The Indianapolis City-County Council is targeting mutual aid services under the guise of concerns for litter and potential violence. Sponsored by Councilors Zach Adamson, Kristin Jones, and Vop Osili, Proposal 256 will take effect in October, if passed. It imposes criminal charges and fines on anyone doing charitable distribution to 10 or more individuals on city property or public sidewalks without a permit.
There is an affordable-housing crisis across America. As of June, the median sale price of a home in the United States was nearly $400,000. In large cities, the cost of homeownership is significantly higher. The median apartment in Manhattan sells for well over $1 million...
There is a huge exception to this problem: Co-op City.
Slow Bloom Coffee Cooperative has grown up fast in Redlands, California, following the demise of long-running local coffee company Augie’s Coffee.
This past spring, the worker-owned coffee cooperative formed mostly by former Augie’s employees in late 2020 opened its first brick-and-mortar retail shop under its own name.
Powering Belgian pensioner Bernadette Vandercammen's art deco mansion in the northern town of Eeklo is a challenge at the best of times, let alone when soaring energy prices have left millions of Europeans struggling to pay their bills.
Worker-owned coöperatives are often considered both idealistic and inefficient; the model is seen as suitable mainly for upscale grocery stores or boutique bakeries in progressive towns. At a 2019 conference, the economist Larry Summers characterized co-ops as intrinsically sleepy and short-sighted. “When you put workers in charge of firms and you give them substantial control over the firms,” he said, “the one thing you do not get is expansion. You get more for the people who are already there.” And yet Mondragon is not a sleepy grocery store.
Earlier this year, Community First Fund opened a traditional financial institution, a credit union. Why? Because after serving entrepreneurs like Rodriguez for 30 years, the fund found that the families and communities around those entrepreneurs either weren’t getting access to banking and affordable credit elsewhere or would prefer access to banking and affordable credit from a name and face they’ve come to trust.
Rodriguez was one of the first members of the new Community First Fund Credit Union. He’s moving all his personal and business accounts over.
When newlyweds Betty and Bob Jensen chose their first home, it was some new thing called a housing co-operative.
“My mother had seen an article in the newspaper and said there was a meeting and you kids should go,” Betty Jensen says. “So, we kids went and we were fascinated by the whole concept.”
Decades later, the couple who met over a game of marbles in elementary school are still living where it all began. Now, a few children and grandchildren later, they are happily aging in place.
UCOMUR is the representative entity of worker cooperatives and Murcia is the Spanish Region with the highest number of cooperatives per 100,000 inhabitants. We have managed to create an ecosystem of cooperative social economy spread throughout the region. There are more than 1,600 cooperatives that employ, between members and workers, more than 80,000 people. This is an example of partnership that provides and is recognized as an added value in economic and social terms.
Due to climate change and decades of neglect of our cities infrastructure, critical portions of Jackson have flooded and incapacited our cities water treatment facilities. As a result, the entire city is without drinking water and it is not clear when the system is going to be repaired and water access restored.
The Ozark Land Holding Association (OLHA), founded in 1981, has a vague, mundane name. That’s entirely on purpose.
The moniker was originally intended to obscure the Arkansas group’s true makeup: a group of lesbians who owned land collectively, working, living and growing food together in a radical act of returning to the land.
Enjoy 5 wonderful days visiting the Tosepan Titataniske Cooperative in Cuetzalan, established in 1980 by the indigenous community of the highlands of Puebla. Cuetzalan del Progreso is a mountainous city in the state of Puebla, its climate is sunny with rain and humidity, an Eden full of flora and fauna. We will learn about the importance of this indigenous cooperative and its great achievements.
We present to you the new publication from TRISE, entitled Asking questions with the Zapatistas: Reflections from Greece on our Civilizational Impasse, authored by TRISE members Theodoros Karyotis, Ioanna-Maria Maravelidi, and Yavor Tarinski.
Editor: Matthew Little | Cover: Apollon Petropoulos | Design: George Chelebiev
Publisher: Transnational Institute of Social Ecology (TRISE) | Year: 2022
