United States

As World War II ended and Americans turned their attention to problems at home, union leaders and other prominent New Yorkers came to believe that cooperative housing would solve the city’s century-old problem of providing decent housing at a reasonable cost for working-class families. In Working-Class Utopias: A History of Cooperative Housing in New York City, Robert Fogelson, one of the nation’s foremost urban historians, tells the story of this ambitious movement from the construction of the Amalgamated Houses after World War I to the building of Co-op City, the world’s largest housing cooperative, four decades later.

Chamois Holschuh tells the worker co-op conversion story of Austin Design Cooperative

Laura Flanders speaks to founder of the Community and Worker Ownership Project Rebecca Lurie, CEO of One Brooklyn Health LaRay Brown, and New York City Council Member Sandy Nurse about the recent enthusiasm surrounding worker cooperatives throughout the country, and what they can offer workers that traditional employment cannot.

In the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, getting out in a canoe to harvest manoomin, or wild rice (Zizania palustris), is a political assertion of indigenous food sovereignty for Anishinaabe people.

Reflections on the documentary film FOOD COOP, and the discussion panel that GEO held to talk about the film and the food co-op world.

On today's show, we learn about the potential of housing cooperatives with Anne Reynolds, former Director of UW Center for Cooperatives.

Bret Keisling is joined by worker-owners Alex Fischer and Andrew Stachiw who discuss USFWC's (US Federation of Worker Cooperatives) efforts to network and grow worker co-ops in Vermont to further societal goals including economic, racial, and social justice, and working in business as anti-capitalists.

GEO is hosting a 3 day on-line screening of the documentary FOOD COOP, as well as a panel discussion of the film.

Cooperative ownership offers a way for residents to not only have a say in their community’s decision-making, but also to prevent rent hikes and keep their housing costs affordable.

How one program tried and failed to carve out autonomous "free space" within a large affordable housing non-profit.