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Cooperatives

On World Day, UN Hails Cooperatives As Drivers Of Sustainable Future

July 6, 2016 Staff, www.un.org ,
By Staff of UN News Centre - 2 July 2016 – Cooperatives are an old idea but more relevant than ever as they can be the drivers of a sustainable future, senior United Nations officials said on the International Day of Cooperatives today, urging Governments to create an enabling environment for these groups to thrive and grow. “Cooperatives play an important role in many societies,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his message on the Day, which this year is observed under the theme, “Cooperatives: The power to act for a sustainable future.”

The Mousai House: A Cooperative Vision For A New Creative Economy

July 3, 2016 Jennifer Bryant, www.thenextsystem.org
By Jennifer Bryant for the Next System Project. On a small scale, Mousai is laying the foundation for what Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard calls aCooperative Solidarity Commonwealth. She envisions this to be “a system of interlocking cooperative ownership structures in all industries and all sectors of the economy, where cooperatives and other community-based enterprises support one another by building linked supply chains, collaborating on projects, and sharing funding.” As a professor, economist, and author of the most comprehensive history of African-American cooperatives to date, Dr. Nembhard has spent years studying cooperatives as an economic survival strategy. The seeds of the next system have long been planted in low-income Black communities where cooperative principles and strategies are an integral part of everyday life. The Mousai House is one example of how cooperatives often begin informally to satisfy an economic or social need.

Assemblies Of The Commons Emerge In France

June 22, 2016 Maïa Dereva, www.geo.coop ,
By Maïa Dereva for Grassroots Economic Organizing - In France, the theme of “commons” as a possible structure for society re-emerged gradually since the late 90s and French books on the subject have been published since the 2000s. This question has been confined to the field of digital commons for a long time, and has expanded more and more in recent years into areas such as community gardens or food cooperatives. Events clearly identified as related to commons began to be organized in 2009 (“Brest in commons“) and are scattered over thirty territories in 2013.

Platform Cooperativism: What Is It?

June 17, 2016 Pam Brown, www.truth-out.org ,
By Pam Brown for Truthout - Left in the hands of Google or Facebook, the "commons" of all our data stand to enhance corporate wealth while creating a surveillance state. But what if the producers of all that content -- us -- developed platforms where users shared ownership of this data and played a role in governance? Could all that socially produced value be used for the common good? Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, says we could be on the verge of a great new tipping point of people power

Revisiting Public Banks And Worker-Owned Cooperatives

June 8, 2016 Matt Stannard, www.publicbankinginstitute.org , ,
By Matt Stannard for Public Banking Institute - Foreign corporations could sue to undermine US protections for consumers’ health, safety and financial security under a provision added to the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal (TPP) after executives of big banks pressed the nation’s chief trade negotiator, himself a former big-bank executive, to include it.

Being Black Still Barrier To Rural Cooperative Board Membership

June 1, 2016 John Farrell, www.ilsr.org , , ,
By John Farrell for ILSR - In 32 years, little has changed for electric cooperatives in the South. A recent study published by The Rural Power Project shared results of a similar survey (of 313 cooperative boards) and found just 90 blacks among the 3,000 board members. This 4% proportion of African American board leadership is in states where the black population represents more than 22% of the total. The disparity is even higher between men and women, with men representing 90% of board members but only half the population.

Co-operative Alternatives To Uber And Airbnb Developing

May 31, 2016 Cat Johnson, www.shareable.net ,
By Cat Johnson for Shareable - As “death star platforms” such as Airbnb and Uber continue their pursuit of global domination, an alternative is rising in its wake. Platform cooperatives, which share the value they create with the users they depend on, are on the rise. As Shareable co-founder Neal Gorenflo writes in How Platform Co-ops Can Beat Death Stars Like Uber to Create a Real Sharing Economy...

Ten Tech Worker Cooperatives & How To Start One

May 27, 2016 Staff, www.geo.coop ,
By Staff of Network of American Tech Worker Cooperatives - Below are the stories of 10 democratic tech enterprises, collected by theNetwork of American Tech Worker Cooperatives (NATWC) for a publication they released in 2009. Although these stories and the larger report of which they form a part are now 7 years old, we thought they were worth highlighting again now, given the marked increase in interest currently being shown in tech cooperatives. While the full report is embedded below, we have re-ordered the sections to give pride of place to the first person accounts of worker-owners, and followed them with the "how-to" section

Building A Cooperative Solidarity Commonwealth

May 25, 2016 Jessica Gordon Nembhard, www.thenextsystem.org ,
By Jessica Gordon Nembhard for The Next System Project - Before defining a cooperative commonwealth, it is important to describe its major features. Cooperatives are companies owned by the workers or the people who use their services. These member-owners form the company for a particular purpose: to satisfy an economic or social need, to provide a quality good or service (one that the market is not adequately providing) at an affordable price, or to create an economic structure to engage in needed production or facilitate more equal distribution.

Occupy Buenos Aires: Workers’ Movement Transformed City

April 11, 2016 Matt Kennard and Ana Caistor-Arendar, www.theguardian.com , , ,
By Matt Kennard and Ana Caistor-Arendar for The Guardian - The Hotel Bauen in downtown Buenos Aires looks like its best days are behind it. The art deco interior is crumbling, three of the lifts are out, and the whole place looks like it could do with a lick of paint. It’s an unlikely candidate to be at the centre of perhaps the most successful worker occupation movement in the world. Bauen was opened in 1978, thanks in no small part to a subsidy from the military junta of the time, to provide five-star accommodation for travellers to the World Cup held in the country that same year.

Retirement Co-op Ensures Seniors Aren’t Treated As Commodities

March 27, 2016 Sophie Chapelle, www.truthout.org , ,
By Sophie Chapelle (translated by Leslie Thatcher) for Truthout. Lyon, France - They didn't want to end up in a traditional retirement home. They wanted to remain the actors in their own lives. Seven years after their first discussions about how to age well, a group of retired people is starting to build the first co-op for the aging. Non-speculation, democracy and environmental concern are the foundations of the "Chamarel-Les Barges" project, located in a neighborhood of Vaulx-en-Velin, east of Lyon, France. The project is so inspiring that the bank has even conferred a 50-year loan to the founders, who are in their 60s. The rendezvous was set for the 15th floor in a Vaulx-en-Velin apartment building in the suburbs of Lyon. That's the location for the headquarters of the Chamarel Association (also known as the Residents' Cooperative Housing Residence of East Lyonnais) created in 2010, prompted by the first French co-op for older people.

Unions And Coops: How Workers Can Survive And Thrive

March 5, 2016 Brian Van Slyke, www.truth-out.org , ,
By Brian Van Slyke for Truthout - The year 2008 was when the big banks were bailed out, but it was also the year that catalyzed one group of window makers into democratically running their own factory. On the former industrial hub of Goose Island in Chicago, the employees of Republic Windows and Doors made headlines after they were locked out of their jobs just before Christmas without the back pay or severance they were owed. Organized by the United Electrical Workers Union, these displaced workers did exactly what the ownership hoped they wouldn't do.

Unions And Coops: How Workers Can Survive And Thrive

February 28, 2016 Brian Van Slyke, www.truthout.org , , ,
By Brian Van Slyke for TruthOut. United States - The year 2008 was when the big banks were bailed out, but it was also the year that catalyzed one group of window makers into democratically running their own factory. On the former industrial hub of Goose Island in Chicago, the employees of Republic Windows and Doors made headlines after they were locked out of their jobs just before Christmas without the back pay or severance they were owed. Organized by the United Electrical Workers Union, these displaced workers did exactly what the ownership hoped they wouldn't do. They refused to quietly accept the layoffs. Instead, the workers engaged in a sitdown strike at their factory, garnering local and national media attention. Eventually, the employees won the occupation, forcing Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase (Republic's primary creditors) to create a fund to give the workers their back pay, benefits, and health insurance.

Municipal Leaders Share Visions For Cities Building Community Wealth

February 18, 2016 John Duda, www.community-wealth.org ,
By John Duda for Comunity Wealth - How can cities redeploy their economic development resources to focus on building a more inclusive economy grounded in broad, local ownership? How can policymakers get strategies like worker cooperative development the support and resources needed to reach truly meaningful scale? How can collaborations between communities, local government, and key institutional stakeholders build pathways to economic equity for the people left behind by the traditional trickle-down economic playbook?

A Message Of Hope For The New Year

January 6, 2016 Jack Balkwill, www.dissidentvoice.org , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Jack Balkwill for Dissident Voice. There have been many victories and we need to celebrate them. Among the victories was stopping the northern portion of the KXL pipeline, various new laws in 24 states to prevent police violence and an increase inprosecutions of police who commit violence, and the increase in wages across the country and winning the critically important battle for net neutrality. These were people-powered victories that showed when we act together we have the power to defeat corporate interests. Another ongoing series of victories is seeing local people, who have not been involved in activism, working along with experienced, often young, energy activists, taking on big energy companies in an aggressive way. This is a victory.
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