Economic Justice

Cascadia Hour Exchange Goes Public

jpoling — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:33:58 -0400

Better Than Barter

Who Gains From the Green Economy?

Ethan — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:43:29 -0400

Green economics and racial justice

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.

Searching For the Next Cooperative Principle

Ethan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:52:31 -0500

By Len Krimerman

In 1995, the International Cooperative Alliance adopted seven cooperative principles to define and guide cooperatives throughout the world. Briefly stated, the "traditional seven" include: voluntary and open membership; democratic member control; member economic participation; autonomy and independence; education, training and information; cooperation among cooperatives; and concern for community.

Our Eyes On the Prize: From a "Worker Co-op Movement" to a Transformative Social Movement

Ethan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:56:02 -0500

While empathizing with those who feel a sense of "inevitability" in the face of today's powerful capitalist economy (and disagreeing with those who see it as generally acceptable), I hold firmly to the perspective that a more just and democratic economy is both necessary and possible. And I believe that the greatest chance of increasing and assuring viability for the workplace democracy movement may rest in our ability to keep our "eyes on the prize"; that is, on the long term replacement of capitalism―an economy which socializes costs and privatizes benefits―with an economy of democratic cooperation―in which costs and benefits are democratically and equitably shared throughout society.

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.

Argentina's Unemployed Workers Movement: A Traveler's Report

Ethan — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:02:31 -0500

By Matt Feinstein

For a total of twelve months between 2003 and 2005, I lived and worked with the Unemployed Workers' Movement of Solano (MTD-Solano) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was an experience that fundamentally changed the way I think about community organizing and activism; I continue to search for ways to put those ideas into practice. This article is an attempt to share these experiences, and to let you know about a new video-workshop tool that aims to deepen the exchange between organizers around the world.

Worker Self-management Threatened at the HOTEL BAUEN in Buenos Aires

Ethan — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:53:31 -0500

By Maria Trigona

Inside the BAUEN Hotel, one of Argentina's worker-run workplaces, janitors, repairmen, receptionists and maids sit in an assembly with worried but determined faces and sheets of paper in hand. Each of the workers, some of whom have been working at the hotel since it was built in 1978, hold a court ordered eviction notice, a judicial document notifying the workers they must abandon the hotel or police will force them to leave.

Cooperativization As Alternative to Globalizing Capitalism

Ethan — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:48:08 -0500

By Betsy Bowman & Bob Stone, GEO Collective

This Occasional Paper by editor/activists at Grassroots Economic Organizing is meant to stimulate dialog on the future of the grassroots economic democracy movement. This is a fully re-written update of an essay available since 1994 to GEO readers. We hope for wide use of this text, with attribution to the authors and GEO. Please email us with ideas/dialogue.

Our goal is more than simple options for individual improvement. It is more. If the co-operative enterprise does not serve for more, the world of work has the right to spit in our faces.
- Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta (Quoted by MacLeod 1997)

Building Cooperation East and South

Ethan — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:04:43 -0500

Pam McMichael, Highlander Research and Education Center

From a talk given at the 4th Biennial Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy, July 20, 2007 at the University of North Carolina in Asheville.

Thank you. It's an honor and pleasure to be with you this evening. It's always good when we gather to talk about democracy and democratic participation with people who really mean it.

How many people here are not from the south? I say hello to all of you present. And to those of you not from the South, I want to give a special welcome to the South, and say a little more about this region where we are meeting as a context for my comments about building cooperation for workplace democracy.