After a long hiatus, GEO is back on track! Thanks to our readers for your patience as we've been working on our transition to a web-based publication. After digging into the food-for-thought presented in this issue #2, watch for the upcoming #3 in early spring, focusing on models for the replication of worker-owned cooperatives. 

New Co-ops, New Relationships

Welcome to the first official issue of GEO's new electronic newsletter. We close the past twelve years and 77 issues (volume 1) and open a new volume in our work of sharing stories of hope, creativity and vision in the work of building a just, sustainable and democratic society. 

Democratic Practice Across Sectors 

By Erbin Crowell

By the Center for Family Life

The Challenge

By Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo, GEO

For worker cooperatives to be effective, member-owners should look at power relationships within and peform a "critical self-examination" of themselves and their co-op. That was one of the suggestions of the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond to worker-owners at the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives at the third biennial conference in New Orleans.

By Jessica Gordon Nembhard (GEO, U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy, and The U.S. Solidarity Economy Network)

By Erin Rice and Lisa Stolarski

The United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) held its first "Workweek" in New Orleans (NOLA), after the "Democracy at Work" conference this past June. Twenty-two cooperators stayed for four days after the conference and volunteered their time, energy and skills to local organizations and individuals who expressed interest in cooperatives and cooperative development.

By Len Krimerman, GEO

I went to the Green Union Coop Development Initiative workshop at the "Democracy at Work" Conference in New Orleans (June, 2008) with very high hopes. Somehow, the Conference organizers had managed to bring together, in a large and over-filled room, committed and inventive practitioners from the labor union, cooperative, and green economy movements. The speakers spoke with clarity and passion about:

By Yvonne Poirier

Editors' note: Yvon Poirier is an editor of the International Newsletter on Sustainable Local Development, from which this article is copied. The Japanese Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-Operative Union was the subject of both the spring and summer issues of GEO (#s 12 and 13) in 1994. Seikatsu has grown since then to include 290,000 households. It is notable for its combination of worker and consumer co-ops, its insistence on high food quality, and for its direct involvement in local politics in the Tokyo area. Yvon comments that the current conservative government is doing all it can to undermine co-ops and other similar sectors.