Co-Ops Build Stronger Communities, A New Economy, And Better World
Above Photo: From PopularResistance.org.
Cooperatives are businesses and organizations democratically owned and managed by the people they serve. They come in many shapes and sizes: from a handful of people to thousands upon thousands of members. Some are owned and run by workers, others are owned and governed by consumers, still others are for producers (like farmers and artists). But no matter what, cooperatives always have the same foundation: one member, one share, one vote.
Recently, we at The Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA) (a worker co-op) launched a new poster series to highlight and celebrate the power of the cooperative movement. Below, we’re sharing each of the posters while also going further into depth about how co-ops build stronger communities, a new economy, and a better world.
Cooperatives build stronger communities by keeping money, resources, jobs, and economic control local. Their impact has been so widespread and significant that more businesses are electing to transition into cooperatives. Like the Island Employee Cooperative (IEC) in rural Maine, where the retiring owners decided to sell their businesses to their employees, rather than an outside investor who would surely have made lay-offs and service cut-backs. Since buying-out their jobs, the retail workers at IEC have increased their pay, acquired benefits, shared in the business’s profits, and even brought the local community college system into their stores to help teach the new owners (the employees!) practical business skills. All of these things are rare in the retail world for workers, but it’s possible at the IEC in Deer Isle, Maine, thanks to the cooperative model.
And in Chicago, when window factory employees had their jobs ripped away from them not once but twice, they decided to found their own business: “Everyone decided enough was enough,” New Era’s website declares. “If we want to keep quality manufacturing jobs in our communities, perhaps we should put in charge those who have the most at stake in keeping those jobs — the workers. The plan to start a new worker owned cooperative business began.”
And so New Era Windows was born, where no workers could be fired simply because the bosses wanted to save money. The late Ricky Macklin, who was instrumental in organizing the founding of New Era, said in Own the Change, the documentary TESA co-produced with The Laura Flanders Show about cooperatives, that the co-op model opened new frontiers for the factory workers:
All of our lives, we’ve been told we was only this, and we was only that. And New Era Cooperative allowed us to see that we was much more than that. Actually, what really surprised all of us… at Republic, we only thought we only knew how to make windows, because this is what we were told – is that we were window makers. When we moved into our own plant, we found out that we was electricians, we found out that we was plumbers, we found out that we were people of industry. I found out I was a salesman.
But even taking a step back, we can see that cooperatives are helping to transform not only individual businesses and lives, but entire communities – cities, towns, and regions. Cooperatives in Madison, WI have a strong history of working together to make it easier for more people to start co-ops as well as to improve the situation of their other fellow co-ops in the city. More efforts like these have sprung up around the country – like with the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance.
In fact, cooperatives are taking center stage in the effort to build community wealth that is controlled and owned by the people. And their cities are beginning to take notice. In 2011, the Mayor of Richmond, CA, a highly impoverished post-industrial city, hired a cooperative developer to help launch more co-ops, with the aim to build and retain equitable wealth for community members. Over in the rust belt, Cleveland’s municipal government helped fund the launch of theEvergreen Cooperatives: eco-friendly businesses that are rooted in serving local institutions, like hospitals and universities. Intrigued by Evergreen’s success, Rochester, NY contributed $100,000 towards replicating the model in their city. Madison, WI was so impressed by the impact of cooperatives that they decided to invest $5 million in launching more democratically-owned and governed businesses. And New York City, compelled by worker cooperative advocates, has twice agreed to contribute millions to launching co-ops. Already, this contribution is improving New York communities: like the neighborhood of Bed-Stuy, which is using cooperatives to challenge gentrification.
Indeed, cooperatives can often build stronger communities by directly serving those that have been disenfranchised or persecuted. This includes providing reasonable and healthy food access to people who live below the poverty line and those in food deserts. This is what the Mariposa Cooperative in Philadelphia does and the Renaissance Cooperative, which is trying to launch in Greensboro, NC, will aim to achieve. In Queens, NYC, eight transgender Latina women are founding a worker cooperative together that will be a beauty-focused business: “Their business, the first of its kind in New York City, aims to provide stable and dignified jobs for the women and to serve as a model to other Co-Ops Build Stronger Communities, New Economy, And Better World | PopularResistance.Org:
