Hernandez is the co-leader of Cooperativa Tierra y Libertad, where he and co-leader Ramon Torres have established a pesticide-free, farmworker-run berry cooperative on 65 acres of land on Central Road between Everson and Lynden. Hernandez and Torres began renting the land last October, and this summer marks their first berry harvest.
Local immigrant farmworkers have formed a cooperative to grow and sell their own plants.
It’s a step toward taking control of their own destiny with an ownership stake in a business enterprise, say founders of the Long Island Farmworkers Cooperative, some of whom have been laborers on farms here for decades.
“It’s empowering for all farmworkers,” said Long Island Farmworkers Cooperative cofounder and director Juan Antonio Zuñiga at a grand opening celebration of the co-op’s market yesterday in Riverhead.
The demand by community members to start co-op businesses is rapidly increasing, but if you want to form a new co-op, available support to do so remains limited. This is not a new problem. Back in 1999, a small group of co-op developers—that is, technical assistance providers who help communities start co-op businesses—formed the organization I’ve directed for the past five years, CooperationWorks! (CW).
Because restaurants operate on very slim margins, profit-sharing won’t always lead to a sizable increase in income. And cooperative decision-making can be messy and inefficient. A co-op “is not a silver bullet that solves the problem of the industry,” says Melissa Hoover, executive director of the think tank Democracy at Work Institute—especially the restaurant industry, which continues to consolidate at a terrifying clip.
We had moments where I said, I can’t take it anymore, it’s too long, when are we going to start working? Now I realize all that we have walked and all that we have learned.
It’s like going to school. It has opened us up to different things, to knowing ourselves, more about personal relationships, technology, marketing, accounting, many things that we did not know anything about as employees.
That has also been a challenge, to change that mindset. You are an employee, but you are also the owner and you have the power to decide.
For over 10 years, we at The TESA Collective have been proud to lead the development and publishing of tabletop board and card games that are about changing the world. We even walk the walk by having our games manufactured ethically and sustainably.
Join us for a 2-hour workshop to find out how to design a system that will support dialogue in your group, especially when tensions are high.
When conflict blossoms nearby, it often looks more like a bomb than a bloom. But with enough support we can get close enough to take the danger out of conflict, and even to see its hidden potential to bring about what we want most. Conflict points to unmet needs, in ourselves and in our communities.
The City wants your ideas.
Specifically, on how low-income households and households of color can build wealth through collective ownership of neighborhood assets such as homes, businesses and land.
On Wednesday, the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) put out a joint Request for Information on the issue of Shared Equity.
Shared Equity is another name for shared ownership or co-ownership.
Laurie Foy, the longtime manager of the Liberty Graphics retail outlet in downtown Liberty, is good at warmly greeting customers and welcoming them to the old-fashioned store.
But as of two weeks ago, Foy’s welcome comes with a brand-new feeling: ownership and pride. Foy, who has worked for the T-shirt printing company for 26 years, just became one of its owners. She belongs to a worker-owned cooperative that purchased the business from founder Tom Opper.
A handful of newspapers such as the Daily Herald Media Group in Chicago, Dubuque Telegraph and Cedar Rapids Gazette remain majority-owned by ESOPs. Defector Media, made up of former Gawker staff, became employee-owned in 2020.
Cooperative Housing Development Workshop #2
Participants will learn: - Feasibility Analysis - Development of Team Members - Site Selection and Concept Development - Initial Studies (environmental surveys, CNA, market study, appraisal) - Site Control - Development and Operating Pro Forma - Financing Options
Nearly 500 participants and twenty-six teams competed for top honors and bragging rights during the 2021 CDF Virtual Co-op 5k. From April 25 to May 1 cooperators from across the US walked, jogged and ran to raise more than $56,000 to support cooperative development.
This year's trophy winners were
You know, the basic human need that’s answered by mass movements is the need to communicate, but also to validate your own existence, your own story, every human being has a story. And part of the motor of oppression is to deny that your story is important. Deny your importance as a human being. When you become able to share your story with people all over the world, and listen to their story, there is a fundamental kind of power that emanates from those kinds of connections and those conversations or that kind of sharing.
Lynn Tobey and Bill Kornrich said that none of their group – PVEC Member Voices – had been involved in the co-op in any way – “we were member owners but we just paid our bills and that was it”– but were moved to challenge the board after it sprayed pesticide on residents’ property. It had a legal right to do so, to keep the area around its power lines clear to avoid outages, but did not notify residents.
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The Matawa Health Co-operative (MHC) was created in 2017 to enhance existing services provided by the federal and provincial governments to the nine Matawa First Nations in northern Ontario. This community-driven co-op supports Matawa members, both on reserve and in Thunder Bay. After numerous engagement sessions, members identified three main areas where they needed MHC’s assistance: mental health and addiction, diabetes and chronic diseases.
