This week, David Bollier talks with Valeria Granziano and Tomislav Medak about their new book, Pirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity. They discuss the many ways people take action to challenge the "organized abandonment" of people, countering it with organized compassion and social solidarity.
And then we share some thoughts on setting up governance structures for cooperative groups by Laird Schaub, a longtime cooperator and group facilitator whose life and work will by fondly remembered by all of us who have been fortunate enough to learn from his hard won wisdom.
Pirate Care as a Revolutionary Act
by David Bollier
The authors describe "an archipelago of self-governing initiatives, collectives, and coalitions operating within, outside, and across Empire’s enclosures and institutions" whose shared purpose is the organized provisioning of "plebeian care." The book "aims to help pirate carers recognize themselves in their diversity and band together into a federation of mutually sustaining struggles that can turn the tide against an uncaring Empire."Â
Thoughts About HOA Governance
by Laird Schaub
Meetings, in the ideal, should be run (facilitated) by someone who is suitably disinterested in the outcome of the topics to be discussed. If there is no such person in your group available for a given topic, consider asking the member of a different HOA to facilitate that topic. Note: I am expressly recommending that you unlink the traditional role of president from the person who runs plenaries, as the skill set of someone who may be a suitable public face or point of contact for the group may have no overlap with the ability to run meetings well.
The Meaning of Meaning
by Josh Davis
Cooperativism always asks us to look beyond our individual selves, to concern ourselves with benefiting every member of our co-op, as well as the communities our co-ops inhabit. This is why, once bitten by the cooperative bug, it is so hard for most of us to leave it behind - it gives our work lives meaning in a way that most other pursuits in our atomized, hyper-individualized society rarely do.
Berkeley residents turned apartment building into affordable housing cooperative
ABC 7 News — When the owner of a Berkeley apartment building passed away, tenants worried their building would be bought and flipped into an unaffordable luxury property. So, the residents of the 12-unit building banded together and got help from a community partner to turn this building in South Berkeley into an affordable housing cooperative...
Report from Los Angeles as Mutual Aid Hubs Mobilize in the Face of Historic Wildfires
It's Going Down — Almost immediately, hundreds of individuals began to coordinate a massive city-wide mutual aid effort. People began circulating evacuation information, gathering food, water, toiletries, personal protection equipment, medications, bedding, and other essentials. The mutual aid networks stepping forward during this crisis include medics and therapists offering medical assistance and mental health care to people displaced by the fires...
Labor Organizer of the Year Award
In These Times — Eligible candidates include individuals who are bringing new energy to existing labor unions, leading collective action at their own workplace, or advancing worker power in worker centers, co-ops and other models outside traditional unions. Individuals may self-nominate. Nominations will be evaluated by a panel of veteran labor leaders, scholars and organizers...
NCBA CLUSA and USFWC partner to strengthen worker co-ops in Madagascar, Kenya, Guatemala and Peru
NCBA CLUSA — Through NCBA CLUSA’s CDP project, Cooperative Ecosystem and Social Inclusion, USFWC will conduct worker cooperative sensitization and peer learning activities across Madagascar, Kenya, Guatemala and Peru to increase awareness of and interest in worker co-ops and strengthen the capacities of these countries’ cooperative movements to advocate for the worker co-op model...
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