Equal Exchange of W. Bridgewater, MA, the worker cooperative which initiated fair trade with coffee farmers more than 20 years ago and one of the worker cooperative movement's oldest and more successful democratic organizations released a statement Oct. 27, 2011 "strongly" supporting, and urging others to support Occupy Wall Street. 

http://smallfarmersbigchange.coop/2011/10/27/equal-exchange-stands-with-occupy-wall-street/ 

The following communication was sent Sept. 9, 2011 by the American Monetary Institute regarding Kucinich's Sept 7, speech in which he introduced the National Employment & Economic Defense (NEED) Act.

African Americans and the working class in general has always have always had a tough time under capitalism, which operates off our backs.  But the economic exploitation reached a new level when the predominantly white middle class, which tended to benefit from this oppressive arrangement, also started to get knocked off their feet. Award winning producer of Capitalism:  A Love Story Michael Moore lays out a very interesting history and encourages people to take action.

by Michael Moore

John Duda, of Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse, a worker-owned and operated business in Baltimore, writes in the spring issue of Indypendent Reader about the process of building a just and sustainable economy by examining a local worker dog-walking cooperative called Just Walk, Cleveland's Evergreen Cooperatives, and the Sojourner-Douglass College plan to rebuild a neglected part of Baltimore called Oldtown with a community wealth strategy that will include cooperatives. 

Read Duda's article here. 

Jose Luis Lafuente, Mondragon's Corporate Management Model specialist 

Some things speak for themselves:

"Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa or the Mondragon Co-operative Corporation (MCC) is a business-based socioeconomic initiative with deep roots in the Basque Country, created for and by people and inspired by the Basic Principles of our Co-operative Experience.  It is firmly committed to the environment, competitive improvement and customer satisfaction in order to generate wealth in society through business development and the creation of, preferably co-operative employment which:

Dr. Isabel Uribe 

Ever since I first learned about Mondragon cooperatives in Dr. Christina Clamp's graduate class at Southern New Hampshire University, I have been fascinated with what black people might do with the lessons from the Mondragon experience. 

Dr. Jon Altuna, Mondragon's chief innovator 

Ideas and the mentality, they promote areas indispensable for the progress of our cooperatives as are the buildings and machinery. 

--Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta in the book, Reflections·

 Author's self-portrait outside of Mondragon headquarters.

Five of nine of us touring Mondragon arrive on Sunday in Bilbao, make our way to Mondragon-Arrastata, get settled and find food at the Monte bar a short walk from The Hotel Mondragon where we are staying for the week-long tour.  I fall into bed at about 10:30 (4:30 pm EST), the 12 hour journey and time zone change wearing me out.  Tonight there is no reading of The Kemetian Tree of Life, my nightly fix.   

This story by Karen Thomas, of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, is reprinted from the Winter 2011 issue of Owners at Work.  It is the story about how eight workers took over a local restaurant, and turned it into a worker cooperative called Casa Nueva.  But the work did not stop there. In the 25 years that it has been operating, Casa Nueva has also helped build a regional economy. The Athens, Ohio area where they are located is a national model for food literacy because of their work.  For more information, visit the OEOC website at http://www.oeockent.org/.  Click here for the story.

Brahm Ahmadi, CEO of People's Community Market in Oakland, and founding board member of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, won a Food and Community fellowship that will allow him to deepen and expand the food activism started when he helped found People's Grocery.  See Brahm's GEO article last year on the importance of developing community leadership.  

The Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy released its press release with all the details for it's July conference activities: 

2011 Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy | Connecting Our Workplaces: Building Cooperative Economies

The Eastern Coordinating Council is pleased to announce the 2011 Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy (ECWD), to take place July 8-10, 2011 at University of Maryland, Baltimore County in partnership with the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and Grassroots Economic Organizing.