How State Banks Bring the Money Home
Big banks freeze out small business, but North Dakota’s state bank supports local jobs. The idea is catching on.
From Yes Magazine
by Stacy Mitchell
Sep 23, 2011
One of the most significant, but least noticed, consequences of the rapid and dramatic consolidation of the banking industry over the last decade is how much it has hindered the U.S. economy’s ability to create jobs.
To begin to understand this, take a look at each end of the banking spectrum. On one end are the nation’s 6,900 small, locally owned, community banks. These institutions control $1.4 trillion in assets. That’s 11 percent of all bank assets. They currently have $257 billion in loans to small businesses and farms on their books.
On the other end, four giant banks—JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo—now command $5.4 trillion in assets, or 40 percent of the total. Given that they are nearly four times as large as all local banks combined, one might expect that they would have made four times the small-business loans, or about $1 trillion. In fact, these banks have a mere $85 billion in small-business and farm loans on their balance sheets.
Why do giant banks make so few small-business loans? Automation is the short answer. The only way these sprawling institutions can function efficiently is by taking a mass production approach to lending: Plug credit score, income, and appraisal into the computer—out comes the loan. That’s why the mortgage business was supposed to be so safe. The economic meltdown of 2007 shows that it’s actually very risky.
North Dakota's struggling farmers, tired of being at the mercy of powerful out-of-state financial interests that controlled the availability and cost of credit, decided they needed a bank better aligned with their own interests.
Small-business loans are not so easily mechanized. Each is a custom job, requiring human judgment to evaluate the risk associated with a particular entrepreneur, a particular business plan, and a particular market. Community banks excel at this. Their lending decisions are made locally, informed by face-to-face relationships with borrowers and an intimate understanding of their hometown economies. Big banks, whose decision-making is long-distance and dictated more by computer models than judgment, are pretty bad at it. So they don’t make many small-business loans.
It’s no wonder, then, that unemployment has been so persistent. Our financial system is top-heavy with big banks that are scaled to meet the needs of large multinational corporations. The Commerce Department estimates that U.S.-based multinationals have eliminated 3 million American jobs over the last decade. Meanwhile, small businesses, historically responsible for about two-thirds of new jobs, have found it harder and harder to obtain credit.
In short, we have a financial system that is mismatched to the economic needs of American communities. This mismatch will become more acute as we attempt to transition to a carbon-efficient economy, which, by its very nature, will be the domain of small-scale enterprises: local food producers, community-owned wind and solar electricity, neighborhood stores that provide goods within walking distance of homes, and so on. To take root, these businesses will need a robust array of community-based financial institutions capable of meeting their capital and credit needs.
What a State Bank Can Do for a State's Economy
Lots of lending by banks is a measure of a healthy economy.
1. Lending in North Dakota is consistently higher than nearby states that are economically similar. One reason? The support that the State Bank of North Dakota offers local banks.
2 That’s also why North Dakota has nearly double the number of banks per 100,000 than its neighbors, and more than four times the national average.
State Partnership Banks
Home of Economy photo by Ellis Grafton
Photo by Ellis Grafton.
There’s no single solution to the thorny problem of how to restructure our financial system, but one of the most promising strategies involves creating state-owned banks that can bolster the lending capacity of local banks, helping them grow and multiply.
North Dakota is the only state, so far, that has a publicly owned bank. Founded in 1919, the Bank of North Dakota (BND) was a populist response to dynamics similar to those we face today. The state’s struggling farmers, tired of being at the mercy of powerful out-of-state financial interests that controlled the availability and cost of credit, decided they needed a bank better aligned with their own interests.
BND is wholly owned by the state, which deposits all of its money, except pension funds, with the bank. BND does not compete with local banks; it does not solicit retail banking business and has no branch offices or ATMs.
Instead, BND partners with local banks to expand their lending capacity. Much of BND’s $2.8 billion loan portfolio consists of “participation loans.” These are business loans originated by local banks, which then invite BND to finance a portion of the loan (and share part of the risk). This enables local banks to make more loans and maintain more diverse portfolios.
Thanks largely to BND, North Dakota has a more robust community banking network than any other state. It has 35 percent more local banks per capita than South Dakota and four times as many as the U.S. average. Small local banks account for 60 percent of deposits in North Dakota, compared to only 16 percent nationally.
Inspired by the North Dakota model, activists and small-business owners in more than a dozen states backed bills this year to create state-owned banks.
Over the last decade, lending by North Dakota’s local banks has averaged about $12,000 per capita (plus about $2,400 in participation lending by BND), compared to just $3,000 for community banks nationally. BND has also enabled local banks to maintain a higher loan-to-asset ratio than their counterparts in other states, which means they devote more of their assets to productive lending, rather than safer holdings like U.S. securities.
Although BND has some loan programs that accept a higher risk or lower return to meet specific economic objectives, such as its Beginning Entrepreneur Loan Guarantee Program, the vast majority of its lending decisions are made on a for-profit basis. It participates only in loans that make economic sense. As a result, BND has pumped $300 million in profit into the state’s general fund over the last decade. (In a state like Illinois that has a population of 13 million, the equivalent return would be about $6 billion.)
Inspired by the North Dakota model, activists and small-business owners in more than a dozen states, including Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, and Washington, backed bills this year to create state-owned banks. Although none of these bills passed on the first round, they did pick up a remarkable amount of support from lawmakers, given how unfamiliar most people, including most local bankers, are with BND.
To help educate lawmakers and counter misinformation put out by big-bank lobbyists, the Center for State Innovation has produced several reports analyzing how a public bank would function in various states. Its analysis of Oregon, for example, concluded that a state bank would help local banks expand lending by $1.3 billion, leading to 5,391 new small-business jobs in its first three to five years.
Many of these states, and others, are likely to take up the state bank idea again in the coming months. Although opponents like to suggest that these proposals would simply create yet another (unnecessary) state loan fund, the real power of a state bank lies not so much in its own lending, but rather in its capacity to support local banks and remake the financial landscape to better meet the needs of small businesses and communities.
Stacy Mitchell wrote this article for New Livelihoods, the Fall 2011 issue of YES! Magazine. She is a senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project, where she heads up initiatives on community banking and independent business. Her latest book is Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Moving to Equilibrium: Risk and Return in the New Economy
From the Reimagine Money Blog
November 4, 2011
By John Bloom
The tandem term risk-return represents a kind of received wisdom in the investment world. The hyphen highlights the assumption that with higher risk comes higher return and that the investor’s interest stands at the top of the investment system hierarchy. Such a unilateral perspective has produced enormous investment wealth very efficiently for a limited number of people—after all, only a few can afford to take the risks that produce the highest returns. Those below that threshold have options ranging from insured savings accounts (very low risk with minimal returns) to the casino world of slots, lotteries, and scratchers (with odds far outweighing risk in the calculus). There are a number of vehicles that lie somewhere between these extremes, such as CDs and bonds, but the risk-return choices are limited by regulation.
The point of this framing is not to cast aspersions on investors and the structures that support them in their deployment of capital, but rather to call into question the entwined nature of risk and return, coupled as they are in investor-centric practice, and to explore what might happen if they were treated as separate functions weighed out not only from the perspective of investor interest (private wealth) but also in light of community wealth. It is the rare exception in which this latter dimension is considered as anything other than a fortuitous by-product of investment. The concept of the commonwealth holds little economic resonance in an individualistic ownership society. In an economy driven by competitive self-interest, that which is not strictly economic suffers the most directly—namely, natural resources and culture, two key elements of the commons. I am pointing to a foundational problem with ownership. Do we own in order to accumulate wealth in service to self, or do we own in order to circulate and steward wealth in service to self and others? Each of these leading questions goes down a different path, and each to a world that has a fundamentally different economic operating system.
Historically, and from an economic perspective, the capacity to bring ideas into production has been the purview of the entrepreneur. The investor, able to recognize this capacity, places capital at the service of the entrepreneur who then uses those funds to run the business. Through the activities of the business an economic community is created including investors, employees, natural resources, suppliers, distributors, and customers, among others. Through its interconnected chain of actions this community produces wealth and hopefully the participants have their economic needs met from the proceeds of the ongoing circulation. However, through the assumed hierarchical power of the investor’s position (high risk, high return) as it has come to be applied in the modern investing world, the natural flow of capital in economic community is driven to disequilibrium. Investment has moved from its original primary function as enabler of economic initiative, to a more extractive process, in that an investor’s success has come to be measured by the degree to which wealth is drawn excessively out of community flow with far more than is necessary accumulated for private benefit. This is, of course, a broad-brush analysis. It is not intended as anti-capitalist or anti-anything, but rather to establish that the commonwealth could and should have a place in the investment process. Inclusion of the interest of the commonwealth could bring much needed equilibrium to the current extreme systemic imbalance, one caused at least in part by investor self-interest, and in the worst cases by greed.
The example of Mondragon Cooperative Corporation is a useful one for demonstrating that an investment system can create both personal wealth and commonwealth through a different set of assumptions about the risk-return linkage. The approach that Mondragon’s financial institution, Caja Laboral, takes to investment is that a start up enterprise is financed at a very low interest rate. This is so because the bank recognizes that a young business is not really in a position to carry a burdensome debt service. When the enterprise is established and can demonstrate sustainability, it then pays higher interest. This formula is quite the opposite of high-risk, high return. Judging by Mondragon’s growth and stability since the 1950s, it is worth understanding what lies behind this approach.
First, the consideration of risk is inherently broader than just the bank’s perspective, because the bank is in reality owned by the community. Thus the failure of the enterprise is also the community’s failure. This is not a conundrum, but instead a picture of financial and economic mutuality or interdependence that has long vanished from mainstream financial institutions, but has been the backbone of community banks and credit unions. Instead of the convention that risk is an indicator of what I as an investor might lose, risk is seen as a degree of investor and community commitment to a project’s success. The rate of return is not at all derived from the perceived risk, but rather from what is needed in order for the money to continue in circulation and produce enough surplus to meet the complex of community needs. Much more could be said about the shared community values and agreements underlying Mondragon’s system, but this is enough to see that Mondragon is one notable model of a different way of working.
There is change afoot. The emerging field of impact investing, which is looking at the outcomes of investing on the natural and cultural environment is moving toward a more bilateral view, one that recognizes the importance of the commonwealth and values it as a beneficiary. Yet, it fails to give that commonwealth a real voice in the investment process. The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) is one example, though it is still driven by the investor’s will as the provider. The evolution of B Corporation is another growing exemplar of reallocating investor-stockholder power to entrepreneurs who build a sense of the commonwealth into the corporate charter. In a B Corporation a risk to the environment caused by the company’s activities is also a risk to the investor. Such an investor is not only stepping into a new set of agreements about stockholder rights, but also into an evolving social contract.
The realities of mutuality or interdependence are critical to maintaining economic equilibrium. And, further, owning with a sense of stewardship for the commonwealth will require a rewiring of most of our basic economic and financial understandings. In this case I have identified risk-return as a metaphoric magnifying glass to look into the system, which Occupy Wall Street [OWS] and so many others have named as broken, unjust, and even criminal. These visionaries for a new social contract have rightly identified that our current imbalance of wealth, and the concentration of economic power in the hands of investors, including Wall St. and banks, is the place where leverage for change is most needed and is most likely to be effective. One need not look far or read extensively to know that our economy is where the social pain is most visible and visceral.
Transforming from a culture of owning to a culture of stewarding will require a fundamental shift in how we view our relationship to the material world. If the last few years have taught us anything, it is that what we think of as material and enduring is no longer so. What we thought of as retirement savings can disappear overnight, and increasingly strong natural catastrophes can wipe out whole communities instantly. Communities rise up as the antidote to uncertainty, whether its origins are natural or cultural. OWS is nothing if not a new kind of community. While its origins reside in recognizing the disequilibrium in the economy, what the movement is demonstrating is a new stewardship of the commonwealth.
John Bloom is Director of Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance.
* Published by Jillian McCoy
* Categories: Blog, Investing, Money
November 4, 2011
By John Bloom
The tandem term risk-return represents a kind of received wisdom in the investment world. The hyphen highlights the assumption that with higher risk comes higher return and that the investor’s interest stands at the top of the investment system hierarchy. Such a unilateral perspective has produced enormous investment wealth very efficiently for a limited number of people—after all, only a few can afford to take the risks that produce the highest returns. Those below that threshold have options ranging from insured savings accounts (very low risk with minimal returns) to the casino world of slots, lotteries, and scratchers (with odds far outweighing risk in the calculus). There are a number of vehicles that lie somewhere between these extremes, such as CDs and bonds, but the risk-return choices are limited by regulation.
The point of this framing is not to cast aspersions on investors and the structures that support them in their deployment of capital, but rather to call into question the entwined nature of risk and return, coupled as they are in investor-centric practice, and to explore what might happen if they were treated as separate functions weighed out not only from the perspective of investor interest (private wealth) but also in light of community wealth. It is the rare exception in which this latter dimension is considered as anything other than a fortuitous by-product of investment. The concept of the commonwealth holds little economic resonance in an individualistic ownership society. In an economy driven by competitive self-interest, that which is not strictly economic suffers the most directly—namely, natural resources and culture, two key elements of the commons. I am pointing to a foundational problem with ownership. Do we own in order to accumulate wealth in service to self, or do we own in order to circulate and steward wealth in service to self and others? Each of these leading questions goes down a different path, and each to a world that has a fundamentally different economic operating system.
Historically, and from an economic perspective, the capacity to bring ideas into production has been the purview of the entrepreneur. The investor, able to recognize this capacity, places capital at the service of the entrepreneur who then uses those funds to run the business. Through the activities of the business an economic community is created including investors, employees, natural resources, suppliers, distributors, and customers, among others. Through its interconnected chain of actions this community produces wealth and hopefully the participants have their economic needs met from the proceeds of the ongoing circulation. However, through the assumed hierarchical power of the investor’s position (high risk, high return) as it has come to be applied in the modern investing world, the natural flow of capital in economic community is driven to disequilibrium. Investment has moved from its original primary function as enabler of economic initiative, to a more extractive process, in that an investor’s success has come to be measured by the degree to which wealth is drawn excessively out of community flow with far more than is necessary accumulated for private benefit. This is, of course, a broad-brush analysis. It is not intended as anti-capitalist or anti-anything, but rather to establish that the commonwealth could and should have a place in the investment process. Inclusion of the interest of the commonwealth could bring much needed equilibrium to the current extreme systemic imbalance, one caused at least in part by investor self-interest, and in the worst cases by greed.
The example of Mondragon Cooperative Corporation is a useful one for demonstrating that an investment system can create both personal wealth and commonwealth through a different set of assumptions about the risk-return linkage. The approach that Mondragon’s financial institution, Caja Laboral, takes to investment is that a start up enterprise is financed at a very low interest rate. This is so because the bank recognizes that a young business is not really in a position to carry a burdensome debt service. When the enterprise is established and can demonstrate sustainability, it then pays higher interest. This formula is quite the opposite of high-risk, high return. Judging by Mondragon’s growth and stability since the 1950s, it is worth understanding what lies behind this approach.
First, the consideration of risk is inherently broader than just the bank’s perspective, because the bank is in reality owned by the community. Thus the failure of the enterprise is also the community’s failure. This is not a conundrum, but instead a picture of financial and economic mutuality or interdependence that has long vanished from mainstream financial institutions, but has been the backbone of community banks and credit unions. Instead of the convention that risk is an indicator of what I as an investor might lose, risk is seen as a degree of investor and community commitment to a project’s success. The rate of return is not at all derived from the perceived risk, but rather from what is needed in order for the money to continue in circulation and produce enough surplus to meet the complex of community needs. Much more could be said about the shared community values and agreements underlying Mondragon’s system, but this is enough to see that Mondragon is one notable model of a different way of working.
There is change afoot. The emerging field of impact investing, which is looking at the outcomes of investing on the natural and cultural environment is moving toward a more bilateral view, one that recognizes the importance of the commonwealth and values it as a beneficiary. Yet, it fails to give that commonwealth a real voice in the investment process. The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) is one example, though it is still driven by the investor’s will as the provider. The evolution of B Corporation is another growing exemplar of reallocating investor-stockholder power to entrepreneurs who build a sense of the commonwealth into the corporate charter. In a B Corporation a risk to the environment caused by the company’s activities is also a risk to the investor. Such an investor is not only stepping into a new set of agreements about stockholder rights, but also into an evolving social contract.
The realities of mutuality or interdependence are critical to maintaining economic equilibrium. And, further, owning with a sense of stewardship for the commonwealth will require a rewiring of most of our basic economic and financial understandings. In this case I have identified risk-return as a metaphoric magnifying glass to look into the system, which Occupy Wall Street [OWS] and so many others have named as broken, unjust, and even criminal. These visionaries for a new social contract have rightly identified that our current imbalance of wealth, and the concentration of economic power in the hands of investors, including Wall St. and banks, is the place where leverage for change is most needed and is most likely to be effective. One need not look far or read extensively to know that our economy is where the social pain is most visible and visceral.
Transforming from a culture of owning to a culture of stewarding will require a fundamental shift in how we view our relationship to the material world. If the last few years have taught us anything, it is that what we think of as material and enduring is no longer so. What we thought of as retirement savings can disappear overnight, and increasingly strong natural catastrophes can wipe out whole communities instantly. Communities rise up as the antidote to uncertainty, whether its origins are natural or cultural. OWS is nothing if not a new kind of community. While its origins reside in recognizing the disequilibrium in the economy, what the movement is demonstrating is a new stewardship of the commonwealth.
John Bloom is Director of Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance.
* Published by Jillian McCoy
* Categories: Blog, Investing, Money
Friday, November 4, 2011
An interview with Mira Luna on The Solidarity Economy
An interview with Mira Luna by Michel Bauwens
and Neal Gorenflo
From Shareable.net
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Shareable publisher Neal Gorenflo and founder of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives Michel Bauwens talked with solidarity economy activist and organizer Mira Luna about the historical moment and what's coming soon from alternative economies
Neal Gorenflo: When I met you three years ago, you described yourself as an alternative economics organizer. I had never heard such a thing. It fascinated me. How did you come to your work?
Mira Luna: I came to my work through years of environmental and social justice activism. I was disheartened by how little progress we were making because of the way the economy is structured. It was like banging my head against a wall. While studying at New College and coordinating the Really Really Free Market, I realized the wall was in some ways an illusion and there are many ways to take back your power that often are invisible to the average person- in these spaces is the terrain of solidarity economy. I wrote a Masters thesis on my work to end sweatshops and how it was hopeless, pointing to many local economic alternatives as the only real and permanent solution. I don't believe it is possible in this context to significantly reform or topple the system from above.
Then personal and political fused. My relationship with my long-term partner fell apart because of economics – differences in class and values. I didn't value money over relationship and he did. This became a critical point. Then I got Lyme disease and hit up against another wall – my insurance company – and spent several years disabled and going bankrupt to get better, on the edge of not being able to afford the medicine my insurance wouldn't cover, really on the edge of death, for the sake of profit. After all my money and credit was gone, I fell into the arms of a new found community and to some degree they caught me, although I felt I could have gotten more help with a better mutual aid network. I discovered a whole new world living in the gift and barter economy, which is based primarily on relationships and shared values. I thrived in this subculture, which echoed a village type economy that still exists in some parts of the world – Mali for example. I decided I wanted to create this relationship village economy locally.
As I was recovering from my illness, I dove head-first into theory and practice of alternative economics and became an expert in local currencies. I started Bay Area Community Exchange and its Timebank, co-founded JASEcon - a network of alternative economic projects, joined the US Solidarity Economy Network board, the San Francisco Community Land Trust board which develops affordable housing coops, dabbled in the worker cooperative world, and joined my local Transition Towns group.
Michel Bauwens: What is the Solidarity Economy? How closely is it related to other 'social economy' formats such as what is called the 'social economy' in France. What are the requirements to be counted as part of that economy?
As defined by the US Solidarity Economy Network, “the Solidarity Economy is an alternative development framework that is grounded in practice and the in the principles of: solidarity, mutualism, and cooperation; equity in all dimensions (race/ethnicity/ nationality, class, gender, LGBTQ); social well-being over profit and the unfettered rule of the market; sustainability; social and economic democracy; and pluralism, allowing for different forms in different contexts, open to continual change and driven from the bottom-up.”
USSEN and the local solidarity economy network I helped develop called JASecon have a open approach that allows organizations to self-identify based on these principles. There seems to be a lot of consensus, except when it comes to organizations that identify as social or green capitalists. I think most solidarity economists, but not all are vehemently anti-capitalist but not anti-business or market (maybe anti-stock market) and they are general not communist, although some are participatory socialists. Actually, they tend to shun political ideology in favor of fluid values and principles as a frame. I would add to their definition that participation is very important – participation in decision-making, governance and in creating economic activity itself. Local, collective decision-making and voluntary action are favored over authoritarian control of the economy.
From a more spiritual perspective, the solidarity economy moves us from a “me” to a “we” economy, recognizing, like the Buddhists do, that we are all interconnected – we including the Earth and all its creatures - which the Bolivian Government recently encoded in law.
NG: Why is the Solidarity Economy so strong in some parts of the world,like the Basque region of Spain where the Mondragon cooperative is based, and weak in others?
It is stronger in areas that have a culture of resistance, community self-sufficiency, and strong communal ties. Latin America is leading the way. Poverty is a strong motivator, but the solutions are only possible because there is fertile ground for change in strong communities, like the Basques, Zapatistas and the MST. On the other hand, government has been helpful in some countries, especially in Latin America, and some local governments. Additionally, our economy in the US is so tied into a centralized power structure, it feels very challenging to escape and survive. In less developed countries there is more room for experimentation without the government cracking down, less commercialization, and more possibilities for economic autonomy. Less of their assets are tied to big banks and more are tied up in local relationships. Relationships and reputation are extremely important to Latin Americans in general so it makes sense that an economy based on relationships would thrive there. In the US, our economy thrives on the severing of relationship ties - to place, to workers, to the Earth, to each other.
NG: What impact has The Great Recession had on the Solidarity Economy? Has it been strengthened or weakened by the crisis of our economic system? Do you see it's future improving? How big a role would it have in the overall economy?
It definitely has strengthened the solidarity economy. Crisis breeds change and most Americans and Europeans had been riding along too comfortable to rock the boat. There is a growing distrust in government as corruption and deceit become glaringly obvious, especially around the bank bailouts. A global economy and even a national economy seem out of our hands and out of control. So there is a now a strong movement towards localization to gain democratic control back, even if not yet full solidarity economy, which asks for more. As people are out of work and desperate to get their needs met, they search for alternatives that offer a more hopeful future. They are also questioning what the economy is for (if it's not taking care of our needs), allowing the imagination to envision a whole new economy, and from there many creative possibilities emerge.
NG: Poverty alleviation and solidarity economy initiatives seem like two different streams of activity here in the US. Why is that, and how might that be changing?
Actually, they are quite overlapping. There certainly needs to more more integration, but it is happening as I demonstrated in my article “An Economy Turned Upside Down”. My understanding is that often people at the bottom of the economic pyramid often don't have access to information about alternatives or the time or capital to implement them. They are definitely interested though as they understand the Solidarity Economy at deep personal level and through social justice organizing. I find that funders are more interested in poverty alleviation than solidarity economy projects that present a challenge to the source of their wealth. That makes it difficult to get these projects off the ground in low income communities, but I think we need to get more creative at using the resources already within these communities. If a good government or nonprofit or socially responsible business is willing to help all the better, and we are seeing that happen as well in small pockets.
In March of this year, the Southern Grassroots Economies Project brought together over thirty representatives from organizations from across the South and Midwest to discuss developing cooperative economics as a part of their social justice work, at the Highlander Center. Labor organizations like theUnited Steel Workers, Jobs with Justice, and the International Labor Organization have all started partnerships with worker cooperative development institutions. While traditionally worker coop development hasn't expresses a preference for helping the most poor, this is changing. Evergreen Worker Cooperatives prioritizes hiring worker owners that have serious barriers to employment, like former incarceration and there are many social justice organizations organizing solidarity economy projects with poor people under the radar (some mentioned in my last article), especially, but not at all limited to, worker cooperative development.
NG: What are the most promising new innovations coming out of The Solidarity Economy recently?
Associations of alternative economic projects that pool resources: skills and technical expertise, knowledge, capital and material resources (like mills or butchering facilities), administration, governance and labor either within a specific sector (cooperatives, timebanks, etc) or across sectors within a specific geography. The Evergreen Cooperatives in Ohio and Banco Palmasin Brazil are an example of the former, and Sonoma Go Local is an example of the latter. These projects are very familiar with the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, which has an impressively integrative model, with its own bank, educational institutions, and participatory self-governance. The Zapatistas are also quietly building a new economy from the bottom up, using mostly their own resources but in intensive collaboration, collective governance, resource sharing, training, and so on. The US Solidarity Economy Network, emulating Brazil, is attempting to map the solidarity economy in the US. Mapping should help people find each other to grow and form stronger networks, facilitate resource and information sharing, trade, collaboration, and associative organizations, as well as connecting solidarity economic producers.
MB: Some people are advocating a convergence between open source thinking, i.e. the sharing of knowledge, code (free software), and designs (Arduino), with the solidarity economy networks? Is this happening, feasible, desirable?
It is of the utmost importance. I think open source tools can help these projects catch fire spreading across the world, by eliminating the initial or limiting barrier to implementation, which is often knowledge or money or both. Solidarity economy projects as I mentioned are intentionally or systemically under-resourced or unfunded. Sharing knowledge, code, etc. is one way to give these projects a leg up against the mainstream economy and give them access to resources they can't afford to access. Many people with useful skills and knowledge are coming aboard the open source movement, but since they often come without a personal experience of poverty, idealism is usually the main driver for open source innovators. One problem I see with this is that people with knowledge and skills often create solutions without the input of those who will be using their tools, especially the poor, non-English speakers, unplugged, etc. It would be wise to get as much input from the groups you are trying to involve from the very beginning.
The Timebank I coordinate is an open source code project so we share code with communities that want to use our software and we ask that they share new code with us. I see more of this happening in the currency world and as more skilled techies get involved, there is enormous potential for a power shift. As Thomas Jefferson said, which is more true today, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks, and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." We need many currencies, all kinds of them run by democratic groups of good reputation or even individual issuing power, which happens in a mutual credit currency model like the timebank, LETS or GETS. Decentralization of knowledge, decision-making power and resources is absolutely necessary to a healthy democracy and a peaceful, relatively egalitarian society. If one group gains more power, they will game the system and shift its rules and structure to to their favor. Open source models are tools that counter this kind of power grab.
MB: The Arab Spring and the 15M movements in the Middle East and Europe, and perhaps the elections of progressive governments in Latin America, are signs of a revival of social movements in the world, in the context of an onslaught of austerity budgets. Do you see any connection or convergence?
Yes, there is both horrible suffering and amazing opportunity around the world right now. Though actually the suffering is mostly new to the developed world. This happens in many different contexts, but since the economic downturn touches nearly everyone and every issue, it is a primary motivator and target for reform and radical change.
NG: You've been co-leading the largest timebank in the San Francisco Bay Area for over two years. What have you learned that could help other timebank organizers?
Our Timebank appears to be different from other timebanks. There are only a couple outstandingly successful ones in the US and they were very, very well funded – one by a Rockefeller and the other by the government. However, getting outside conventional funding is notoriously difficult for timebanks, with a few exceptions of government grants. Other timebanks peter along growing painfully slow with minimal funding and still working within a traditional nonprofit framework and unable to make the transition to functioning in the new economy. While we do need $USD for some basic expenses, we try to maintain as much self-sufficiency and autonomy from the mainstream economy as possible. We pay our volunteers in time dollars and work to make those time dollars as useful as possible as soon as possible. As nonprofits are shrinking and closing up all around us, we are growing quickly, fueled by necessity and idealism, and by tapping into the solidarity economy growing all around us.
Our timebank is simultaneously a nonprofit, a volunteer worker collective, and member/consumer cooperative that combines economy of scale and a decentralized organizing strategy. We offer everyone in the Bay Area access to the Timebank and ask them to organizing their own communities using our free software and pooled organizational resources. It’s like having lots of mini-timebanks under one umbrella association called Bay Area Community Exchange. All these groups are coming to me saying “I want to start a Timebank.” It takes an awful lot of work to start one so we say just “join us and do your own thing”, but under a few main principles and in communication with the larger group. As an open source project, we share code with other communities outside the Bay that want to use our software and have a Ruby programmer to tailor and maintain their system. In return, we ask that they share new code with us. There is now a group in Greece that's interested in using our software to start a timebank. There is another organization calledHour World that hopes to provide economy of scale of financial resources, training, and software to timebanks on a national level while organizing networks amongst timebanks in a more decentralized and collaborative way than Timebanks USA as a leadership organization has done as a conventional nonprofit. Naturally, timebankers are collaborators and we can be because in our system there is abundance not scarcity. Timebanking is the closest bridge we have to the new economy and its where I find the most hope.
and Neal Gorenflo
From Shareable.net
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Shareable publisher Neal Gorenflo and founder of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives Michel Bauwens talked with solidarity economy activist and organizer Mira Luna about the historical moment and what's coming soon from alternative economies
Neal Gorenflo: When I met you three years ago, you described yourself as an alternative economics organizer. I had never heard such a thing. It fascinated me. How did you come to your work?
Mira Luna: I came to my work through years of environmental and social justice activism. I was disheartened by how little progress we were making because of the way the economy is structured. It was like banging my head against a wall. While studying at New College and coordinating the Really Really Free Market, I realized the wall was in some ways an illusion and there are many ways to take back your power that often are invisible to the average person- in these spaces is the terrain of solidarity economy. I wrote a Masters thesis on my work to end sweatshops and how it was hopeless, pointing to many local economic alternatives as the only real and permanent solution. I don't believe it is possible in this context to significantly reform or topple the system from above.
Then personal and political fused. My relationship with my long-term partner fell apart because of economics – differences in class and values. I didn't value money over relationship and he did. This became a critical point. Then I got Lyme disease and hit up against another wall – my insurance company – and spent several years disabled and going bankrupt to get better, on the edge of not being able to afford the medicine my insurance wouldn't cover, really on the edge of death, for the sake of profit. After all my money and credit was gone, I fell into the arms of a new found community and to some degree they caught me, although I felt I could have gotten more help with a better mutual aid network. I discovered a whole new world living in the gift and barter economy, which is based primarily on relationships and shared values. I thrived in this subculture, which echoed a village type economy that still exists in some parts of the world – Mali for example. I decided I wanted to create this relationship village economy locally.
As I was recovering from my illness, I dove head-first into theory and practice of alternative economics and became an expert in local currencies. I started Bay Area Community Exchange and its Timebank, co-founded JASEcon - a network of alternative economic projects, joined the US Solidarity Economy Network board, the San Francisco Community Land Trust board which develops affordable housing coops, dabbled in the worker cooperative world, and joined my local Transition Towns group.
Michel Bauwens: What is the Solidarity Economy? How closely is it related to other 'social economy' formats such as what is called the 'social economy' in France. What are the requirements to be counted as part of that economy?
As defined by the US Solidarity Economy Network, “the Solidarity Economy is an alternative development framework that is grounded in practice and the in the principles of: solidarity, mutualism, and cooperation; equity in all dimensions (race/ethnicity/ nationality, class, gender, LGBTQ); social well-being over profit and the unfettered rule of the market; sustainability; social and economic democracy; and pluralism, allowing for different forms in different contexts, open to continual change and driven from the bottom-up.”
USSEN and the local solidarity economy network I helped develop called JASecon have a open approach that allows organizations to self-identify based on these principles. There seems to be a lot of consensus, except when it comes to organizations that identify as social or green capitalists. I think most solidarity economists, but not all are vehemently anti-capitalist but not anti-business or market (maybe anti-stock market) and they are general not communist, although some are participatory socialists. Actually, they tend to shun political ideology in favor of fluid values and principles as a frame. I would add to their definition that participation is very important – participation in decision-making, governance and in creating economic activity itself. Local, collective decision-making and voluntary action are favored over authoritarian control of the economy.
From a more spiritual perspective, the solidarity economy moves us from a “me” to a “we” economy, recognizing, like the Buddhists do, that we are all interconnected – we including the Earth and all its creatures - which the Bolivian Government recently encoded in law.
NG: Why is the Solidarity Economy so strong in some parts of the world,like the Basque region of Spain where the Mondragon cooperative is based, and weak in others?
It is stronger in areas that have a culture of resistance, community self-sufficiency, and strong communal ties. Latin America is leading the way. Poverty is a strong motivator, but the solutions are only possible because there is fertile ground for change in strong communities, like the Basques, Zapatistas and the MST. On the other hand, government has been helpful in some countries, especially in Latin America, and some local governments. Additionally, our economy in the US is so tied into a centralized power structure, it feels very challenging to escape and survive. In less developed countries there is more room for experimentation without the government cracking down, less commercialization, and more possibilities for economic autonomy. Less of their assets are tied to big banks and more are tied up in local relationships. Relationships and reputation are extremely important to Latin Americans in general so it makes sense that an economy based on relationships would thrive there. In the US, our economy thrives on the severing of relationship ties - to place, to workers, to the Earth, to each other.
NG: What impact has The Great Recession had on the Solidarity Economy? Has it been strengthened or weakened by the crisis of our economic system? Do you see it's future improving? How big a role would it have in the overall economy?
It definitely has strengthened the solidarity economy. Crisis breeds change and most Americans and Europeans had been riding along too comfortable to rock the boat. There is a growing distrust in government as corruption and deceit become glaringly obvious, especially around the bank bailouts. A global economy and even a national economy seem out of our hands and out of control. So there is a now a strong movement towards localization to gain democratic control back, even if not yet full solidarity economy, which asks for more. As people are out of work and desperate to get their needs met, they search for alternatives that offer a more hopeful future. They are also questioning what the economy is for (if it's not taking care of our needs), allowing the imagination to envision a whole new economy, and from there many creative possibilities emerge.
NG: Poverty alleviation and solidarity economy initiatives seem like two different streams of activity here in the US. Why is that, and how might that be changing?
Actually, they are quite overlapping. There certainly needs to more more integration, but it is happening as I demonstrated in my article “An Economy Turned Upside Down”. My understanding is that often people at the bottom of the economic pyramid often don't have access to information about alternatives or the time or capital to implement them. They are definitely interested though as they understand the Solidarity Economy at deep personal level and through social justice organizing. I find that funders are more interested in poverty alleviation than solidarity economy projects that present a challenge to the source of their wealth. That makes it difficult to get these projects off the ground in low income communities, but I think we need to get more creative at using the resources already within these communities. If a good government or nonprofit or socially responsible business is willing to help all the better, and we are seeing that happen as well in small pockets.
In March of this year, the Southern Grassroots Economies Project brought together over thirty representatives from organizations from across the South and Midwest to discuss developing cooperative economics as a part of their social justice work, at the Highlander Center. Labor organizations like theUnited Steel Workers, Jobs with Justice, and the International Labor Organization have all started partnerships with worker cooperative development institutions. While traditionally worker coop development hasn't expresses a preference for helping the most poor, this is changing. Evergreen Worker Cooperatives prioritizes hiring worker owners that have serious barriers to employment, like former incarceration and there are many social justice organizations organizing solidarity economy projects with poor people under the radar (some mentioned in my last article), especially, but not at all limited to, worker cooperative development.
NG: What are the most promising new innovations coming out of The Solidarity Economy recently?
Associations of alternative economic projects that pool resources: skills and technical expertise, knowledge, capital and material resources (like mills or butchering facilities), administration, governance and labor either within a specific sector (cooperatives, timebanks, etc) or across sectors within a specific geography. The Evergreen Cooperatives in Ohio and Banco Palmasin Brazil are an example of the former, and Sonoma Go Local is an example of the latter. These projects are very familiar with the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, which has an impressively integrative model, with its own bank, educational institutions, and participatory self-governance. The Zapatistas are also quietly building a new economy from the bottom up, using mostly their own resources but in intensive collaboration, collective governance, resource sharing, training, and so on. The US Solidarity Economy Network, emulating Brazil, is attempting to map the solidarity economy in the US. Mapping should help people find each other to grow and form stronger networks, facilitate resource and information sharing, trade, collaboration, and associative organizations, as well as connecting solidarity economic producers.
MB: Some people are advocating a convergence between open source thinking, i.e. the sharing of knowledge, code (free software), and designs (Arduino), with the solidarity economy networks? Is this happening, feasible, desirable?
It is of the utmost importance. I think open source tools can help these projects catch fire spreading across the world, by eliminating the initial or limiting barrier to implementation, which is often knowledge or money or both. Solidarity economy projects as I mentioned are intentionally or systemically under-resourced or unfunded. Sharing knowledge, code, etc. is one way to give these projects a leg up against the mainstream economy and give them access to resources they can't afford to access. Many people with useful skills and knowledge are coming aboard the open source movement, but since they often come without a personal experience of poverty, idealism is usually the main driver for open source innovators. One problem I see with this is that people with knowledge and skills often create solutions without the input of those who will be using their tools, especially the poor, non-English speakers, unplugged, etc. It would be wise to get as much input from the groups you are trying to involve from the very beginning.
The Timebank I coordinate is an open source code project so we share code with communities that want to use our software and we ask that they share new code with us. I see more of this happening in the currency world and as more skilled techies get involved, there is enormous potential for a power shift. As Thomas Jefferson said, which is more true today, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks, and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." We need many currencies, all kinds of them run by democratic groups of good reputation or even individual issuing power, which happens in a mutual credit currency model like the timebank, LETS or GETS. Decentralization of knowledge, decision-making power and resources is absolutely necessary to a healthy democracy and a peaceful, relatively egalitarian society. If one group gains more power, they will game the system and shift its rules and structure to to their favor. Open source models are tools that counter this kind of power grab.
MB: The Arab Spring and the 15M movements in the Middle East and Europe, and perhaps the elections of progressive governments in Latin America, are signs of a revival of social movements in the world, in the context of an onslaught of austerity budgets. Do you see any connection or convergence?
Yes, there is both horrible suffering and amazing opportunity around the world right now. Though actually the suffering is mostly new to the developed world. This happens in many different contexts, but since the economic downturn touches nearly everyone and every issue, it is a primary motivator and target for reform and radical change.
NG: You've been co-leading the largest timebank in the San Francisco Bay Area for over two years. What have you learned that could help other timebank organizers?
Our Timebank appears to be different from other timebanks. There are only a couple outstandingly successful ones in the US and they were very, very well funded – one by a Rockefeller and the other by the government. However, getting outside conventional funding is notoriously difficult for timebanks, with a few exceptions of government grants. Other timebanks peter along growing painfully slow with minimal funding and still working within a traditional nonprofit framework and unable to make the transition to functioning in the new economy. While we do need $USD for some basic expenses, we try to maintain as much self-sufficiency and autonomy from the mainstream economy as possible. We pay our volunteers in time dollars and work to make those time dollars as useful as possible as soon as possible. As nonprofits are shrinking and closing up all around us, we are growing quickly, fueled by necessity and idealism, and by tapping into the solidarity economy growing all around us.
Our timebank is simultaneously a nonprofit, a volunteer worker collective, and member/consumer cooperative that combines economy of scale and a decentralized organizing strategy. We offer everyone in the Bay Area access to the Timebank and ask them to organizing their own communities using our free software and pooled organizational resources. It’s like having lots of mini-timebanks under one umbrella association called Bay Area Community Exchange. All these groups are coming to me saying “I want to start a Timebank.” It takes an awful lot of work to start one so we say just “join us and do your own thing”, but under a few main principles and in communication with the larger group. As an open source project, we share code with other communities outside the Bay that want to use our software and have a Ruby programmer to tailor and maintain their system. In return, we ask that they share new code with us. There is now a group in Greece that's interested in using our software to start a timebank. There is another organization calledHour World that hopes to provide economy of scale of financial resources, training, and software to timebanks on a national level while organizing networks amongst timebanks in a more decentralized and collaborative way than Timebanks USA as a leadership organization has done as a conventional nonprofit. Naturally, timebankers are collaborators and we can be because in our system there is abundance not scarcity. Timebanking is the closest bridge we have to the new economy and its where I find the most hope.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Occupy Oakland makes plans for citywide general strike
By Scott Johnson and Angela Woodall
Contra Costa Times
OAKLAND -- Occupy Oakland protesters debated Thursday evening the practical difficulties of organizing a citywide general strike with the aim of shutting down the city of Oakland on Nov. 2. Speakers urged teachers, students, union members and workers of all stripes to participate in whatever way they could, and said the entire world was watching Oakland. "Oakland is the vanguard and epicenter of the Occupy movement," said Clarence Thomas, a member of the powerful International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union who urged the hundreds of assembled people to support the strike.
Protesters said the aim of the strike was to involve Oakland more aggressively in the global Occupy movement, and to help mobilize millions of Americans to protest against what they see as the excesses of Wall Street, unfair banking regulations and disparities in the nation's health care system.
The call for a strike originated Wednesday evening during a General Assembly which drew at least a thousand people from all walks of life to Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza, which protesters had turned into a de-facto camp site before police kicked them out last week. Many people said they felt mobilized to participate after seeing videos and pictures from Tuesday night's violence, when at least 200 riot police from around the Bay Area clashed with protesters, lobbing tear gas, flash-bang grenades and so-called "nonlethal" projectiles to attempt to corral and contain them.
Scott Olsen, a U.S. Marine corporal and Iraqi war veteran remained in intensive care at Highland Hospital after suffering critical wounds to the head from an unidentified police projectile. His condition was improving but as of Thursday evening he remained unable to talk.
Spurred on by Olsen's injury, the actions of the police and the relative absence of Mayor Jean Quan from the debate, the calls for a general strike gained momentum as the week progressed. Oakland last had a general strike over half a century ago, in 1946, when unions shut the city down for 56 hours. Bars were allowed to remain open, but could only serve beer. Jukeboxes were left to play, but had to be placed on public sidewalks so the maximum number of people could enjoy the music. A commonly heard song was "Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay that Pistol Down," a national hit at the time.
Today's protesters say the next step is to involve as many local and national unions, community organizations, churches and student movements in the shortest time possible.
"We're going to have to do a lot of work, but we understand the importance of it," said Josie Camacho, executive secretary and treasurer of the Alameda Labor Council, which has 120 affiliated unions and claims over 100,000 Bay Area members. "This movement has its own momentum," Camacho said, adding that she and others were urging the AFL-CIO to join their ranks.
Some who support the movement have nevertheless expressed concern about the implications of a major strike.
"There are a lot of people in this city who are struggling to hold on to their jobs," said Noweli Alexander, an East Oakland resident and comptroller at a local design company. "I support this strike, but there needs to be more discussion about the economic consequences."
Pastor George Cummings with Imani Community Church in Oakland and a leader with the Oakland Community Organizations, or OCO, a federation of congregations, schools, and allied community organizations, representing more than 40,000 families in Oakland, said the organization had not yet taken a stand on the proposed strike.
However, Cummings continued, "As a leader of OCO, to the extent that the sentiments of the movement attempt to hold the financial institutions accountable, then we would support that," Cummings said.
So far, both a nurses association and an Oakland teachers union have come out strongly in support of the Oakland protest's goals, but have fallen short of giving their full endorsement for a general strike. Some teachers have expressed support for the strike, but said they would not bring students along for reasons of "legal liability."
"However energetic we are about the cause, we also are law-abiding organizations that are very cautious," said Matthew Goldstein, president of the Peralta Federation of Teachers, which represents faculty at the four East Bay schools in the Peralta Community College District. The union planned to discuss the strike with its members and with its parent organization, the California Federation of Teachers, before deciding whether to participate.
"A general strike on the order of the 1946 general strike in Oakland is an ambitious goal, especially in just a few days," Goldstein said. "It requires groundwork to be laid. There is still much to be determined."
"I'll definitely be here," said Max Bell Alper, a member of United Here 2850, a hotel and hospitality workers union, headquartered near Frank Ogawa Plaza.
Alper said his family was hit hard by the recession and housing crisis. Occupy Oakland, he said, was an inspiration. "It looks like we're on course to be the next 1946."
Contact Scott Johnson at 510-208-6429. Follow him at Twitter.com/scott_c_johnson and Twitter.com/oaklandeffect
Local Money Creates Wealth Outside the Bubble
Nov 1, 2011
by Mira Luna
From Shareable.net
Ever since the crash several years ago, Americans have felt precarious about the nation's economy and the value of its currency. Money seems to take inconceivable, abstract, and even magical forms, traveling around the world at lightening speed with little oversight and obvious mismanagement.
We have little control over it — the value of our currency is tied to conditions well beyond our control. It moves in directions that most of us are vehemently opposed to. We trusted that the banks, Congress, the Federal Reserve, corporations and Wall Street are managing money responsibly on our behalf, particularly with retirement funds and mortgages, but lately that trust has been broken. In response, local currencies have drawn interest from Occupy and other economic resistance groups to create an alternative to state-controlled money.
Click here to read the rest of the article
Monday, October 31, 2011
Cashless transactions: Greeks’ creative crisis solution
From Question More
27 October, 2011
Whether the EU anti-crisis plan is effective or not, for the austerity-hit Greek people a creative solution could be the answer to some of their problems. In a country where cash is in short supply, time has taken on a whole different value.
They same time is money, and now it’s being used as a currency in an emerging barter system developed by cash-strapped Greeks who want to swap goods and services.
“In the Time Bank we exchange voluntary services.Sometimes I give painting lessons for free but I take yoga for free also,” says Niki Roubani of the Bank of Voluntary Time project. “It’s huge, it’s everything we do without money. It’s looking after people and making things ourselves.”
The Time Bank is just one of a growing number of service-swapping alternatives that are providing people in Greece with an imaginative way to cope with the tough economic conditions.
Tsakalotos Efklidis, an economics professor, says a financial crisis can have terrible and divisive consequences for society.
“[It divides] public sector workers from private sector workers, it divides richer workers to poorer workers, immigrant workers from home workers. And that’s a terrible thing,” he said.
For a country in crisis, building social unity can be an uphill struggle. However, the barter networks have proven a great way of bringing together large groups of people. A popular slogan in Greece now is, "No-one's alone in the crisis."
Organizations are arranging swap-shops to exchange clothes, and one town in Greece has even started its own barter currency.
“We still have the memory of an agricultural society in Greece, where people used to do things together. They would harvest the olive tree of my family this week and then the next week we do the olive trees of your family. So they would exchange services – and people like that,” says Niki Roubani.
Nikki gives her friend Alexandra, who is also a member of the time bank, an art lesson. In exchange, Alexandra helps Nikki with the gardening, and the time is repaid.
“It’s an amazing way of receiving by giving to others,” says Alexandra.
As many Greeks struggle with wage cuts and tax increases, and with unemployment in the country now cripplingly high, there has been huge interest in the time banks and barter networks.
No wonder the idea of swapping goods and services has proven so popular – it is building solidarity at a time when the economic situation is extremely uncertain. Whilst these barter networks will not solve Greece’s financial problems, they do provide a massive amount of help and support for the participants.
“It’s not a response to the crisis, in the sense that it’s going to overturn the government, but it’s giving support and comfort to those who would like to overturn the terrible economic policies that are being imposed by the Troika. It’s giving people support to feel that they can do something,” says Tsakalotos Efklidis.
While these tough economic times are leaving many Greeks feeling worthless, there is real value in projects like the time bank. With the Greek government drowning in debt, these creative solutions are offering not only support but also encouragement to the people here, which at a time of deep economic recession, are proving priceless commodities.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Building the Worker Co-op Movement
By Rebecca Kemble
From the Progressive
October 12, 2011
[Kemble is a driver for Union Cab Co-op in Madison, WI]
I am in Quebec City this week to attend two worker-cooperative-related conferences. I am here as the president of the board of directors of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives together with the rest of the board, our staff and our Canadian and Quebequois counterparts. Joining us are cooperative movement leaders from Italy, France, Spain, Belgium and Argentina.
At the end of the week, we will officially sign a declaration and launch the North American regional body of CICOPA [1], the international organization of worker cooperatives. Worker cooperative federations in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil have formed a similar organization in their part of the world in the hopes of building toward a pan-American organization that has the capacity to resist the forces of neoliberal economic exploitation.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting in windowless hotel conference rooms with a group of amazingly dedicated, tenacious (and surprisingly funny) people who are developing organizational structures and institutional relationships based on solidarity that build meaningful working class power on an international scale.
Worker cooperatives are businesses that are owned and operated on democratic principles by the people who work in them. Because they are organized around the will, talents and needs of the human beings who work in them rather than the imperative of growth and ever-increasing profit margins, worker coops have the capacity to promote and extend new, humane and imaginative ways of meeting the material needs of people by producing and distributing goods and services in society.
When dozens, hundreds and thousands of these enterprises pool resources and cooperate with each other based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity, a fundamental transformation of culture and society occurs. This has taken place most notably and enduringly in Mondragon, Spain, where worker co-ops drive the economy and fund and control social services, health care, retirement and education.
So as my heart breaks for the burning of Rome (or Athens), the life cycle of my family, the gutting of public education, the depth of the suffering and indignities visited on the most vulnerable and marginalized people in our communities through false austerity and punitive laws and policies, and the abuse being hurled at the brave, young people who dare to stand up for them, I redouble my efforts to strive with others through differences of opinions, communication styles and languages to build the worker cooperative movement. If the Basque people of Mondragon could do it under the iron fist of Franco, we can certainly do it here.
Rebecca Kemble [3] is an Anthropologist who studied decolonization in Kenya. She serves on the Board of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and as the President of the Dane County TimeBank.
From the Progressive
October 12, 2011
[Kemble is a driver for Union Cab Co-op in Madison, WI]
I am in Quebec City this week to attend two worker-cooperative-related conferences. I am here as the president of the board of directors of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives together with the rest of the board, our staff and our Canadian and Quebequois counterparts. Joining us are cooperative movement leaders from Italy, France, Spain, Belgium and Argentina.
At the end of the week, we will officially sign a declaration and launch the North American regional body of CICOPA [1], the international organization of worker cooperatives. Worker cooperative federations in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil have formed a similar organization in their part of the world in the hopes of building toward a pan-American organization that has the capacity to resist the forces of neoliberal economic exploitation.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting in windowless hotel conference rooms with a group of amazingly dedicated, tenacious (and surprisingly funny) people who are developing organizational structures and institutional relationships based on solidarity that build meaningful working class power on an international scale.
Worker cooperatives are businesses that are owned and operated on democratic principles by the people who work in them. Because they are organized around the will, talents and needs of the human beings who work in them rather than the imperative of growth and ever-increasing profit margins, worker coops have the capacity to promote and extend new, humane and imaginative ways of meeting the material needs of people by producing and distributing goods and services in society.
When dozens, hundreds and thousands of these enterprises pool resources and cooperate with each other based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity, a fundamental transformation of culture and society occurs. This has taken place most notably and enduringly in Mondragon, Spain, where worker co-ops drive the economy and fund and control social services, health care, retirement and education.
So as my heart breaks for the burning of Rome (or Athens), the life cycle of my family, the gutting of public education, the depth of the suffering and indignities visited on the most vulnerable and marginalized people in our communities through false austerity and punitive laws and policies, and the abuse being hurled at the brave, young people who dare to stand up for them, I redouble my efforts to strive with others through differences of opinions, communication styles and languages to build the worker cooperative movement. If the Basque people of Mondragon could do it under the iron fist of Franco, we can certainly do it here.
Rebecca Kemble [3] is an Anthropologist who studied decolonization in Kenya. She serves on the Board of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and as the President of the Dane County TimeBank.
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