Community Development

Global Pressures May Spark Rural Economic Revolution

Ethan — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:23:06 -0400

Rising costs of oil may give local economies a competitive advantage...

Co-op As Alternative to "Take a Leak" Economics

Ethan — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:19:23 -0400

A brainstorm on strategies for local economic development

The People's Grocery: Developing a Worker-Owned Community Grocery Store

Ethan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:58:16 -0500

People's Grocery is making speedy progress from a mobile organic food service cooperative towards developing a worker-owned cooperative grocery store in West Oakland in which local food and sustainable agriculture will be prioritized in a community health model centered on nutrition education for low-income residents of the community. At the same time, the cooperative is taking their business development goal beyond the single cooperative grocery store to a broader community development initiative focused on establishing a commercial and health service complex.

Shakoor Aljuwani in New Orleans: We Need Viable Community-Based Development Models

Ethan — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:08:57 -0500

Interview by Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Shakoor Aljuwani is an organizer with the Home Coming Center in New Orleans. GEO Newsletter's Jessica Gordon Nembhard interviewed him in April 2007 about his work and progress with helping low-income residents return to New Orleans and rebuild their homes and neighborhoods. Aljuwani describes some of the grassroots efforts to help returnees with both direct services and advocacy - to play a role in designing their homecoming, rebuilding their neighborhoods, and making government programs work for them. He also discusses prospects and opportunities for including cooperative economic development in the efforts to rebuild neglected neighborhoods in New Orleans.

Democracy Belongs in the Workplace

Ethan — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:09:07 -0500

By Omar Freilla, for AlterNet

Boston Workers Alliance Temp Agency Project

admin — Sat, 19 May 2007 22:54:31 -0400

by Chris Heneghan

Just over a year after the Boston Workers Alliance (BWA) was founded at a convergence of "jobless workers" from Boston's Dorchester, and Roxbury neighborhoods, members of their job creation committee were in New York City at the second national conference of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives discussing plans to establish a temp agency cooperative in the Greater Boston area.

"Other Economies Are Possible!": Building a Solidarity Economy

admin — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:49:18 -0500

By Ethan Miller, GEO Collective

Consider this: thousands of diverse, locally-rooted, grassroots economic projects are in the process of creating the basis for a viable democratic alternative to capitalism. It might seem unlikely that a motley array of initiatives such as worker, consumer, and housing cooperatives, community currencies, urban gardens, fair trade organizations, intentional communities, and neighborhood self-help associations could hold a candle to the pervasive and seemingly all-powerful capitalist economy. These "islands of alternatives in a capitalist sea" are often small in scale, low in resources, and sparsely networked.