This week, Jim Johnson and John McNamara sit down for a conversation about the Democracy At Work Network: how and why it got its start, their peer advisor certification and worker co-op match-making programs, and how, after eight years of success, DAWN was unceremoniously brought to an end.
Then, Laird Schaub shares some lessons about community values and community buildings from his decades of experience living and working in intentional communities. While not all of us need to worry about building construction, Laird's insights here are widely applicable to many cooperative endeavours.
Remembering the Democracy At Work Network
by GEO Collective
Jim Johnson and John McNamara, two of the co-founders of the Democracy At Work Network (DAWN), joined our monthly livestream to share the history of this worker co-op peer support network that was conceived, built, and run by worker-owners across the US. DAWN provided training for worker-owners to become peer-advisors and help shepherd fledgling worker co-ops into existence.Â
The Fluidity of Community Values & the Permanence of Community Buildings
by Laird Schaub
What is often misunderstood about common values, is that they do not eliminate disagreement among members—both because there are any number of ways that members can (and often do) disagree about matters not addressed by the common values, and because different people interpret the same words differently, and those nuances are typically not exposed until you get into the nitty gritty of living together.
Â
Â
Help Us Build Ghana’s First Worker-Owned Delivery Platform
Platform Cooperativism Consortium — We’ve partnered with CoopCycle, a platform cooperative, to customize an app that meets the unique needs of Ghanaian couriers. But we need your help to get there. To fast-track the development of a User Interface that truly serves us, we need to hire a programmer. This will allow us to launch by the end of the year...
Building the network that builds cooperatives
NCBA CLUSA — From this network, and with the support of CDF and NCBA CLUSA, a shared vision of a formal organization emerged, and in July 1999, CooperationWorks! (CW) was founded to create, as their vision statement declared, “a unified system of cooperative development centers and development partners, [to] provide the highest quality professional services, honoring our diversity and creating leading edge cooperative solutions.”...
The Long Way Home
The Hub Collective — Ever wonder how a person comes to live in an ecovillage? I want to tell you my story about how I came to live at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. Hang on to your hat; my story has twists and turns and some serendipitous coincidences...
Missoula housing co-ops aim to prove an anti-gentrification tool can work
Montana Free Press — Tucked away off River Road, a cluster of modest homes is part of a bold experiment that supporters and participants hope could prove one approach to tackling Montana’s housing affordability woes: cooperative ownership. A year ago, the residents of these 14 homes, a mixture of mobile homes, single-family houses and duplexes, weren’t sure whether they had a future here. A visit from a real estate agent — a sign their Seattle-based landlord was considering a sale — had thrown many of the tenants into a panic over the potential that subsequent rent spikes or redevelopment could force them from their homes...
Collective Courage 10th Anniversary Edition
The Hub Collective — This tenth anniversary edition of Collective Courage features a substantial preface that expands on material in the first edition and addresses the development of the Black co-op movement through the second decade of the twenty-first century. It remains an indispensable resource for readers interested in the history of the struggle for African American economic freedom and equity...
Like what you find on GEO?
Make a Donation Today!
Your tax-deductible contribution ensures that GEO can continue to provide independent grassroots content about the cooperative and solidarity economy movements.
Got something to say?
Let us know. Send your comments, suggestions, rants and article submissions to editors@geo.coop.
Follow us on Social Media
Mastodon: social.coop/@GEO_Collective
FB: facebook.com/GrassrootsEconomicOrganizing/
Twitter: twitter.com/@GEO_Collective
Â
Our mailing address is:
Grassroots Economic Organizing
P.O. Box 115
Riverdale MD 20738-0115
