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[W]hen the couple moved to McCool in January 2017 and looked out over the abandoned farm, they had no idea where to start. So, they looked to history, back to a time when this land was tended well.

Historically, as many as 50% of Kenya’s coffee producers have worked with big estates or co-operatives at any given time. Across the country, these organisations have anywhere from 100 to 12,000 members.

On the 14 of July 2022, CICOPA organized a Mutual Learning Session (MLS) between members on the topic “Worker Cooperatives and Unions: How to build a healthy relationship?” 

It’s official: Four Southern States cooperatives in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia will merge into an all-new organization, Freedom Ag & Energy Cooperative, effective January 1, 2023.

The members of the cooperatives in Winchester, Va., Oakland, Md., Buckhannon, W.Va., and Petersburg, W.Va. all formally approved the merger in votes held in late July and early August. The boards of directors at each location have also endorsed the deal, which means the four cooperatives have completed the process and will become Freedom Ag & Energy this winter.

Several Portland pubs double as bookstores. Over at Worker’s Tap, a new, worker-owned beer bar located near the corner of Southeast 12th Avenue and Burnside, they’re doing things differently. Co-owner and barkeep Connor Smith says the genesis of the bar wasn’t in business, but in activism. “We have all known each other through activism and organizing in the city, and the initial idea behind Worker’s Tap was creating a community space,” Smith says. “The bar is for making money to support that space.”

Worker-led models, touted as a counter force to tech monopolies like Amazon, have been slowly moving from the pages of publications like Co-op News to the mainstream press, a process which took another big step in recent weeks with the revelations about the corporate behaviour of Uber, making this a timely book.

The 4-Häuser Projekt houses are not a concentrated housing complex. They’re scattered at different lots along the street. Marc draws my attention to the ground floors rebuilt by the residents themselves, allowing families living on the same floor to have independent access from the yard. Altogether, the four buildings are inhabited by one hundred people, including forty children. New roof tiles, added a year earlier, are covered by photovoltaic panels. Bicycles are parked in front of the entrance.

Learn about some of the reasons that Sustainable Economies Law Center has adopted equal pay for staff.

Watch more from The SELC on YouTube

The Evergreen Cooperative Corporation (ECC) and Green City Growers (GCG) boards recently sold GCG to Local Roots Cleveland, a company headquartered in Fort Wayne, Ind. The GCG board, comprised of employee-owners and independent board consultants, voted to approve this transaction, and Local Roots Cleveland assumed ownership on May 19, 2022. Local Roots has offered jobs to all 12 GCG employees and expects to at least double the workforce by year-end.

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Purchase the book at Rutgers University Press

Ask yourself: When was the last time that the co-operative movement was mentioned alongside the unions and the Labour Party as an instrument for change in Britain? What is the co-operative movement doing to help individuals through the cost-of-living crisis? 

In 2022, the two oldest cooperatives of Brazilian journalists still in operation will complete 15 years of uninterrupted activity: Tribuna Independente and Portal Desacato. The achievements, worthy of celebration, happen with a daily dose of resilience and a financial effort from journalists who found in self-management a solution to survive in the market.