The invisible thread that ties the development of Canada and our current economy plays out daily in the story of the First Nation relationship in the Canadian media. These pivotal moments can support the opportunity for our continued definition of modernity, to right our past relationship, and to define our current relationship.
Can democracy just consist of voting at the ballot box when we spend much of our time living under a dictatorship at the workplace? Increasingly, Americans are saying no. Under the radar, many are creating collective, cooperative kinds of economic institutions that aren’t your usual capitalist top-down enterprise.
Entrepreneurship, with all its headline-grabbing power, is misunderstood and overstated as a liberatory force when it comes to solving the challenges of economic growth. Start-ups get a lot of love and attention. There’s excitement and intrigue at the outset of a new venture, and the same goes for big buy-outs, acquisitions, and billion-dollar valuations.
Climate change, shifting demographics, and sobering economic realities for a growing number of Americans have sparked increased awareness of the need to re-examine how working class people and communities of color will successfully participate in tomorrow’s economy, the one they will inherit when our nation becomes an ethnic plurality.
My cousin, Charles Goodridge, was one of many unarmed black men killed by police this past summer. Black communities across the country have mobilized in response to this spate of high profile police killings.
The top 300 co-operatives in the world are collectively worth $2.205 trillion– an increase from the previous year’s result of $2.097 trillion.
To create vibrant communities, people need to share in the decisions that affect them. This is true for neighborhoods, cities, and beyond.
We meet to help one another explore, form, join, or improve businesses without bosses: worker cooperatives.
Join us if you are interested in working for yourself but not working alone— nor in being someone else's boss.
[Editor's note: The Every Thing Goes furniture store is one of three businesses owned and run by Ganas, a cooperative community in Staten Island, NY.]
A new economy must do more than distribute goods and services. It must also more equitably distribute meaningful opportunities for participation and wellbeing to the communities - human and ecological - so long exploited by our dominant political economy. A clue to how this can be achieved may lie in the very word “economy” itself.
KMO attended the People’s Climate March on Sunday and Flood Wall Street the next day. The first event was a permitted march that respected authority and was timed not to disrupt business.
“The central solutions to address the climate crisis are not actually going to come from looking up and counting carbon in the atmosphere,” Mascarenhas-Swan said. “They are going to come from remaking the economy, which is the root of this struggle.”
"Everything that's happening around us is showing us that more and more people are realizing that in general, this system of capitalism that rests on a history of slavery and colonialism and continues the exploitation and war and violence to this day is not working for us," [Kshama Sawant] said. "We need an alternative.
Cooperatives are collective problem solvers, and community assets. They are also a perfect fit as a tool for community economic developers who want to create high-quality, long-lasting jobs.
Millions are rising globally to challenge corporate domination of government, people, and the commons, and building a ‘movement of movements’. Hundreds gathered in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for the ‘Moving Beyond Capitalism’ Conference in August, 2014, and we share the millions’ principles for building a new world.
