub-departments are decided by workers in that department, and questions that impact the entire company are decided by the whole collective. "The general philosophy we use for decision-making is that the group who is impacted by the decision gets to make the decision, and all members within that group have equal power," says Boyer. Any member can raise objections and bring departmental issues to a company-wide vote, since all employees are part-owners and therefore share risk as well as profit.

As anyone who's been in a collective can tell you, direct democracy can be tricky. "Early on, we had loooong meetings (like, we'd ruin your whole Saturday) every month to make a lot of decisions about everything," remembers Boyer. But thankfully those days are long past. Meetings now are far shorter, and on a quarterly basis.

In Boyer's time working for C4 and the USFWC, she says more and more people she encounters are familiar with cooperatives. Additionally, more funding options are available to start-ups. "A lot of lending capital available to cooperatives comes from investments from other successful cooperatives," says Boyer.

Despite the growth of worker-owned co-ops, the industry remains small-the Democracy at Work Institute 's 2021 state of the sector report stated that the median size of the cooperatives in their study was six workers, and there are likely under 1,000 such co-ops in the country. Similarly, though the growth of unions in the retail and grocery sector has increased in the number of workplaces covered, union membership on the whole in the United States has overall continued to decline despite an uptick in support.

"I think it's a history of an attack on the working class," says Rebecca Lurie , who runs the Community and Worker Ownership Project at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studie s.

Though Lurie sees worker-owned cooperatives as compatible with all types of labor organizing, they have encountered organizers who are hostile to the idea of worker-ownership, considering it antithetical to unionism. However, Lurie sees the cooperative economy as fighting for ownership for workers, rather than letting private equity "run the game."

"We've now acquiesced all the running of things to the owners," Lurie says, and sees a lot of laws governing unions in the United States as ultimately structured within a deeply unequal system.

From cooperative economies, workers stand to gain agency in their workplaces, in the face of intersecting oppressions. New Orleans remains a deeply unequal city , with a steep racial wealth gap ; co-ops can allow people without substantial personal wealth or access to credit-particularly Black potential business owners , who face intense discrimination when applying for loans-the chance to become business owners who accrue equity in a way that workers without an ownership stake cannot. Cooperative members are also peers-Lurie mentions in the wake of a family tragedy, for instance, workers may find community in their co-owners that they would not in a traditional workplace (not to mention flexibility to take bereavement leave).

And there is grief all around us. To be even remotely conscious in these times means an awareness of living between successive catastrophes: viral, economic, and climatic. After one such apocalypse, the BP oil spill in 2010, New Orleans saw the creation of a new co-op, VEGGI. In 2011, VEGGI started as a vocational training program in aquaponics and sustainable micro-farming, targeting people in New Orleans East's Vietnamese community who lost their fishing livelihoods.

Eleven years later, VEGGI's workers make delectable tofu and soymilk, and grow herbs and produce sold at New Orleans farmers markets and directly to restaurants. There are six growers in the cooperative; the farmers pay into the cooperative by paying one quarter of their profits, keeping the remaining 75%. The co-op's share then goes to pay for supplies, bills, and other overhead expenses. With the cooperative, the growers have access to a well-known brand, staff to work the farmers markets, marketing resources, and land.

"It is very difficult in the state of Louisiana to be an accredited cooperative. Probably the biggest hurdle is the state to recognize this type of model," says Edwards.

The new worker-owners at both Velveteen and Bellegarde also mentioned that finding an attorney experienced in cooperative law Louisiana law was challenging. In some countries such as , , and , cooperatives are managed with special laws, even (in the case of Spain) as a third sector, distinct from corporations and nonprofits, which allows for more favorable regulation that encourages cooperatives to form.

"Through COVID we saw what co-ops could do in lean times," says Lurie. A 2020 survey of 142 U.S. cooperatives by the Democracy at Work Institute showed that 40% were involved with mutual aid networks. As the pandemic trudges on and the precarity of our position in an environmental sacrifice zone only increases, it is clear that strong communities are the most critical resource when crisis occurs.

While large corporations have lobbyists, cooperatives can work to advance their agendas locally. With members controlling their budget, a co-op might decide that they want to formally integrate community work by paying for time they spend organizing outside the cooperative, for things that ultimately benefit the collective and community. In our conversation, Lurie cites adrienne maree brown 's work Emergent Strategy : "what we practice at the small scale sets the pattern for the whole system."

Worker co-ops create opportunities for people to build equity as business owners who wouldn't otherwise be able to, to empower laborers in their workplaces, and practice direct democracy. Yet cooperatives are not perfect. They are businesses, and there is always the risk that the business will fail. For Boyer, the C4 collective member and board member of the USFWC, "a cooperative is not some utopia;" however, "it's the economic option in our society that is the most fair for the most people."

Cooperatives hold the potential to build power and equity among working people. They intrinsically build connections between people and empower them within their workplaces- perhaps if they flourish in New Orleans it can go beyond that too. Each passing day it's tempting to despair at the crushing problems surrounding us, like encroaching water on all sides. Cooperatives and their ethos of community remind us that there are solutions, and what's more, there are people around us who are implementing them.

As Lurie asks me, "Are we gonna be workers, or are we gonna run the shit we got?"
illustrations by Deanna Larmeu

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Recently, to make ends meet as my rent increased and the prices of groceries and utilities have climbed, I have begun busing tables on the weekends. There are holes in my floors and holes in my shoes and a flock of cooing pigeons living in the eaves of my shotgun palace, yet someone must earn [...]

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1) Kwanzaa December 28th (MC Art Gallery) w/ Tuttle Law for Annual Report Kwanzaa Celebration
2) Monthly Fannie and Ella Black Land Cooperative Hours (Hybrid)
3) Reviving Blk Cooperative Movement: Invitation to Black August LandCorps (Short) Documentary Narrative Film&Screening featured by Communicating Our Power
4)
Black Inclusion Accountability Task Force featured in part through a collaboration with the Intentional Community Conference

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WHAT ARE WE CELEBRATING IN THE NETWORK? 💟

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WHAT ARE WE CELEBRATING IN THE NETWORK? 💟

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Food for the Spirit is in the midst of organizing and engaging BIPOC farmers and food systems actors in NYS in farm bill advocacy, and we're looking forward to building with community storytellers in Buffalo and throughout the state to tell their food stories through a Public Narrative Training planned for early 2023.

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Food for the Spirit is in the midst of organizing and engaging BIPOC farmers and food systems actors in NYS in farm bill advocacy, and we're looking forward to building with community storytellers in Buffalo and throughout the state to tell their food stories through a Public Narrative Training planned for early 2023.

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- Bekah

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SELC also has me blushing over here with their new “Funding Economic Democracy” toolkit 💞 

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SELC also has me blushing over here with their new “Funding Economic Democracy” toolkit 💞 

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- Zac , NEC staff

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[PUBLIC] Legal Toolkit: Funding Economic Democracy (2022)

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BCDI just had a Bronx Futures panel event this past Friday. An event in coordination with #UnitedBlackEconomies fundraising campaign we have alongside Boston Ujima and The Black Farmer fund. We made merch and everything!

- Rainey, BCDI

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The Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative

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Shop - The Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative

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Shop What We Do Our Model BronXchange Economic Democracy Learning Center Planning & Policy Lab Bronx Innovation Factory Bronx-wide Plan Connect

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NASCO was recently awarded a Co-op Innovation award of $35,000 to help a 209-unit apartment building in Stockton, CA to transition to a group-equity cooperative. This project will pilot a scalable model where we’ll work with tenants’ unions and residents of apartment buildings facing displacement and gentrification to provide training, and give them the tools to buy the properties and own them through the group-equity model.

- Katherine

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Sustainable Economies Law Center just published our Seeds of Land Return guide, Legal tools to help you liberate land from the exploitative market and return it to communities of loving stewards

- Chris Tittle

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CEANYC is getting ready to re-launch its Cooperative Leadership Intensive after a 2y pause!

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CEANYC is getting ready to re-launch its Cooperative Leadership Intensive after a 2y pause!

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- Emilie Miyauchi

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Ohio’s Worker-Owned Network just held our second in-person meeting at community-owned Gem City Market in Dayton

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Ohio’s Worker-Owned Network just held our second in-person meeting at community-owned Gem City Market in Dayton

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- Johnathan Cleveland Owns

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Resource Generation members cohosted a workshop series with SE Principles Project this year! 

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Resource Generation members cohosted a workshop series with SE Principles Project this year! 

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Our members committed $95mil in grants to movements so far this year, and $13 mil so far to divest this year from Wall Street and reinvest in community and SE investments

- Nadav

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Fellowship with disabled and incarcerated artists 

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Fellowship with disabled and incarcerated artists 

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PeoplesHub just led our first online Artist in Residency fellowship with some disabled and incarcerated artists and we hope to launch this again in 2023 prioritizing disabled and incarcerated artists ✨

- Hope Ghazala

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Esther Choi, the PhD candidate who authored a report with NEC on regional SE published an article in NPQ last month:

- Lisa, NEC staff

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What is the meaning of the term "solidarity economy"? Because my graduate research is focused on the US solidarity economy movement, I often find myself answering this question in conversation with people from various walks of life.

I usually respond by emphasizing that the solidarity economy is a framework to network and expand existing alternatives to capitalism. To make the idea more concrete, I share examples of these practices, such as worker-owned cooperatives, community land trusts, community-supported agriculture, and mutual aid networks. I explain that these practices share a set of values, including solidarity and cooperation, equity, participatory democracy, sustainability, and pluralism. ¹

While this brief explanation seems to get people's minds whirring with new connections, I have undertaken a longer journey to reach my own understanding of the solidarity economy.

The Economics of the Korean Diaspora

I was born in Los Angeles to Korean immigrants, and my understanding of economy is rooted in the collectivist traditions of my heritage.

As an ethnic studies PhD candidate, I have approached my study of the US solidarity economy movement with the understanding that it is not a new formation. Rather, it is rooted in modes of survival forged by the communities most impacted by the violence and exclusion of the capitalist system.

I was born in Los Angeles to Korean immigrants, and my understanding of economy is rooted in the collectivist traditions of my heritage. My parents grew up in agrarian poverty during the immediate aftermath of the Korean War. In the 1980s, my dad's side of the family immigrated to the US, following my uncle who had received a visa to work as a tae-kwon-do instructor. When they first arrived, my dad worked as a gas station attendant, while my mom waited tables and assembled parts at a factory in downtown Los Angeles.

Our family depended on immigrant survival networks and cultural practices such as rotating credit circles to save for their future. Shortly after I was born, my parents were able to open an auto repair shop in Koreatown and buy a house in the suburbs, which they chose for its good public schools. Although our financial situation fluctuated and my parents did not have health insurance, my sister and I grew up with access to many class privileges, especially when it came to our education.

But our family's struggle to realize the "American Dream" came at a heavy cost. We did not have the knowledge or tools to understand the support that my dad needed when he fell into a deep depression as he struggled through the isolation and shame of debt and unfulfilled dreams. Just as I was beginning my senior year of high school, my dad ended his life.

Unlearning the Economics of Racial Capitalism

That same year, I was introduced to the study of economics. The teacher, a white man, would decry the evils of socialism at the start of class each day and had a "Communist" flag on the wall that read, "The beatings will continue until productivity improves." He rigorously indoctrinated us into the core principles of capitalist economics-that society is made up of self-interested individuals, each maximizing their own interests under conditions of scarcity.

[In college,] essential aspects of life-such as community, collectivity, and care-were rendered as nothing more than 'deadweight loss.'

When I entered college, fully funded by financial aid, I decided to major in economics and became enchanted by the idea that we could use equations and graphs to determine society's most efficient outcomes. But I struggled with the fact that essential aspects of life-such as community, collectivity, and care-were rendered nothing more than " deadweight loss." We never uttered the word capitalism in our classes, or socialism except as a failed idea. I did not see Marx on an economics syllabus until I studied abroad at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

At the same time, my college ethnic studies classes introduced me to an alternative vocabulary with which to understand the world and gave me permission to draw upon my lived experiences as a source of expertise.

I also began to understand how my immigrant community's grasp on the American Dream, however tenuous at times, was contingent on the extraction of resources from Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities within a larger system of racial capitalism. I learned how mass incarceration maintained systems of racial domination rooted in slavery, and that the myth of meritocracy was contingent upon the disposability of those most marginalized by the country's unsustainable economic system.

After graduating, I explored different avenues of social change work, including public interest law, nonprofit social services, and tenant organizing. I also spent a year in South Korea, joining protests against the construction of a naval base in Jeju and volunteering with the Korean House for International Solidarity, a Seoul-based nonprofit which advocates for the rights of workers of multinational corporations.

In 2014, I began a PhD program in ethnic studies, during which I intended to learn to research in tandem with my activist commitments. Once a graduate student, however, I quickly learned that my graduate program was designed to professionalize us to become competitive academics who would vie for scarce tenure-track professorships.

Solidarity Economy Through an Ethnic Studies Lens

I first learned about the solidarity economy during graduate school, through the US Solidarity Economy Network (USSEN). ² From multiple researchers and educators within this network, I learned that the term, solidarity economy, emerged from movements in Latin America and Europe in the 1980s and 1990s to build networks to support existing alternatives to neoliberal capitalism. ³

Learning about the solidarity economy was a lifeline, at a time when I felt overwhelmed and disempowered by the totalizing nature of academic critique, which seemed to relegate possibilities for social transformation to an abstract future after the revolution.

My ethnic studies perspective also helped me identify needed challenges to the evolving discourse of solidarity economy in the US context, particularly around the relationship between race and property. While solidarity economy efforts often idealize collective ownership as a solution to capitalist exploitation, ownership in the US economy has always been structured by racial and colonial domination.

In "Whiteness as Property," Cheryl Harris demonstrates how the US judicial establishment categorically disqualified Indigenous claims to land from the "rules of first possession and labor as a basis for property rights," while reducing the selfhood and labor capacity of enslaved Africans to extensions of white property. Harris argues that law has constructed whiteness as a bundle of exclusive rights, including the right to own property, and into a form of property itself, whose value is expected to grow over time.

Growing Institutionalization of the Solidarity Economy Movement

Since the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of activists and organizations in the US have come to identify with the solidarity economy movement, seeding new organizations, funding strategies, and public sector initiatives and becoming more closely integrated with economic justice platforms in electoral politics. As the movement becomes more institutionalized, it risks recentering whiteness as property in its efforts to build a post-capitalist economy, rather than understanding racial justice as central to any efforts to transform capitalism.

My research collaboration with the New Economy Coalition (NEC), a US-based nonprofit coalition of over 200 member organizations, has been an important part of my journey to understand the solidarity economy movement. The coalition has evolved since its founding in 2012 toward a solidarity economy vision that aims to center the leadership of frontline communities.

Between June 2020 and July 2021, I collaborated with a group of NEC staff and organizers based in different regions of the US to collect case studies that would inform NEC's strategic shift toward a "regional solidarity economy ecosystems" framework. ⁴ NEC left the meaning of "regional" open to multiple interpretations: ecologically by land, climate, or watershed; politically through borders and voting boundaries; economically by markets and shared material conditions; or culturally, by our traditions, ethnicities, and migration pathways.

I learned an incredible amount from this collaborative process and from the many organizers who shared insights into the different challenges and opportunities they faced as they worked to grow their regional solidarity economy ecosystems. I also realized the limits of my understanding of the informal and relational dynamics shaping these ecosystems, and how my research privileged efforts that take place through formal infrastructures, such as nonprofits and cooperatives. Together with NEC staff and other research partners, I sought to be honest about the limitations of this research and frame our findings as a tool for ongoing collaboration.

Efforts to institutionalize solidarity economy on a national scale may occur out of a desire to resource and grow the movement, but they can also recenter those with the most capital and status to define the term, while erasing the formative work happening in spaces that are removed from institutional status. As an academic, I had to confront my own complicity with research practices that extract knowledge from marginalized communities and organizers in ways that disengage that knowledge from an ongoing process of collective transformation.

Telling the Story of What Is Possible Now

The solidarity economy is one of many ways to describe how efforts for systemic transformation can be grounded in present relationships-based on genuine trust, solidarity, collective theorizing, and practice-rather than credentials or capital. Even though my next step feels undefined, as I transition out of academia, my purpose has never felt clearer. I know I'm not alone as I find many others who are engaged in developing alternative structures to support the necessary work of researching, teaching, and healing our economy. Collectively, we are experts of the economic systems we are struggling to survive, and we all have a part to play.
Notes

1. My understanding has been informed by the US Solidarity Economy Network (USSEN), which defines solidarity economy as "an alternative framework for economic development grounded in practice and the following principles: solidarity and cooperation; equity in all dimensions (race, ethnicity, gender, class, etc.); social and economic democracy; sustainability; pluralism (not a one-size-fits-all approach), puts people and planet first."

2. In preparation for the first US Social Forum in 2007, Emily Kawano, then Executive Director of the Center for Popular Economics in Amherst, MA, brought together a committee of activists to organize a track of workshops focused on the solidarity economy. Many of the organizers had first encountered the solidarity economy during the world social forums, the first of which took place in Brazil in 2001. Following the workshops, participants agreed to draft the beginnings of a permanent solidarity network, USSEN, which would serve as the US representative for the RIPESS (Réseau intercontinental de promotion de l'économie sociale solidaire, "International network for the promotion of social solidarity economy" in English) network, which had formed a decade before.

3. Luis Razeto in Chile and Jean-Louis Laville in France are widely credited with coining the term in an academic context, although the framework is grounded in a much wider network of practices envisioned and led by those most impacted by capitalist exploitation.

4. Thank you to NEC staff Tori Kuper, Anand Jahi, and Eli Feghali for working closely with me to design and carry out this research project, as well as all the people and organizations who made this research possible through their feedback, interviews, survey responses, and ongoing work to realize a solidarity economy, including (in alphabetical order): Kelly Baker, Adriana Barraza, Yoni Blumberg, Ivy Brashear, Ariel Brooks, Salena Burch, Mario Ceballos, Andrew Delmonte, Sona Desai, Shavaun Evans, Eli Feghali, Sachie Hayakawa, Cassia Herron, Julia Ho, Emily Kawano, Nati Linares, Abdiel López, Ashley Miller, Jeff Olson, Francisco Pérez, Martin Richards, Derrick Robinson, jean-huy Tran, Leila Tamari, Chris Tittle, and Zen Trenholm.

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My Learning Process Toward a Real Solidarity Economy - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly

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What is the meaning of the term "solidarity economy"? Because my graduate research is focused on the US solidarity economy movement, I often find myself answering this question in conversation with people from various walks of life. I usually respond by emphasizing that the solidarity economy is a framework to network and expand existing alternatives to capitalism.

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Nonprofit Democracy Network just wrapped season 2 of our 15-month Collaborate to Co_liberate community of practice!

- Chris Tittle

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$75k to BIPOC Co-ops in the Cooperative Fund (CoFUND)

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$75k to BIPOC Co-ops in the Cooperative Fund (CoFUND)

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CoFED launched and completed our very first round of regranting funds through our Cooperative Fund (CoFUND) through which we raised and redistributed $75K among 13 BIPOC-led coops around the country! Also, we celebrated 10 years last year and our team is the biggest it’s ever been! More hearts to lead us in this work 🔥✊🏼

- Suparna Kudesia

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Power Shift 2023 Convergence happening April 6-8 in New Orleans

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Power Shift 2023 Convergence happening April 6-8 in New Orleans

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Power Shift 2023 Convergence happening April 6-8 in New Orleans (Bvlbancha)! Would love to see everybody there <333 https://www.powershift2023.org/

- Kayla Soren

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Solidarity Economy Principles & Practices 

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Solidarity Economy Principles & Practices 

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The Solidarity Economy Principles & Practices project is launched with a TRILINGUAL website in French, Spanish and English. Come to our breakout at the end of the hour to learn more!

- Rebecca kemble

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Solidarity Economy Principles and Practices

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Solidarity economy principles and practices help us build liberation cultures, democratic organizations, and accountable relationships.

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Share photos, links, campaigns you're working on, random memes! 

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Share photos, links, campaigns you're working on, random memes! 

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Anything you want to share with the network :)

shout out to the Canadian Worker Co-op Federation for this A+ meme 💥

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This is an open space for us to share reflections & appreciations

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This is an open space for us to share reflections & appreciations

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Don't forget to put your name & contact info if you want people to follow up

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Don't forget to put your name & contact info if you want people to follow up

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ie - this is gabby, email me anytime at gabby@neweconomy.net!

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 The Post Growth Institute wrapped it's FIRST EVER Post Growth Fellowship including fellows in this call!! 💯 

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 The Post Growth Institute wrapped it's FIRST EVER Post Growth Fellowship including fellows in this call!! 💯 

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- Pricilla, PGI

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Launched in September 2021, the world's first Post Growth Fellowship brought together 24 post-growth activists, researchers, artists, and entrepreneurs from a range of backgrounds, fields, cultures, histories, and geographies for a 12-month content and community-building collaboration. Here, the Post Growth Institute's Fellowship support team, alongside the Fellows themselves, reflect on the rich and diverse learnings from the inspiring inaugural year.

One of the most surprising and interesting realizations from this Fellowship is that post growth research and activism can feel isolating - even for those working in organizations or as part of other fellowships. Having spaces to connect in vulnerable ways to share the loneliness of that journey is powerful .

Relatedly, we note the importance of nurturing individuals. Just because the answer to our individualistic tendencies in capitalism is collectivist action, it does not mean that the only antidote is to create collectivist practices. People are often burned out, so it's essential to instead individually nurture and support leaders around the world in their collectivist work, in a collective community.

Through this Fellowship we have seen that people have concrete needs which, when met, can make their work easier and more fruitful. The Offers and Needs process - just that simple focus on matching and resourcing - can be transformative. One Fellow, for example, was able to provide digital marketing consultancy for another's fledgling social enterprise, and numerous in-person connections were made as Fellows offered each other accommodation in their hometowns.

Fellows deeply appreciated being supported in telling their stories - whether through editorial collaboration, interviews, or simply open conversation. Rather than having their voices mediated and sculpted to fit around a predetermined agenda, content creation and sharing was led by the Fellows themselves. This led to the emergence of authentic, insightful articles and videos told from diverse perspectives, and ensured that Fellows always retained control of their stories.

As one Fellow shared during an engagement call:

The blog post you wrote [based on our interview] has been awesome. I can't tell you how many times I have sent it to people. And when people saw it, they got excited and contacted me. I really appreciate it.

​​Fascinatingly, we did not define 'post growth' at the outset of the Fellowship, yet this did not create barriers to participation. We were able to validate that a group of people from all over the world, working on disparate topics and fields, can come together under the guise of 'post growth' and feel comfortable in the shared understanding of its overarching significance. What's more, over the course of the year, some Fellows have begun to use the term explicitly in their work. This highlights the necessity for fluidity of language when dealing with cross cultural explorations of sustainable futures.

This learning is particularly pertinent to regions beyond the Global North, from which the majority of post growth discourse emerges and on which it focuses. While their work is not always labeled 'post growth', Fellows in the Global South have long been exploring alternative economics outside capitalist, growth-based frameworks yet often aren't recognized - and these approaches often connect with traditional Indigenous perspectives, as well as those of community development workers.

Starting out without fixed definitions set the tone for a culture of openness to learning - and, in turn, reduced the potential for tension and conflict. From this place of trust, people felt calm and safe enough to explore, to question, and at times to disagree in a healthy, non-confrontational way that allowed for the emergence of insight and potential new pathways.

Robert Wanalo, our Director of Movement Building, was also one of the Fellows, providing invaluable ongoing advice based on his experiences. Robert requested from the very beginning that we focus on relationship building, first of all with each other as a team. And, once the team got to know each other and felt comfortable as a collective, we began nurturing connections with individual Fellows, and then modeled that focus so that Fellows could build relationships with each other. This happened through regular engagement calls that took the form of Offers and Needs Markets, Warm Data methodologies, and networking breakout sessions. In other words, we spent time making sure that the Fellowship did not feel transactional.

At the same time, in acknowledgement that many fellowships can feel extractive, we decided to lower the bar and reduce the content requirement to just one piece per Fellow for the entire year. At some point we realized that the greater purpose of the Post Growth Fellowship is how we can give to and support Fellows - so that they, in turn, can continue and deepen their groundbreaking work.

1. Republish any of the Fellowship articles or videos on your own blog, website, publication, or platform. All of our content is published under a Creative Commons license.

2. Join the Post Growth Institute's cooperative social media service to help promote the Fellowship, as well as lots of other post-growth aligned content and organizations. You'll receive email alerts when articles are shared on social media.

3. Chip in $US20 to help us convene the 2023 Fellowship.

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Learnings and Reflections from the First Post Growth Fellowship

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Launched in September 2021, the world's first Post Growth Fellowship brought together 24 post-growth activists, researchers, artists, and entrepreneurs from a range of backgrounds, fields, cultures, histories, and geographies for a 12-month content and community-building collaboration. Here, the Post Growth Institute's Fellowship support team, alongside the Fellows themselves, reflect on the rich and diverse learnings from the inspiring inaugural year.