#Cooperatives#Coops#Socialism#SolidarityEconomy#WorkerOwnedFirms: "Fast forward to 2024. Once again, the Left is discussing strategies for political advance. It is clear that electoral campaigns on their own and short-lived protests are not enough to win durable victories. But unlike socialists of the past, the contemporary left’s discussions have largely ignored the strategic role that cooperatives — and the solidarity economy more generally, i.e., enterprises geared to serving the needs of workers and achieving broader social goals — can play in building up the Left’s power.
This is a mistake. History shows that a flourishing solidarity economy can provide a distinctive set of material and social benefits for the Left, benefits that can play a key role in socialism’s broader political revival. This is not to say that supporting cooperatives and other kinds of worker-owned firms should supplant our other political tactics — but neither should they be ignored. Rather, cooperatives can and should complement the Left’s other strategic efforts, as the Second International recognized long ago."
We're excited about the new "How to Build a Data Cooperative" handbook draft that @opendatamcr's Data Cooperative Working Group has published! We commend the effort and hope to see more data co-ops emerge as a result.
Great reporting by the @coloradosun on how Glenwood Springs mobile home park residents bought the park themselves, rather than letting it fall into the hands of a corporation with a reputation of being a shitty landlord.
Just finished a very interesting interview with Euclides Andre Mance. Looking forward to transcribing and translating it and publishing the text in Spanish and English on GEO.coop
I have a proposal for a Europe-wide* experiment, that aims to bring together the movements around solidarity and ecology in order to build up the material infrastructure.
I'm looking for collaborators, please DM me!
Here it is briefly:
We try to raise 50 000 000€ over about 5-10 years and give that money as 1000 gifts of 50k€ each to new collectives for setting up housing cooperatives and land communes. The main vehicle for the fundraiser would be crowdfunding with focus on a high volume of small, recurring donations.
For example, this could be achieved with 200 000 donors, donating 5€/month on average for 50 months, or 4,17 years. That's 250€/person over four years.
Each recipient collective would make a legal pact with us or a trusted third party to ensure that the property will not be sold back to the market for financial gain. Additionally collectives would go through screening to ensure alignment with a shared vision.
*Even though internationalism on a global scale is important, I believe it makes sense to focus this effort geographically, to be able to have location-connected synergies between collectives.
In the end we would have boosted the 'ecosystem' with a network of maybe 10-30k members and created 1000 foci for social and ecological organizing. Additionally, we would have built up a network of Commons, that can help us gain a better understanding of this new, old, paradigm.
The leftist space is full of ideas and people with motivation to work and organize together, to try new forms of living and care, to grow food and to steward the land. I want to see this potential realized, but I'm afraid most of it will not happen unless we cooperate on a broader, international scale to push things forward.
"Worker control goes against the grain and questions the logic of capital. It teaches society that workers not only produce value, but can also run a factory. Here, at Indorca, we have collectively identified five obstacles shared by all worker-run enterprises..." ~Jose Cedeño, Indorca
:TwinPines: Italian car workers fight for alternative green production plan
Workers at an Italian car parts factory that the multinational GKN corporation closed have launched an international appeal to support their idea to start a co-op producing cargo bikes and solar panels. #Coops#SolidarityEconomy
The day after Christmas is also the first day of #Kwanzaa, the most #SolidarityEconomy friendly holiday - especially given that its fourth day principle is cooperative economics.
10 days remain to sign the Cooperative Digital Infrastructure Manifesto! We've received signatures from groups all throughout the international solidarity economy, including Mondragon University's Team Academy. Help us to advocate for digital tools and policies that will support a robust and fair economy - add your signature by 12/31!
I've seen so many Tech for Good people get really excited and build something new, and then getg mired down in fatigue and burnout.
#ZincCoop tries to be a bit different. We're not pushing big numbers or making a splash; we're just showing up every week for a few hours and investing our time and talent in support of the local solidarity economy.
We're entirely community-funded and power the local BIPOC-owned solidarity-economy delivery company and local restaurant's online ordering platform.
Adding your labor-power! We have a discord and weekly video hangouts where we support each other's skill development while moving the projects forward!
Songtradrs actions at firing the #Bandcamp staff are outrageous. They are destroying the only independent music platform left, starting with the people who make it work. Please follow and support @bandcampunited if you care about independent music.
@bandcampunited has there been any talk of making your own platform without the bosses? I’d pay a subscription for access/weekly. I bet a lot of artists would join. #cooperatives#SolidarityEconomy
One of the organizations I'm working to transition to #WorkerOwnership via a hybrid #Cooperative/corp model (original founder holds a portion of the original Corp, new #WorkerCoop holds another portion) is looking for an outside 3rd party to help us do a pro-forma valuation.
Imagine that everyone complicit in working workers in South Florida to death were to sit down for a banquet. Who would be at the head of the table?
The investment funds Blackrock, Vanguard, and Wellington own the largest stakes in Sysco $SYS working for their shareholders. Browsing their top shareholders, we find the tech companies, the pharmaceutical companies, Big Ag, other banks, and the military industrial complex. No surprise, the oligarchs we know by name. These bankers would be sitting next to them at the head of the table, lapping up their scraps.
As farms across South Florida continue to exploit those hunted by the immigration Gestapo, do not limit yourself to raging at those on the ground. Capitalism is destroying this world, creating the very heat that is killing these workers. Capitalism makes class traitors of us all and some wholeheartedly embrace this. Capitalism thrives because of nation states and borders, dividing the people with militarized borders. But it shall fall.
When eating produce from Not So Fresh Point a subsidiary of Sysco $SYS do you ever feel, you know, not so fresh at the thought that your food may have been grown and picked by someone who was worked to death?
With all this big money behind these deaths, we need to put pressure on OSHA to quickly issue a severe citation against Dang Death Camp for working Efraín López García to death!