Cooperative

Produce For The People

October 24, 2020 Jacquelyn Voghel, Daily Hampshire Gazette. Create! Cooperative, Immigrant Rights, Massachusetts, Organic Farming

Hatfield, MA - For many farmers, the 2020 season has posed numerous difficulties: an ongoing drought, early frost and a need for extra public health precautions amid the pandemic, to name a few. But in a year marked by challenges, Riquezas del Campo farm, now in its second season, is growing. The immigrant-led, worker-owned cooperative farm got started later in the growing season when it started in 2019 and had just one customer, said Lorena Moreno, a founding member of the farm. This year, the farm, situated on the Northampton-Hatfiled line, has multiplied its sales around four times over, is attracting new members and selling to more vendors.

22 Mayors Want PG&E To Become A Customer-Owned Co-Op

November 17, 2019 Marisa Lagos, KQED. Create! Cooperative, Corporatism, Energy, New Economy

California - A coalition of public officials representing 5 million Californians — including 22 mayors — wants to see PG&E emerge from bankruptcy as a customer-owned cooperative. And they're asking state regulators to help. In a letter sent Tuesday to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and Gov. Gavin Newsom, the group of mayors and county supervisors argues that the two factions currently vying for control of the bankrupt utility are made up of "Wall Street titans" concerned only with "a short-term desire to maximize financial gain," and that a co-op structure would go further toward making PG&E a financially stable company capable of addressing its operational challenges while also regaining the public trust.

One Of America’s Poorest Cities Has A Radical Plan

December 1, 2018 Jordan Heller, Huffington Post. Create! Cooperative, New Economy, Worker Rights

Cleveland ― The last time Tymika Thomas’ name appeared in newsprint was in connection with an elaborate 2012 robbery in the Cleveland suburb of Wickliffe in which Thomas and two accomplices stole numerous handguns and more than $30,000 in cash from a bookie. Thomas, who knew the victim and was well aware that he kept a large amount of money in his home, took the man out for a night on the town while her partners broke into his house. Thomas and the man returned to find two armed robbers wearing ski masks. They absconded with the man’s possessions and took Thomas as a hostage.

Can Worker Cooperatives Alleviate Income Inequality?

January 24, 2015 Sarah Jaffee, www.occupy.com Create! Cooperative, Income inequality

When Henry Lezama joined Roca Mia Construction, his new colleagues were still in the process of deciding what kind of business, exactly, it would be. On New York’s Rockaway peninsula after Hurricane Sandy washed through, there was plenty of work to do. Entire homes had been destroyed; basements and ground floors needed to be gutted and rebuilt. Would the workers do demolition, landscaping or cleanup? The one thing they were sure of was that Roca Mia would be a cooperative: The employees, as a group, would own the business. “From that day forward, we all made decisions together — on buying insurance or tools or accepting new contracts,” Lezama says.

Denver’s Immigrant Taxi Drivers Build Unionized Workers Co-op

November 4, 2014 Minsun Ji, www.labornotes.org Create! Cooperative, Labor Unions

This month 800 immigrant taxi drivers in Denver—from 24 different countries in Africa—joined the Communications Workers (CWA) Local 7777. They hope to break out of poverty and challenge the workplace abuse many endure working for private taxi companies. The drivers also voted to build a worker-owned taxi cooperative, as an alternative to the existing companies. The local union movement is supporting the effort. Due to precarious relationships with their employers, taxi workers have been building similar organizations around the country. In Washington, D.C., and Seattle, drivers have joined Teamsters locals; in Boston, the Steelworkers.

Worker Owned Cooperative Produces Independent Media

October 11, 2014 ImportantCool, www.importantcool.com Create! Cooperative, Journalism, Media

ImportantCool is a worker-owned journalism collective which will radically change the way the news is gathered, presented, and consumed. We will give readers, not editors, control over stories. Patrons will vote on which projects get funded and which get dropped. We are even giving readers the chance to vote on which stories and pictures are included in our dead tree digest, Paper Fetish, and it’s bi-annual photo-special insert, Radical Transparencies. At ImportantCool, you will control the news. In line with our core philosophy of radical transparency, ImportantCool will feature the Artefacts Cave, containing transcripts of interviews, documents, audio recordings, and any additional original source material behind our journalism.

Workers In Maine Buy Out Their Jobs

September 16, 2014 Rob Brown, Noemi Giszpenc and Brian Van Slyke, www.truth-out.org Create! Cooperative, Economic Democracy, Labor

On remote Deer Isle, Maine, the movement for a more just and democratic economy won a major victory this summer. More than 60 employees of three retail businesses - Burnt Cove Market, V&S Variety and Pharmacy, and The Galley - banded together to buy the stores and create the largest worker cooperative in Maine and the second largest in New England. Now the workers own and run the businesses together under one banner, known as the Island Employee Cooperative (IEC). This is the first time that multiple businesses of this size and scope have been merged and converted into one worker cooperative - making this a particularly groundbreaking achievement in advancing economic democracy.

A Living Laboratory Of Self-Management

June 22, 2014 Jordi Blanchar, www.theoccupiedtimes.org Create! Activism, Community, Cooperative, Democracy

The CSA Can Vies has been an Autonomous Social Centre (hence the acronym CSA) since it was squatted in 1997. It is situated in Sants, a predominantly working class district away from the cleansed and tourism-centred areas of downtown Barcelona. The building itself and the land where it sits are property of the Metropolitan Transport of Barcelona (TMB), a company owned by the city’s Council. Throughout its existence Can Vies has had a strong link with workers organisations, first as an outpatients clinic for the municipal transport workers, and then as the headquarters of the local branches of the CNT and CGT anarcho-syndicalist unions. In 1997, as a continuation of this historical legacy, the building was taken over by an assembly composed of squatters, activists and local neighbours, with the aim of setting up a self-organised social centre that would have deep roots in the local community

The Modern History of Venezuela: The Bolivarian Revolution

April 17, 2014 Paul Jay, www.therealnews.com Educate! Cesar Chavez, Cooperative, Finance and the Economy, Maduro, Venezuela

There has been social policies that have led to a very, very significant reduction of poverty and to greater degree of equality. Venezuela's not today an particularly equal society, but it's the least unequal in all of Latin America, which is the most unequal continent in the world. So that's not saying that much, but there has been a significant reduction of inequality. There has been a really significant transformation of popular political culture. And this is probably the most important thing that's happened over [incompr.] years. For most of the Venezuelan popular sectors, the political system was alien. It's something that they'd just given up hope on. They felt totally marginalized. They felt that they had no participation, no involvement, that the political system wasn't responding to their needs. And that has changed dramatically. People feel empowered. People feel like they can self-organize to get things done. They feel like they have a possibility of a say in their own lives. And that's huge, and that's really, I'd say, the most important thing that has happened over those years. The level of political participation and political organization in Venezuela can't compare with anything previously existing in Venezuela. There's a widespread level of grassroots organizations around health, around water, around educational issues about--. So that's--those are all huge gains.

Solutions to the Housing Crisis with Michael Carlson and Nancie Koerber

July 24, 2013 Podcast Cooperative, Economic Democracy, Finance and the Economy, Housing

The artificial inflation of the housing market, predatory lending practices and fraudulent behavior by Big Finance which created the collapse

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