This week, we talk to three of the people behind People's Plumbing, a worker co-op based in Cleveland that operates on a "gift economy" model. The co-op is proving that it's possible to run a business that doesn't bill its clients, focuses on meeting needs rather than maximizing revenue, and puts unconditional love at the center of all that they do. 

Then, members of the GEO Collective remember Len Krimerman and his contributions not only to our organization but to the worker cooperative movement.

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Building Community with the Gift of Plumbing

by GEO Collective
Josh talks to Cristobal, Wren, and Dayle — three of the people behind People's Plumbing, a worker cooperative operating on the Gift Economy model in Cleveland, OH. That's right, when People's Plumbing does a job, there is no bill to be paid at the end, just a participation form and a flushing toilet. Despite this unconventional model, the co-op has been successful for two years, is providing a living for multiple people, and looks to continue growing into the future.

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Memories of Len Krimerman from the Grassroots Economic Organizing Collective

by GEO Collective
Len was a prolific writer and thinker in GEO, analyzing what the movement needed, and bringing these points out with different coverage: stories, editorials, and news articles. He understood the power of story telling and chronicling the worker co-op, workplace democracy, and solidarity economy movements.

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Repair x Share Summit: Building a Care Economy

Repair X Reuse Washington — Join your colleagues in the repair, share, and reuse community from near and far for 2 days of inspiration, peer-learning, and conversation! A free online event...

Our Mutual Friend: The BBC in the Digital Age

Common Wealth — By the end of 2027 the government is required to renew the BBC’s Royal Charter, which will set the terms of how the BBC operates for the next decade. The Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, has said she supports mutualising the BBC, with new structures for “genuine public representation and participation”. This briefing explains how to transform the BBC into a new kind of institution: a public service mutual. Mutual organisations are run for the benefit of their members, and members are actively and directly involved in its operations...

Challenging the Degeneration Thesis

Academia.edu — This paper uses data collected through written narratives, focus groups and participant observation in three small UK worker cooperatives to investigate the role of democracy in maintaining cooperatives’ dual social-economic characteristic and resisting degeneration. More specifically it argues that ongoing processes of individual-collective alignment, understood as central to the practice of democracy, help cooperatives to balance varying and at times conlicting needs and aims, and challenge the assumptions underpinning the degeneration thesis..

Just Leadership Fellowship Application 2026

CoFED (Google Docs) — The Just Leader Fellowship is designed for individuals who identify or have background with QTBIPOC either personally or in the community and are land and food justice leaders and stewards - people between 18–30 years old who have lived experience in land stewardship, cooperative economics, food sovereignty, or movement ecosystem-building and have an emerging or nascent project ready for incubation inside of an 8-month container...

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Our mailing address is:

Grassroots Economic Organizing
P.O. Box 115
Riverdale MD 20738-0115