I came across the DC Corporations Listing, which includes all the cooperatives registered in DC since the 1800s. It is an enormous list because it also includes cooperatives outside the District. DC had very open co-op laws. I’ve been adding the cooperatives to the Coop DC directory. Lots of interesting cooperatives from the past!

Let me know if you want to add any cooperatives to the list or if you have info about existing or former cooperatives. It would be nice to have some descriptions about what it was like shopping at Fields of Plenty or at Bread & Roses Community Music Center/Cooperative (“An anti-capitalist, collectively run record shop” at 1724 20th St, NW).

Howard Bowers Day grants – applications due January 24

Grants are available for training for new and about-to-open food co-ops!

The Hoardowers Fund of the Cooperative Development Foundation is pleased to announce that grants will be available for education and training for board, staff, and management of food co-ops that are new (opened in 2013) or close to opening (will open in 2014). The deadline for applications is January 24, 2014 and grants will be announced in late February.

Grants available: To be determined – probably several for a maximum of $1,000

Login to read more at:
http://www.cooperativegrocer.coop/discussions/42212

Coop DC wishes you a Happy New Year!  Just an update on the Coop DC website. The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,800 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. The busiest day of the year was November 12th with 74 views. In general, the Coop Directory is our most popular page.

Remember if you are interested in writing a little history about a DC cooperative you knew or know today, just send me some text, photos, etc. Also, if you are working on a new cooperative in the DC area, feel free to send me an update to post (johanna.bockman@gmail.com).

Happy New Year!

Are cooperatives part of generative justice? Is this a useful concept? This text is from a call for conference papers:

Social problems are often addressed through the top-down forms of “distributive justice”: intervention from government agencies and regulations for example. But science and technology innovations have opened new possibilities for “generative justice”: bottom-up networks that strive for a more equitable and sustainable world through communitarian value generation. Some examples of generative justice involve lay innovation: maker spaces, DIY movements, and “appropriated” technologies.  Other examples are more focused on nature as a generator of value, such as urban agriculture, food justice, and indigenous harvesting. Some focus on the framework of Open Source, putting code, blueprints and manufacturing processes into the public domain. Still others concern composite networks: for example community waste projects that link recycling and organic composting with artistic production, “fixer” movements and other forms of  community development. Generative justice can apply to social entrepreneurship, restorative justice,  community media, social solidarity economies, and many other structures that allow those who generate value to directly participate in its benefits, create their own conditions of production, and nurture sustainable paths for its circulation.

…What theories of ethics, law, epistemology and politics can help to define this concept and improve its utility? What research methods are best used to explore it, and in what analytic frameworks can it be deployed? Are the relations between distributive and generative justice best viewed as opposite ends of a continuum? As mutually supportive symbiosis? How might generative justice experiences and outcomes differ across identities such as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation; across geographic and national differences; across ideological and institutional spectrums? How can we distinguish generative justice from bottom-up forms of exploitation, oppression, or unsustainable ecologies? What kinds of technologies and scientific programs might foster more generative justice, and conversely, how might generative justice contribute to better STEM education, research, and infrastructure?

I’ve been wanting to create individual histories pages for each of the cooperatives in the Coop Directory. So, now is the time to start! If you worked or shopped at one of the cooperatives in the Coop Directory, feel free to write something about it. Vernice Woodland put together a history of one cooperative: https://coopdc.org/womens-community-bakery-collective-1976-199/ You could write a few thoughts in an informal way, such as what it was like to shop at the cooperative. Or your contribution could be a basic history of the cooperative. Or you could include:

1) when you started and stopped working there
2) what kinds of work you did, how many people were working there when you were there
3) what you thought about the work, organization, fellow workers, special events, etc.
4) how the bakery related to other cooperatives or to the surrounding community

It’s a kind of evolving history of cooperatives in DC. Feel free to email me with your histories and I’ll post them to the individual history pages for the cooperatives.

In addition, if a cooperative is missing from the list, feel free to let me know.

Thanks for considering contributing to the coop history pages.

Johanna (johanna.bockman@gmail.com)

Well, I can’t evaluate whether this is a great program, but it looks highly relevant for this group:

Saint Mary’s University offers two international management programs that provide exceptional management skills to current and future co-operative leaders. Designed for working professionals seeking a part-time program geared to co-operatives, the programs draw students, faculty, and researchers from around the globe and from a diversity of co-operatives and credit unions. Graduates and students come from various countries and faculty hail from Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and England.

Master of Management, Co-operatives and Credit Unions | Complete in < 3 Years | 10 Day International Study Tour |

Graduate Diploma in Co-operative Management | Complete in 16-20 Months | New for 2013 |

Throughout the curriculum, management functions are explored within the context of the co-operative business model while being driven by the purpose, values and principles of co-operation. Beyond the development of a deep understanding of the history and evolution of the co-operative movement, learning encompasses governance, strategy, leadership, and people management skills through to accounting, finance, marketing, and information technology.

The program is predominantly online with students and faculty in various countries interacting as part of a co-operative learning community. To facilitate this online learning experience, strong relationships are forged during a one-week face-to-face orientation at the start of the program and during the international study tour in year 2 (for Master’s program students).

Every year we offer a 10 day study tour to Italy or Spain as part of our Master’s program, and we are inviting a few individuals from the co-operative sector to join us from June 2-11, 2014 as we travel to Mondragón in Spain. The tour provides an in-depth look at co-operatives in Mondragón and a unique opportunity to experience the culture of the Basque country.

Title: Ethnocultural co-operatives: Race, society and co-operative emergence

Date: Wednesday, November 20, 1:00pm Eastern (for 1 hour)

Registration: http://www.cooperativedifference.coop/en/hub/Events-Opportunities#Upcoming%20webinars  Scroll down to “Upcoming Webinairs” and go down to Fall webinairs and under “Ethnocultural co-operatives: Race, society and co-operative emergence Wednesday, November 20 | 1:00pm Eastern (1 hour),” click register now. This is free.

Description:

This webinar will open the dialogue on ethnocultural co-operatives (specifically reflecting on examples across Canada and the US) and the place of these co-ops in the larger society. The two featured speakers are both undertaking research as part of the Measuring the Co-operative Difference Research Network: Jo-Anne Lee of the University of Victoria and Jessica Gordon-Nembhard of John Jay College, City University of New York.

Jessica Gordon-Nembhard will begin the webinar by providing a description of co-ops emerging in African American contexts in the US. Through her discussion of the history and examples, participants will better understand how co-operatives emerged in response to the social context, race relations and people living on the margins.

Jo-Anne Lee will examine how researchers have written about cooperatives and the absences in our understandings of co-operatives in Canadian society using the Japanese Fishing Cooperatives on the West Coast as a case study.  Co-operatives play many different roles in nation formation.  As social entities, co-operatives are bound to reflect existing power relations in the larger society including those of race, gender, class and colonialism. In addition, Jo-Anne will explore a couple of key questions:

How can we understand the relative absence of knowledge about “ethnic” cooperatives?

How has this lacunae affected our knowledge and understanding of cooperatives?

She will engage participants in a conversation that shifts from normative and descriptive discussions to critical thinking and reconceptualizing the role of cooperatives in larger social, cultural, political and economic contexts.