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“I didn’t know it was a co-op, but once I found out what it was, I was like, ‘ This is amazing. People running a company democratically. Taxi drivers, from all different walks of life, able to run this company. It was so inspiring to me, that’s really when I began to learn all about worker cooperatives, getting involved in local government and national and international organizations as well,” says Kemble.

When Pagoda Café reopened last week, Brandon Duncan got his old job back and also a chance to become a restaurant owner.

Duncan is one of 10 employees there who are now in the process of turning Pagoda Café into a worker-owned cooperative.

If successful, they will collectively take over ownership from founder Shana Mae Sassoon and operate the small Seventh Ward cafe together, sharing management responsibilities and whatever profits it generates.

What are the secrets to good co-operative governance? Dr. Murray Fulton and his colleagues at the Canadian Centre for the Study of Co-operatives have identified the three most important pillars that every co-op board needs to guide the business effectively. In this great discussion, Dr. Murray Fulton breaks down these three pillars and illustrates them with cases of prominent co-op governance gone wrong. You will not want to miss this episode of the Common Share!

On your first day working at Taharka Brothers, a majority-Black-owned ice cream maker in Baltimore, you can join the flavor committee and help create flavors like the limited holiday edition Sweet Potato Crumble. Or you can join the social justice committee and vet local organizations to support through ice cream sales, like the Baltimore Action Legal Team. If none of those are to your liking, there are other committees you can join.

“I don't own farmland, nor did my ancestors,” says Kamaljit Kaur. “But still, I am here to help our farmers in my small way, because I fear that if I don't, I will have to counter corporate greed to put something on my kids' plates.” 

“This is about using our collective power to create a new financial institution,” says Kate Khatib, co-director of Seed Commons and a worker-owner at Red Emma’s, a cooperative restaurant and bookstore in Baltimore. “We’re fundraising collectively, raising the investment capital collectively and figuring out how to deploy that capital most effectively in our individual communities.”

In a city with a grocery store on almost every block, the bright green lights that frame Dill Pickle Food Co-Op Market & Deli shine on a steady flow of neighbors turned loyal customers.

The only operating grocery food cooperative in the city, Logan Square’s Dill Pickle is a community-owned store run by its members.

While customers say the Dill Pickle is a fixture in the Logan Square food economy, residents around the region — from Rogers Park to Lombard to Woodstock — are in different stages of trying to launch three other food co-ops.

The confluence of crises in 2020 has laid bare deep societal fissures and flaws. We are questioning what we truly care about and why.

The PNCA Strategy + Foresight class has been exploring the what, how, and why of personal and societal values. In particular, what symbolic systems do we use for signaling and promoting our values, and how might we design better ones? We’ve learned to call these value-signaling systems: currencies.

In this publication, we speculate on creative currency futures, and we invite you to play along.

It was January 2020 -- just a few weeks before the pandemic would hit the States. Priya and I looked over at each other from our tiny bedroom, with its tiny (and painfully dim) window. We knew it was time for something bigger, better, more joyous.

Home care worker cooperative members and developers from across the country will gather virtually from February 22-26, 2021 for the 5th Annual National Home Care Cooperative Conference. A Pre-Conference focused on the core skills of cooperative finance and governance will be offered on February 22. The conference will run from noon to 2:30 pm EST each day.

Register for the conference here

The Madison Common Council has agreed to decrease the limitations on establishing housing cooperatives, or co-ops, throughout the city. 

While uniform state business corporation statutes provide level expectations for enterprises across the United States, the field of cooperative laws is a quirky and often threadbare patchwork quilt. While statutes in a handful of jurisdictions have stayed current with the needs of modern cooperative activity, other state statutes remain grounded in agricultural concepts of the nineteenth century.

What is East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EBPREC)? 

EBPREC is a people-of-color-led multi-stakeholder co-operative that supports Black, brown, and allied communities to cooperatively organize, finance, co-steward, and long-term asset manage land and housing in Oakland and the East Bay.

What is the short term vision of EBPREC?