Category: Uncategorized
Hungarians are into Degrowth Economy
Yes, Hungarians at the Corvinus University in Budapest (which housed the former Karl Marx University of Economics) are interested in the degrowth economy. Here are some English language articles they are recommending:
- « A Degrowth Project » in Libération: Vincent Liegey : “We can no longer grow in a finite world”
- « A Degrowth Project » in « Le Monde »
- A Degrowth Project on Slate.fr: « To do away with the God of Growth »
- The transition is underway! – In Reporterre.net
- Vincent Liegey : “The freedom to consume is a costly illusion” – A Degrowth Project in Bastamag.
- Green European Journal: « A Degrowth Project: a strategy to counter the crisis »
- « A Degrowth Project » : Yesterday’s utopia has become today’s reality!
- Degrowth and equality of the sexes? An interview with Vincent Liegey by Sarah Alzieu
- Transition and Degrowth movements… Three questions by Silence!
How to Scale Up the Cooperative Movement
Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO)’s first e-book, Scaling Up the Cooperative Movement, highlights the role of co-ops in building a more just, egalitarian, and sustainable economy. The books has some very exciting articles:
Conversation
Mondragón and the System Problem –Thomas M. Hanna and Gar Alperovitz
Cooperative Movement Should Engage Government Cautiously –Andrew McLeod
Cooperative Movement Should Embrace Discussion of Systemic Issues –Thomas M. Hanna
Planning Must Be Centered in the Cooperative Movement –Andrew McLeod
Confronting the “System Problem” Cooperatively –Len Krimerman
Serving Life: A New Economy Vision for an Alternative Political-Economic System –Noel Ortega
Cooperative Enterprise and System Change –Joe Guinan
Scaling-Up Democracy Through Empowerment –Michael Johnson
Seizing the Moment: Catalyzing Big Growth for Worker Co-ops –Hilary Abell
Reflections on Moving Beyond Capitalism –Cliff DuRand
Structure vs. Culture: Why Not a “Stulture” That Comines Them? –Len Krimerman
Action Plan for a Co-op Nation –Tony Patterson
Mondragon and Fagor
Creating a Cooperative Culture: Lessons from Mondragon –Caitlin Quigley
Mondragon Feels Pain as It Cuts Off Fagor, One of Its Own –Miles Johnson
Major Mondragon Cooperative Faltering –GEO
When the Right Ones get it Wrong –Michael Peck
Concerns about “Scaling Up” –Marty Heyman
The Promise and Limitations of Worker Co-operatives –Gar Alperovitz, interviewed by Paul Jay of the Real News
Today: History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice appears on “Everything Coop”
In celebration of Black History Month
Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Professor and Author of
Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice appears on Everything Coop on 2/12/2015
Tune in to WOL 1450 AM, today, at 10:30 a.m. for Everything Coop, hosted by Vernon Oakes. This week Vernon interviews Dr. Gordon Nembhard, Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development, and Author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. Mr. Oakes and Dr. Gordon Nembhard will discuss the history of cooperative economics in the movement for civil rights, and the importance of knowledge and integrity in establishing collective economic entities.
Dr. Gordon Nembhard, is a Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Department of Africana Studies at John Jay College, of the City University of New York (CUNY) in New York City, USA. She is a political economist specializing in community economic development, wealth inequality, Black political economy, popular economic literacy, and community justice.
Her research has focused on community and asset-based economic development and democratic community economics; cooperative economics and worker ownership; racial and economic wealth inequality and wealth accumulation in communities of color; and alternative urban economic and youth educational development strategies. Her future research and policy analyses will connect community-based economic development, asset building, and economic justice strategies with community-based approaches to justice.
To listen live online Click Here!
or Click Here! to Listen on your cell phone with Tune-in Radio.
Home Depot vs. ARTillery Tool Library in DC
Niell Duval and his theater company Banished? Productions run a tool library out of their multi-purpose ARTillery space in Brookland that gives DC-based artists, hobbyists, and home improvers access to tools for an afforable annual membership fee. Artists pay $50 per year + volunteer hours, while any DC area resident pays $100 per year + volunteer hours.
See more at: http://www.jclass.umd.edu/652352/2014fall/smith/dctoollibrary/
The US Solidarity Economy Network
More info: http://www.ussen.org/
Obama implicitly supports co-ops
Interview with Executive Director for the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Cooperatives
WOL’s Everything Coop: This week Vernon interviews Anne Reynolds, Executive Director for the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Cooperatives. Vernon and Ms. Reynolds will discuss initiatives and research the university has supported regarding the creation of new cooperatives.
Anne Reynolds is the Executive Director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives. She develops courses, conferences and educational programs at the Center, and has led numerous workshops on board leadership, board roles and responsibilities and strategic planning. Her areas of interest include governance, member loyalty, business structure and innovative uses of the cooperative model.
Ms. Reynolds has worked with cooperatives in all sectors, including agriculture, food, energy, purchasing and worker-owned. She serves on several boards, including The Cooperative Foundation, the Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund, and the Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative.
To listen live online Click Here!
or Click Here! to Listen on your cell phone with Tune-in Radio
Greece’s solidarity movement: ‘it’s a whole new model – and it’s working’
An excerpt:
The clinics in turn are part of a far larger and avowedly political movement of well over 400 citizen-run groups – food solidarity centres, social kitchens, cooperatives, “without middlemen” distribution networks for fresh produce, legal aid hubs, education classes – that has emerged in response to the near-collapse of Greece’s welfare state, and has more than doubled in size in the past three years.
“Because in the end, you know,” said Christos Giovanopoulos in the scruffy, poster-strewn seventh-floor central Athens offices of Solidarity for All, which provides logistical and administrative support to the movement, “politics comes down to individual people’s stories. Does this family have enough to eat? Has this child got the right book he needs for school? Are this couple about to be evicted?”
As well as helping people in difficulty, Giovanopoulos said, Greece’s solidarity movement was fostering “almost a different sense of what politics should be – a politics from the bottom up, that starts with real people’s needs. It’s a practical critique of the empty, top-down, representational politics our traditional parties practise. It’s kind of a whole new model, actually. And it’s working.”
Exec Director of University of Wisconsin’s Center for Cooperatives on Everything Coop
“I…depend on GEO to keep me connected to this wild and inspiring movement!” — Marnie Thompson
Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO) is a decentralized collective of educators, researchers and grassroots activists working to promote an economy based on democratic participation, worker and community ownership, social and economic justice, and ecological sustainability–a “solidarity economy”–through grassroots journalism, organizing support, cross-sector networking and movement-building and the publication of educational and organizational resources. Since 1991, GEO has published the great GEO Newsletter. The GEO website is an amazing resource on which many people, like Marnie Thompson, depend.
Recently, GEO published “Marion Barry: DC’s Co-op Mayor” based on my paper “Home Rule from Below: The Cooperative Movement in Washington, DC.”
Follow this link to learn more about how you can get involved in GEO’s work.
Coop DC 