Democratic Dialog & Deliberation

Ramsey Nassar, Gwen Pasquarello, and Andy Wallace at EMMA Technology Cooperative have spent five years as a worker-owned co-op building software and hardware for video games, theater, public installation, and media arts. And theme parks. And custom programming languages. And a nonprofit arcade collective. They're thriving.

A workshop of best practices for effective governance, by and for worker co-ops.

Paul Kahawatte - an experienced mediator working with communities, cooperatives, and social movements - shares the structures and processes he uses to ward off conflict, catch it early, and resolve it in ways that strengthen, rather than fracture. 

Practicing Social Ecology: From Bookchin to Rojava and Beyond, from Pluto Press, offers a compelling synthesis of ethnographic research, journalism and political analysis, combining the author's field research and her own activist experiences in a highly engaging and superbly accessible manner.

Catalyst Cooperative is an all-remote, 8-person, tech worker cooperative based in North America. The coop was founded in 2017 with the mission to make US energy system data more accessible. Catalyst's main objectives are to curate the free, open-source Public Utilities Data Liberation project (PUDL) and help clients navigate a myriad of energy or environmental data needs.

In this session, Stephanie Rearick of Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks discusses getting started on projects and Julian Rose of Endstate ATL and New Economy Coalition discusses key considerations for sustainability, including governance, power, conflict, and more. 

In all likelihood, board meetings will be run according to Roberts Rules of Order. My guess is that the vast majority of HOA are governed in this way. Based on my 4+ decades of working with cooperative groups, however, I know this can be done better. 

Josh talks with Kate "Sassy" Sassoon about her long history in co-ops of all different varieties and her current work as a co-op facilitator.

I have some things to say about the role of common values in communities, about how to think about community buildings (as distinct from private dwellings), and about how the one relates to the other.

Has your city been making cuts to schools, libraries, firefighters, and social services that you are not happy with? Think you could do a better job managing the budget? There is a way in which  you can have that opportunity through a process called “participatory budgeting (PB).”