Cooperatives

Electric Co-ops Are Well Situated To Lead The Green Energy Transition

June 3, 2022 Robert Raymond, Resilience. Create! Cooperatives, Energy, Green Economy, Public Banks

To maintain a livable climate, the United States must make immediate and drastic changes to its energy policies. Perhaps the most important change is the need for a transition away from fossil fuels toward cleaner, more renewable sources of energy. A new report by the Democracy Collaborative has found that community utilities — those that are publicly or cooperatively owned — are better suited for a green transition than their for-profit corporate counterparts. The report also found that many community utilities, as they currently exist, must be significantly reformed to fulfill their full potential. Electric co-ops operate in pretty much the same way as investor-owned utilities companies, like PG&E.

The Gig Economy Needs Worker-Owned Apps

April 27, 2022 In These Times. Create! Apps, Cooperatives, Silicon Valley, Worker Rights and Jobs

That’s the idea! Presently, the so-called sharing economy often evades employee and consumer protection regulations, which is bad news for workers. But the underlying technology has its advantages: By cutting out the Silicon Valley middlemen, platform co-ops are putting a 21st century spin on worker-owned enterprises. The Drivers Cooperative, for example, began offering rides through its Co-op Ride app in New York City in 2021 and redistributes profits back to its driver-owners with an annual dividend. It also assists with auto loan refinancing. Hosts on Fairbnb, meanwhile, each rent out a single vacation property and direct 50 percent of booking fees to community projects.

Democratizing Mississippi’s Electric Cooperatives

April 18, 2022 Makaelah Walters, Facing South. Create! Cooperatives, Democracy, Energy, Mississippi

In 1932, only about 10% of rural America was electrified, as big energy companies had long avoided investing in rural areas for fear it wasn't profitable. New Deal legislation offering federal assistance to Americans living without electricity led to the formation of electric cooperatives. Thanks to their efforts, 90% of homes, businesses and farms in rural America were electrified by 1936. Co-ops are not-for-profit and made up of member-owners — community members who share collective ownership of the company from which they also receive electricity, and nowadays sometimes internet service as well. Co-ops are governed by a board of directors who are elected by member-owners to make policy decisions. Today there are more than 900 electric co-ops across the U.S. powering more than 20 million businesses, homes, schools, and farms.

The Power And Potential Of Democratic Public Ownership

April 16, 2022 Thomas M. Hanna, Resilience. Create! Cooperatives, Democracy, New Economy, Public ownership

In most cases, it would be absurd to think that the same approach that created a problem would also be the one best suited to solve it. Yet this is exactly what we are expected to believe regarding the existential ecological threats our world now faces. As predicted by many since its inception, capitalism and its core interconnected tenants — private ownership of the means of production, market allocation, and exponential economic growth — have brought us to the precipice of both environmental and social disaster. Yet, year after year we continue to be told that capitalism will save us. Just a few more dashes of regulation here, some different market incentives there, and the turning point is right around the corner. All the while, temperatures climb, species disappear, the air is choked with smog, waters rise, forests burn, and storms rage.

How Grocery Co-Ops Across New England Thrived Despite The Pandemic

March 11, 2022 Paige Wolf, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Community organizing, Cooperatives, Food and Agriculture, New England

Though a global pandemic and ease of technology has sent millions of grocery shoppers online to order from Instacart and Amazon, the most grassroots and socially connected form of grocery shopping has been surprisingly untouched. In fact, grocery co-ops have grown during the pandemic, with overall sales increasing 10% during 2020, a year full of supply and social disruptions.

The Green New Deal From Below

October 31, 2021 Jeremy Brecher, Labor 4 Sustainability. Create! Cooperatives, Green New Deal, Just transition, Municipalization

The Green New Deal is a visionary program to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Its core principle is to use the necessity for climate protection as a basis for realizing full employment and social justice. The Green New Deal first emerged as a proposal for national legislation, and the struggle to embody it in national legislation is ongoing. But there has also emerged a little-noticed wave of initiatives from community groups, unions, city and state governments, tribes, and other non-federal institutions designed to contribute to the climate protection and social justice goals of the Green New Deal. We will call these the Green New Deal from Below (GNDfB).

Green Mountain Spinnery And Flat Iron Cooperative

October 5, 2021 Ebony Gustave, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cooperatives, Democracy, New Economy, Worker Rights

Green Mountain Spinnery is a 40 year old cooperative based in rural Vermont. They mill high quality yarns made in the U.S., support regional sheep farming, and develop ways of producing natural fibers that are environmentally friendly. Flat Iron Cafe is a cooperatively owned coffee shop based in Vermont. They are still in the developmental stages but intend to create a model that integrates coffee, community driven events, and supports local food entrepreneurs within the space. In this episode I speak with worker-owner Larisa Demos about the inspiration behind Green Mountain Spinnery and Flat Iron’s development. Initially this interview was just going to be about The Spinnery but I decided to ask Larisa to share a bit about a new co-op she is helping to develop.

Cooperatives And Community Land Trusts: Natural Partners?

August 10, 2021 Jake Blumgart, ShelterForce. Create! Community Land Trust, Cooperatives, Housing, Public Housing

The first ever presidential visit to the South Bronx took America’s chief executive to a multi-unit cooperative, a radical break from the nation’s housing norms that became a symbol of hope during the depths of the urban crisis. In October 1977, Jimmy Carter’s cream-colored limousine rolled into the devastation of the South Bronx. Escorted by six motorcycles and three helicopters, the trip had been kept secret until the last possible moment. There were two stops on the tour. At one, Carter saw a ghost block where every building had been leveled, confirming the nightmarish popular image of this section of New York City. The other stop was something else entirely. The president was driven to a multistory apartment building at 1186 Washington Ave., where tenants had taken control after the landlord walked away.

On Contact: Worker Cooperatives

July 11, 2021 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Chris Hedges, Cooperatives, Environment, Socialism

On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses worker cooperatives with Niki Okuk, activist and founder of the worker cooperative Rco Tires. Okuk founded Rco Tires in 2012. They've since recycled more than 300 million pounds of rubber, diverting 70 million gallons of oil from landfills, and with 16 employees, making it one of southern California's largest sustainability plants. Rco Tires creates alternative uses for trash tires, turning them into new products. Because of Okuk's progressive hiring and management practices, the cooperative provides stable jobs for local black and Latino residents who struggle to find employment because of past criminal convictions or their legal status.

How Rural Electric Cooperatives Can Support A Green New Deal

May 13, 2021 Wan R. Smith and Philip Fracica, Nonprofit Quarterly. Create! Cooperatives, Electricity, Green New Deal, New Economy

Today, as President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure bill is debated in Congress, it’s worth recalling that this isn’t the first time the US has faced an infrastructure deficit. “By the 1930s nearly 90 percent of US urban dwellers had electricity, but 90 percent of rural homes were without power. Investor-owned utilities often denied service to rural areas, citing high development costs and low profit margins,” recalls one account. The policy response: rural electric cooperatives (RECs). In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 7037, establishing the Rural Electrification Administration—today’s Rural Utility Service (RUS)—which provided low-cost loans to co-ops to wire rural America; by 1953, 90 percent of rural Americans had power.

For Small Farms Surviving The Pandemic, Co-ops Are A Lifeline

April 28, 2021 Lisa Held, Civil Eats. Create! Cooperatives, Farming, New Economy, Pandemic

Ian Colburn, Zoey Fink, and Casey Holland all operate small, diversified farms in the Albuquerque, New Mexico area. The farmers already had plants in the ground in March when they realized restaurants and farmers’ markets—two of their biggest sales channels—would likely shut down due to the pandemic. Colburn of Solarpunk Farm worried his acreage was too small to support a robust Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program and that he hadn’t planned for the kind of crop diversity that model demanded. Fink works part-time at Farm Shark Farm with her husband. They already had a CSA but didn’t think they could increase membership enough on their own to sell the rest of the vegetables. “It was a scary time,” she said. “We thought: if we work together, we can be scaling up and serving 100 families per week.”

New Deal Electric Cooperatives Struggle To Democratize

March 2, 2021 James Bruggers, Inside Climate News. Create! Clean Energy, Cooperatives, Electricity, Transparency

What began three years ago as a campaign to stop the spraying of weedkiller under power lines near homes in the Appalachian mountains of northeast Tennessee, has become an example of a more democratic process at electric cooperatives across the country. Member-owners of the Powell Valley Rural Electric Cooperative earned the right to opt-out of spraying, and persuaded their co-op board to let them attend board meetings in ways that were previously prohibited. Some members of Powell Valley have also begun to ask for a program to help members finance energy efficiency measures to save money. These were small steps toward a more transparent and responsive electricity provider, but small steps can lead to bigger ones, said Bill Kornrich, a retired arts administrator who, with friends and neighbors, is part of Powell Valley Electric Co-op Member Voices, a group that’s been behind the reforms.

How To Unlearn Capitalism Through Cooperative Ownership

February 27, 2021 Willa Köerner, Pioneer Works. Create! Cooperatives, Internet, New Economy, Platform Coops

In the context of user-generated content platforms, the coop model is just such a natural fit. One of the principle questions that made a cooperative model feel relevant is this idea of, “Who's generating value, and who's capturing it?” Under capitalism, it’s people with ownership who end up capturing most of the value. So at a base level, sharing ownership with a company’s users and creators can align incentives. And that can dramatically affect the decisions that a platform makes, and steer it in a way that is to the benefit of the people who actually use it and rely on it. What's Spotify valued at, a billion or more? And they’re completely dependent on musicians to make their platform’s content. Lately though, there has been more awareness that this model is not serving its creators. So where coops pop up naturally is when people are like, "I'm not being served."

The Art Of The Legal Hack

December 31, 2020 David Bollier. Create! Cooperatives, Legal System, New Economy

In our legal system -- designed to protect private property, individual rights, and market exchange – it can actually be very difficult to share things legally. Attorney Janelle Orsi found this out the hard way as she worked with co-housing groups, worker cooperatives, and community gardens. “Our clients kept running up against legal barriers that make no sense: employment laws for co-ops in which people are both employer and employee. Landlord-tenant law for cohousing projects in which people are both landlords and tenants.” Such frustrations led Orsi to co-found (with Jenny Kassan) the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) in Oakland, California, in late 2009.

Canada’s Housing Co-ops Find Success Despite Covid-19 Challenges

November 26, 2020 Anca Voinea, News Coop. Create! Canada, Cooperatives, Housing, New Economy

Housing co-ops in Canada remain positive about the future, despite the challenges posed by Covid-19 this year. A recent survey conducted by the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada (CHF Canada) during a virtual town hall held last month revealed that 96% of co-op managers and staff were ‘doing well’. Most housing co-ops in Canada are rental co-ops developed during the 1970s and 80s under government social housing programmes targeting people with low to moderate incomes. Across Canada, over 2,200 non-profit housing co‑ops are home to about a quarter of a million people in over 90,000 households.

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