GEO vol. II, #5: Education For Economic Liberation
*For GEO Blog Updates, scroll down below!*
This issue of GEO, the theme of which is Education, is a double issue. Twice as many articles comprise it than we usually publish, and we hope it offers you twice as much value.
Having an abundance of capitalistic and individual instruction that justifies obscene wealth alongside astronomical lack, clearly we all need information and education on how to create another world where people don't starve, everyone has meaningful work, and the planet's mountains are not cut up, nor its waters polluted, nor land ravaged. Now we need education on alternatives, how to put our ideals in practice, how to stimulate and develop our innate capabilities to expand on what is good and right in the world. This is essential in the worker cooperative world. Education is one of the cooperative principles and it is vital to ensure that members of cooperatives and other alternative economic ventures understand what is going on in their cooperatives or collective organizations, and the world.
In this issue:
- kiran nigam, a teacher, writes about how education in a traditional school can be made more democratic.
- Brahm Ahmadi writes about how his work at People's Grocery in Oakland is helping to educate and build for community empowerment. This thoughtful piece includes a profile of Nikki Henderson, a young African American who is now driving the organization.
- Stu Schneider, a manager at the New York-based Cooperative Home Care Associates, reports on the country's largest worker cooperative.
- GEO's co-editor Michael Johnson writes about the formation of a New York co-op network and the issues they are struggling with. He also brings his 30 years of living and learning from experience in an intentional community on Staten Island, New York to bear on a process that he has developed to help individuals and groups to better work together called the C-PARADIGM. We get a little indoctrination of our own on how to work through issues in our individual dealings, within our organizations and hopefully our movements.
- NASCO's Mingwei Huang writes about NASCO's work that teaches those who live in university and community housing cooperatives primarily how to learn about other people and how to build an anti-oppression mindset. NASCO is doing some of the best work in the country around race, gender, class, and able-ism. Mingwei also shares NASCO's incredible resource list.
- Esther West writes about the educational process at Equal Exchange.
- Sonia Pichardo writes about graduation at Green Worker Cooperative, a Bronx-based incubator of cooperatives. As the incoming training coordinator at GWC, she includes an article about worker co-op myths.
- Andrew McLeod discusses an MBA-equivalent masters program offered at St. Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and his experiences visiting Mondragon.
- GEO co-editor Len Krimerman is interviewed about innovative educational institutions and how cooperative ideas are flowing at the University of Connecticut and the development of nearby community projects based on cooperative principles.
- Hazel Corcoran, executive director of the Canadian Worker Co-operative Federation, writes about the experiences of Canadians formal cooperative education in a country that has a lot more experience with cooperatives than the U.S.
- Equal Exchange worker-owner Aaron Dawson reflects on how education has inspired action since the August Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy. He also add a personal touch on the subject of cooperative education by writing about the wisdom passed down from his father, Steve Dawson, also a cooperator and who wrote some prophetic words for GEO's predecessor "Changing Times" 30 years ago.
- Erin Rice's first "Organizing in the South" column premieres with issues that came out of the New Orleans worker cooperative conference in 2008, and in one case, how they find expression in 2010.
- Mary Hoyer writes a remembrance of one of the employee ownership movement's greatest educators, John Logue, a professor who started the Ohio Employee Ownership Center at Kent State, which helps workers to take control of companies and helps to educate them and many others in the process.
- We also include a remembrance of Julie Graham, an influential alternative economics acivist who recently left us.
- And finally, a list of Resources for more education and expansion.
Education is key to our individual growth, our movement, to meeting ever-new challenges.
We hope that this double issue will give you new ideas, more energy for creativity, and spur action that will help us to build a world where people have work that they love, and where they love their work.
Many Thanks
We would also like to thank the contributing writers. And a special thanks to the photographers (and the writers who contacted them): Leyla Rosario, Vanessa Bransburg and the unnamed photographers, and others who helped us obtain photos. This issue of GEO is visually richer because of your work and creativity.
We also thank others who helped in small ways: Mary Hoyer for her contributions to the resources list, Rubie Coles and Jessica Gordon Nembhard for resource opinions.
We would also like to encourage you to visit us at www.geo.coop and contribute to the online dialogue.
-- Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo, Issue Coordinator
Permanent link to this issue: http://geo.coop/node/451
Photo above courtesy of Equal Exchange, special thanks to Rodney North.
There's a lot going on this year in solidarity economics - be sure to check out our updated calendar of events.
Get involved with GEO! If you have articles, pictures, or graphics on worker cooperatives and solidarity economics that you'd like to contribute, we want to hear from you.
RECENT BLOG POSTS
Celebrate the 16th century roots of the democratic spirit
Listen to this, from the NYTimes:
"All faiths are welcome to eat a free lunch daily at the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine for Sikhs, in Amritsar, India."
"Soupy lentils, three and a third tons of them, bubble away in vast cauldrons, stirred by bearded, barefoot men wielding wooden spoons the size of canoe paddles. The pungent, savory bite wafting through the air comes from 1,700 pounds of onions and 132 pounds of garlic, sprinkled with 330 pounds of fiery red chilies. It is lunchtime at what may be the world’s largest free eatery, the langar, or community kitchen at this city’s glimmering Golden Temple..."
Celebrate the 16th century roots of the democratic spirit
Listen to this, from the NYTimes:
"All faiths are welcome to eat a free lunch daily at the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine for Sikhs, in Amritsar, India."
"Soupy lentils, three and a third tons of them, bubble away in vast cauldrons, stirred by bearded, barefoot men wielding wooden spoons the size of canoe paddles. The pungent, savory bite wafting through the air comes from 1,700 pounds of onions and 132 pounds of garlic, sprinkled with 330 pounds of fiery red chilies. It is lunchtime at what may be the world’s largest free eatery, the langar, or community kitchen at this city’s glimmering Golden Temple..."
The Cooperative Index Tool
Alice Walker: "We Cannot Be Ourselves Without Our Land"
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.
2010 Conference: EdVision Activates Education
One of the great treats at a national worker coop conference is to learn about the incredible stories that exist. It is easy, sitting in our cooperatives at home, to imagine a world where we are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Then we come to a conference and get our mind blown--not just once, or twice, but several times.
Marketing the Coop Advantage in a Worker Coop
The Role of Compassion in Worker Cooperatives
I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I wandered into the meeting room. The description discussed the important role of compassion in dealing with conflicts as opposed to the more common acts of assigning blame.
It was led by Michael Johnson who is part of the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives, GEO and has been living in an intentional community for 30 years. Part of this workshop was based on his real-life experiences in attempting to find more productive methods of resolving conflict.
Notable Quotes heard at the USFWC conference in Berkeley Aug. 6-8, 2010
There was so many rich quotes from the national worker cooperative conference that took place in Berkeley last weekend. Many got lost in my unreadable handwriting.
Here are only a few that I was able to capture:
"This isn't for everyone. Co-ops are awesome."
--Hilary Abell, WAGES Executive Director.
"They say that young people are the future, but they don't treat us like that. It's like we're a burden. ...We're the leaders of today, not just tomorrow."
THE EVERGREEN CO-OP MODEL: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT WITH A PLAN TO STABILIZE A COMMUNITY
The Evergreen cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio was the story everyone wanted to hear at the opening session on Saturday Aug. 7, 2010 of the U.S. Federation for Worker Cooperatives conference in Berkeley.
Several video cameras - including PBS -- were rolling at the front of Krutch Theater as Ted Howard, executive director of The Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, which helped to organize the cooperatives and the strategy along with the late John Logue founder of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, spoke to an inspired audience of 270 worker cooperators from all over the U.S. and part of Canada. Also speaking was Medrick Addison, operations manager at Evergreen Cooperative Laundry.
Social Justice Organizers Articulate the Values of the Cooperative Movement
One of the formative questions of the contemporary worker cooperative movement has been that of who the movement is for. What group of people are included in the movement's organizations, have access the movement's resources, share and shape the movement's values and the campaigns around those values?
David Roach's Mo' Better Food - Building Healthy Economics newsletter
David Roach is doing incredibly important work in Oakland with Mo' Better Food, schools, intergenerational learning, farmer's markets, and other things. He was our incredible improvisational tour guide of Oakland.
Our Calling and Building the Movement
I still have a few more posts on the National Worker Cooperative Conference held in Berkeley last week, but this post isn't about the specific workshops, but a general feeling and vibe that I found at the conference (and at other conferences). The work of building a cooperative society isn't quite like other trade associations or business cultures.
THE WAGES MODEL OF COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT: PROVIDING HOPE AND JOBS AND ECONOMIC SECURITY TO IMMIGRANTS
We Have To Overcome
At conferences it is always refreshing to meet great and inspiring people who are creating the change the world needs. Listening to the brass band on Saturday night and chanting "no bosses" was invigorating and refreshing. Thank you to all I had the pleasure of meeting.
Conference wrap-up--pleased, uneasy, and inspired
Deeper Meanings of Cooperation
Jim Hightower: "We have to get the hogs of out of the creek!"
Jim Hightower is a man of very colorful language.
"We have to get the hogs out of the creek" was Hightower's parting message in his keynote address at the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives on Friday, Aug. 6 at the San Francisco Women's Building.
I think the hogs was the metaphor for cleaning out those muddying up what democracy is supposed to be. We need a grassroots movement to make change, to clean the creek.
Opening Day: The conference itself is representative of the "surge" in the growth of cooperation
At the opening gathering of the 4th bi-ennial conference of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, it was clear that the movement has reached a significant milestone.
First, Executive Director Melissa Hoover announced that PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service) is "following the conference" (note that Twitter reference!) I believe because of the interest in the Evergreen Cooperatives.
Oakland Black Economic History Tour
Call it the Oakland Improvizational Tour. Or Oakland's Special Synchroncity Tour. Or the Divine Flow of Oakland Tour. Whatever you call it, you have got to call it Amazing!!
On Friday, about 25 of us attending the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives conference were part of an economic development tour of Oakland. Cooperatives are an economic development tool because they often create services and jobs in areas neglected by traditional so-called development that is done by businesses to make money. Cooperatives generally fulfills neglected by traditional businesses whose aim is to make profits.
Marketing the Co-operative Advantage
Sunday August 8, 2010 1:25pm USFWC UofC Berkeley, Workshop hosted by John McNamara (Union Cab Cooperative)
Worker co-operatives have a tremendous opportunity to connect with customers who want to purchase from responsible businesses. A great challenge is that worker co-operatives are often dismissed as communist.
Here were a few ideas on how to use marketing to increase sales:
Heading to Headquarters
Toxic Soil Busters
The Toxic Soil Busters are a youth cooperative. These are "youth" in terms of age. They are located in Worchester, MA. They work to clean the soli of their community of the lead paint that was so heavily used by during the industrial age of this area. Since lead poisoning effects children in a more severe manner than adults (although still dangerous), this coop is essentially young people (non-adults) helping to clean the community of lead to help the generation behind them.
Unions and Coops
I wasn't able to sit through the entire presentation, however, I wanted to capture as much as I could of this interesting presentation about the ability of labor unions and worker cooperatives to co-exist and to thrive.
A reflection on GEO's conference blogging experiment
USFWC 2010 Business Meeting
GLEANINGS
Senate committee holds hearing on employee ownership in Montpelier
Vermont Employee Ownership Center reports onthe field hearing of the Senate committee on Health, Education, Kabir, and Pensions (HELP) conerning worker-ownership legislation Sen Bernie Sanders has introduced. http://www.veoc.org/hearing.html
A Question in Latin America: What Kind of Solidarity Economy?
Doing Green Jobs Right
2010 Canadian Worker Co-op Federation AGM and Conference open for registration
Bread Without Bosses
The mascot of the Alvarado Street Bakery (ASB) is an orange and black cat, with a swinging tail and a sly grin. Perhaps his feisty smile is the result of good working conditions. ASB is the worker owned and run cooperative featured in Michael Moore’s recent film Capitalism: A Love Story as an example of economic democracy. ASB is based in Petaluma, California, but ships nationally through their website. In this interview, Joseph Tuck of ASB tells The Socialist about the company’s practices.
Are worker co-ops making a difference? an interview
From grocery stores and bakeries to bike shops and day care centers, worker-owned cooperatives are gaining popularity across the country. How are they faring in the recession? What solutions do co-ops offer for today’s recession/depression? If they gain even more popularity, could they transform the economy and the way we think it should work?
Guests include Dan Thomases, a founding member of Box Dog Bikes co-op, John Kusakabe of the Arizmendi Bakery co-op, and Hilary Abell of Women's Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES).
Bread Without Bosses An Interview with the Alvarado Street Bakery
orange and black cat, with a swinging tail and a sly
grin. Perhaps his feisty smile is the result of good
working conditions.
Hightower on Unemployment & Cooperatives
A new video interview with Jim Hightower on "unemployment and worker cooperatives."
A BRIEF HISTORY OF COOPERATIVES IN THE PITTSBURGH AREA
An Outline History of Cooperatives in the Bay Area and California
