Italy has numerous traditions of cooperatives (Ammirato, 1994, 2018). In particular, the Italian coop sector evolved from both secular liberal thought, socialist and communist traditions, as well as from Catholic social thought. They have managed to become a class of principles-based enterprises strongly embedded in all sectors of the Italian economy.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — When Gadiel Galvez learned that the owner of his mobile home park south of Seattle was looking to sell, he and other residents worried their largely Latino community would be bulldozed to make way for another Amazon warehouse.
So, they decided to form a cooperative and buy their park in Lakewood, Washington. With help from a nonprofit that advises communities like theirs and helps them secure loans, they bought it for $5.25 million. Since becoming owners in September, everyone’s worked to make improvements.
In 2021, the Turner Family Community Enterprise Clinic completed Tennessee’s first conversion of a conventional business into a worker-owned cooperative. Since that time, cooperatives have become a growing part of Tennessee’s business landscape and the Clinic’s community engagement.
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DFA was formed by dairy farmers, we are owned by dairy farmers, we are governed by dairy farmers, and we work for the benefit of dairy farmers.
Any of our nearly 11,000 dairy farmer-owners can participate in our governance process. Before I worked for DFA, I too was a DFA farmer-owner, and I appreciated the value of having a voice in the organization marketing my milk.
Sellassie describes Gem City Market as a “survival mechanism” for people. “We had 40,000 residents and no full-service grocery store,” he tells Food Tank.
A year and a half after its opening, Gem City Market now provides access to fresh produce for Dayton’s West side. The co-op also creates meaningful jobs. “It’s seen as a strategy for community development in a community capacity,” Sellassie says.
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When Prospect Butcher Co. signed a lease in Prospect Heights in October 2020, it was a given that the operation would be worker-owned, said co-founder Greg Brockman. About four years prior, he had attempted to start a butcher cooperative, but it never got off the ground.
The Economic Committee of the Raqqa Zenûbiya Women’s Community Office launched a campaign to plant 4,500 saplings.
The Economic Committee of the Raqqa Zenûbiya Women’s Community Office launched a campaign to plant 4,500 saplings. 13 women participated in the campaign, which started on Monday and will continue until tomorrow, Wednesday.
“In Europe in the 1940s, there were only two ways out: Marseille or Auschwitz,” writes David Rousset, a French author and Holocaust survivor, in the preface to La Filière Marseillaise: Un Chemin Vers la Liberté Sous l’Occupation. Unoccupied Marseille offered safe harbor from Nazi persecution and a potential escape to the United States. So, as Paris fell under German bombs in 1940, the Mediterranean port was bombarded with exiles from across Europe.
Nijil Jones is practically giddy taking a large cardboard box out of an industrial fridge. Inside the chilled box are what Jones calls the best pecans in Georgia.
And Jones, 29, should know. In 2014, Jones, who uses they/them pronouns, started the Pecan Milk Cooperative, a Black, queer worker-owned co-op. They have been using different nuts to make plant-based milk since 2013, first just a batch of almond milk using their roommate’s blender, but then quickly turning to pecans.
ALR: In the book, you write that you hope worker cooperatives can help address a number of crises of our times. Let’s start with the crisis of democracy. When people think about worker cooperatives, one of the first things they think about is that it should be run democratically by workers. How does it work in practice?
