Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo

What would the world be like had America truly learned about Griffin's identification unconscious white racism and had acted even in individual ways on his belief that there is no "other"?

The question of race in the Occupy Movement has been addressed by a few folks.  Here's Tim Wise's take.

40,000 moved their accounts on Bank Transfer Day, but leading up to that, 650,000 moved after Bank of America and other banks announced planned debit card fees.

A different slant on Occupy Wall Street. Check this out....

 
http://www.youtube.com/occupyyourselves

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/ 

Baltimore's rich cooperative heritage dates back a couple hundred years to a shoemakers union that opened its own factory in 1794, according to John Curl, cooperative historian and author of For All The People:  Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America.

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

The International Business Times reported Monday May 30, 2011 that Utah and other U.S. states are preparing to use gold as tender (money) and institute a monetary system that would survive a crash of the dollar.

Jose Luis Lafuente, Mondragon's Corporate Management Model specialist 

 

Some things speak for themselves:

 

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.   

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

In the Unites States of America, socialism and communism are considered by many to be bad, tabu words, but cooperation exists, and "worker-owned cooperatives" existed and prospered for many years to this day, thanks also to the spirit of enterpreneurship that is widespread and to the practice of democracy, practice that is tought at school, starting from the elementary grade. Cooperatives are part of the self-help tradition of America.

Ottawa, April 12, 2011 -- With the first leaders' debate taking place April 12, the Canadian Co-operative Assoc

by James West on March 30, 2011 Utah is the first State to officially recognize gold as money, according to a CNN. “The Beehive State has a new measure on the books that eliminates state taxes on the exchange of gold and silver coins and directs the legislature to study an “alternative form of legal tender.” The law, signed by Gov. Gary Herbert last week, also recognizes gold and silver coins issued by the federal government as legal tender in the state. Of course, they already are. But people use them as investments, not pocket change.

The Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund on August 19, 2010 honored Alice Walker in Birmingham, AL at its annual dinner attended by more than 400 people.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and self-proclaimed "daughter of the rural peasantry" was presented the Estelle Witherspoon Lifetime Achievement award by FSC Executive Director Ralph Paige. The largely black organization of farmer cooperatives works to save and preserve black-owned farmlands.