Bret Keisling is joined by Co-op Developer Rodney North who celebrates new co-ops White Electric Coffee Co-op [whiteelectriccoffee.com] and NYC’s The Drivers Cooperative [https://drivers.coop/]. They also discuss the upcoming "Why Worker Coops?" Podcast, launching September 2021!

The video and full transcript of this episode, which includes links to all of the topics mentioned, is available on our website at https://www.theesoppodcast.com/post/mini-cast-144-celebrating-2-new-co-ops-a-podcast

Mini-cast 144: Celebrating 2 New Co-ops & a Podcast

March 2, 2023

Everything Co-op kicked off its commemoration of Women's History Month with an interview of Andria Barrett, founding member of The Banker Ladies Council. Vernon and Andria discuss the evolution, history and practical use of ROSCAs (Rotating Savings and Credit Associations, and how they can support entrepernuership.

Andria Barrett is a founding member of The Banker Ladies Council and is in a Partner Bank. She is a community activist from Canada and the founder of The Diversity Agency. Barrett’s focus is helping women-led entrepreneurs through mutual aid. She serves as a board member to the Culinary Tourism Alliance, HAGO (Help A Girl Out) and is a member of the Congress of Black Women. The Canadian SME named her one of the Most Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders two years in a row, and she was named the 2022 Rotman Family Entrepreneur of the Year. Andria is being mentored by Dr. Caroline Shenaz Hossein, Canada Research Chair, in Africana Development & Feminist Political Economy and Associate Professor of Global Development and Political Science at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Dr. Hossein coined the concept of Black Social Economy, (see Diverse Solidarity Economies Collective for more info).

The theme for Women's History Month is "Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories." This theme recognizes "women, past and present, who have been active in all forms of media and storytelling. The stories behind the women who have been helped through the many affiliations of Andria Barrett hopefully will inspire others to do the same.

Everything Co-op

Andria Barrett, Co-founder of The Banker Ladies Council, discusses ROSCAS

April 13, 2023

Michael Alden Peck, Co-founder/Executive Director of 1worker1vote, and Co-editor of "Humanity@Work&life-Global Diffusion of the Mondragon Cooperative Ecosystem Experience,” and contributing author, Sara Horowitz. Michael and Sara will give an overview of the book, discuss the Build Mutualism and Humanity@Work&life campaigns, and explore next steps on the pathway to the greater common good.

Michael Peck serves as executive director and cofounder of 1worker1vote. Emerging from the October 2009 collaboration MOU between the United Steelworkers and Mondragon International, 1worker1vote serves as fiscal sponsor for the 2022-2023 Build Mutualism Campaign. Peck is also
co-founder and managing director of a second for-profit start-up, The Virtuous Cycle Collaboratory, a majority-minority worker cooperative and social enterprise (mission: to “flatten unequal socioeconomic curves into shared prosperity virtuous cycles”).

Michael is a board member for the American Sustainable Business Network, and was the 2019 recipient of ASBC’s Sustainable Leaders Award. At ASBN, Michael focuses on three campaigns: “Ownership4All”; “Own The Metrics” - Alternative ESG Human & Social Capital Assets with UNRISD + SEE and Rebuild Social Economy Ukraine through the SEE/ASBN Sustainability Collaboration Partnership announced in December 2020.

Sara Horowitz, is one of the 36 contributors of Humanity@Work&life, and author of Mutualism: Building the Next Economy from the Ground Up. She co-founded the Freelancers Union and Freelancers Insurance Company; and was formerly chair of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Horowitz is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, and she has been featured on NPR, and in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic, among other publications. Sara prides herself as being a lifelong mutualist.
 
In her book "Mutualism: Building the Next Economy from the Ground Up," Sara takes a profound look at the crisis of work and the collapse of the safety net, and gives a vision for a better way forward, rooted in America’s cooperative spirit. She brings us a solution to the current crisis of work that’s rooted in the best of American traditions, which she calls mutualism.

“Humanity@Work&life - Global Diffusion of the Mondragon Cooperative Ecosystem Experience”, published by Oak Tree Press, frames a collective labor of earned merit, vision and determination by 36 contributors in six countries, three continents, proving how solidarity, innovation, and conviction forge sustaining local and global social economy practice on behalf of the greater common good.

Everything 

Michael Peck & Sara Horowitz discuss Humanity@Work&life Global Diffusion of the Mondragon Co-op

Jim Schulman, AIA, Executive Manager of the Alliance for Regional Cooperation Appears on Everything Co-op. Vernon Oakes, host of Everything Co-op, and Jim discuss the need to reschale, and retool our local economy to become more sustainable, and the need to establish an ecosystem to achieve that goal. Jim plans to begin this process through the Cooperative Alliance, the first endeavor of the Alliance for Regional Cooperation. 

Through the Cooperative Alliance the organization plans to help all of the 250 cooperatives it has identified in the Washington Metropolitan Region to be able to help each other through the formation of a cooperative of cooperatives. Then, after the organization becomes established, it plans to open up the membership to small and mid-size businesses that are not cooperatives. 

Jim Schulman, AIA is a regional sustainability strategist, an environmentally-sensitive Architect, and a social entrepreneur. He is the Executive Manager of the Alliance for Regional Cooperation, a regional economic development organization. Between 1999 and 2014 Jim administered a variety of deconstruction and salvage job training programs in the District of Columbia in partnership with the Youth Build Public Charter School, the DC Housing Authority, and US-EPA Region III. During the same period he also served in a leadership role on a number of restorative landscaping projects for the DC Department of Health, several Washington area foundations, and the Washington Navy Yard. He is the former Treasurer of the Building Materials Re-use Association and founded Community Forklift, a used building materials store in Prince George's County, Maryland.

Jim Schulman, AIA, Executive Manager - Alliance for Regional Cooperation Appears on Everything Co-op

During February, Everything Co-op celebrates Black History Month by focusing on ASALH’s (Association for the Study of African American Life and History) theme. The 2020 theme is African Americans and the Vote. Therefore, it was quite fitting to bring David Thompson, President of Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation back to Everything Co-op to discusses the efforts of cooperatives to prepare and register African Americans to vote. David Thompson has conducted extensive research for his upcoming book, Cooperatives and the Civil Rights Movement. Through his research for the book, he has learned a great deal of valuable information regarding the involvement of cooperatives in efforts to get African Americans registered.  

David traces early efforts of cooperative involvement in voter registration to the "Progressive Club," a cooperative that promoted voter registration, and trained local Black residents to pass the voter registration test. The co-op would ultimately share the proponents of its program with the Highlander Center, in Tennessee, where Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Rosa Parks, Amb. Andrew Young, and many other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement would be trained. 

When reflecting upon the influence of the Progressive Club, David remarked; "I think it's rather lovely that this tiny little co-op, on this small Island off the coast of South Carolina, was where voter registration classes took their first form," and ended up registering about 1 million voters in the South using the same kind of program.

David Thompson, has worked for national cooperative organizations of the United States, Britain and Japan as well as the United Nations. He served as Vice President of the National Cooperative Business Association and Regional Director of the National Cooperative Bank's Western Office. He specializes in funding the capital needs of the cooperative development sector; and nonprofit and cooperative housing. He was inducted into the Cooperative Hall of Fame in Washington D.C. in May 2010, and continues to work with cooperatives.

David Thompson, discuss how cooperatives helped African Americans to exercise their right to vote.

Monica E. Mitchell, Vice President of Community Development at Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., discusses how her work has impacted communities throughout the Washington Metro Area, and her involvement in cooperative enterprises.

Monica Mitchell has over 20 years' experience in banking and community development. In her role, Monica leads Corporate Philanthropy and Community Development work for the Maryland and Greater DC regions, responsible for affordable housing, workforce development, entrepreneurship and financial education efforts for low-to-moderate income communities, with a personal passion to address the intersectionality of these issues with public health outcomes. 
    
Monica is the founding President of the Board of the all-girls Lillie May Carroll Jackson Middle School in Baltimore City. She also serves on the boards of Junior Achievement of Central Maryland, LISC DC, Baltimore Community Lending and Associated Black Charities. She was a founding member of the United Way of Central Maryland's Emerging Leaders United Program to promote the professional development and community involvement of Maryland's next generation of leaders.
 
Monica has received numerous awards including: Baltimore Business Journal 40 Under 40, Baltimore Chamber of Commerce Education Advocate of the Year, Associated Black Charities Icon Award for contributions in Corporate Leadership and Philanthropy, Girl Scouts Distinguished Women honors and was inducted into The Maryland Top 100 Women Circle of Excellence - the youngest inductee in the program's 21 year history.

Monica Mitchell, VP of Community Development at Wells Fargo, Discusses Worker Co-ops & Bank Programs

Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur Professor at Harvard University discuss her recently released book "Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire," and the role she feels cooperatives can play in a post COVID-19 world.

Rebecca Henderson is one of 25 University Professors at Harvard University, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a fellow of both the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is an expert on innovation and organizational change, and her research explores the degree to which the private sector can play a major role in building a more sustainable economy focusing particularly on the relationships between organizational purpose and innovation and productivity. Her publications include the books Leading Sustainable Change and Accelerating Energy Innovation: Lessons from multiple sectors and Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, published in April 2020. Rebecca sits on the boards of Amgen and of Idexx Laboratories. In 2019 she was named one of three "Outstanding Directors of the Year" by the Financial Times.

Rebecca Henderson discusses her book, "Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire"

Vernon interviews Ann Fedorchak, Managing Director at National Cooperative Bank (NCB), and Michael Partis, Executive Director at the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative (BCDI), and his team. Vernon and his guests discuss the 2020 Co-op Innovation Award, and its foundation.

Ann Fedorchak, Dir at NCB, & Michael Partis, ED at BCDI, discuss the Co-op Innovation Award

Civil and Voting rights advocate Rev. Wendell H. Paris, discusses relationship between Cooperative and Voting Rights movements. Rev. Paris of Jackson, Mississippi, is one of the early foot soldiers of the Civil and Voting Rights Movements. Paris, was a founding member of the Tuskegee Advancement League (TIAL), a campus organization affiliated with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In the 1960s he helped to register voters and participated in direct action campaigns in Alabama and Mississippi. 

After a record-breaking Presidential Election in November, amid unprecedented voter suppression tactics, Rev. Wendell H. Paris was reminded of rhetoric he heard during registration drives in Alabama and the Selma-to-Montgomery march. “Whenever you hear him say, ‘law and order,’ that’s coded language,” said Paris. “We have reverted back to the racial situation of the 1950s and the 1960s.”

Rev. Paris also discussed the importance of the run-off elections in Georgia, and the impact the outcome of the election will have on his right to vote in the future. He talks about how southern cooperatives have worked with organizations that have protected the rights of farmers and Black communities. With shared how the Southwest Georgia Project  has supported empowering people to participate in voting process, and encouraged people to support its efforts. 

Be certain to listen to this legendary voting rights advocate, who has spent his lifetime standing up for the civil and voting rights since his involvement as a founding member of the SNCC in the 1960s.

Civil/Voting rights advocate Rev Wendell Paris discusses relationship between Co-ops & Voting Rights

Niki Okuk, Downtown Crenshaw Board Chair, and Damien Goodmon, Downtown Crenshaw Board Member, discuss plans for the acquisition and redevelopment Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. The historic Crenshaw Mall being acquired through Downtown Crenshaw Rising, a community nonprofit established to purchase and redevelop the mall. Downtown Crenshaw plans to reinvent the mall as an “urban village.” The 40-acre site will be used to create worker owned businesses, community space, cooperative housing and much more.

Niki Okuk attended Audubon Middle school in South LA and went on to complete her degree in Economics at Columbia University, a Masters from the Nanyang University in Singapore, and a certificate in Sustainability at MIT Sloan School of Business before returning home to start a green-collar business in Compton. Rco Tires existed for nearly a decade as an example of black woman owned small business, employing dozens of formerly incarcerated community members, recycling millions of pounds of tire rubber into new products and creating decent, dignified, and democratic workplaces in South LA, which she talked about in her 2017 TED talk, "Fire the Boss".

 
“Niki and her mom, Lis Ryder, are co-founders of LUCI (Los Angeles Union Cooperative Initiative). Lis, together with Mary Hoyer, is a co-founder of the Union-Coop Council, part of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. Both the USFWC Union Coop Council and LUCI are closely aligned with the 1worker1vote movement.”

Niki continues to work at the intersection of sustainability, industry and environmental justice and is currently serving on the leadership team for Downtown Crenshaw Rising, the ambitious community led effort to purchase and redevelop the historic Crenshaw Mall 40-acre site into a thriving urban village under collective and cooperative models which will house, employ, stabilize, and nurture the Crenshaw community for generations to come.

 

Damien Goodmon, a 27-year Leimert Park resident, has been labeled a “visionary” by the LA Times, recognized as one of the L.A.’s “100 Most Influential African-Americans” by the LA Wave Newspapers, chosen beside former LA Mayor Richard Riordan and actress Drew Barrymore for the 2009 “LA People” issue of LA Weekly, and is a lead subject of the award-winning documentary “Beyond the Echo of the Drum,” which premiered at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. As a nonprofit executive director he has led some of the Crenshaw and Black Los Angeles' most impactful community advocacy campaigns. As a political operative he has managed, led departments and advised electoral campaigns from the school board level up to the presidential. As an executive management consultant and systems thinker, he has built, reconstructed and managed multiple large companies and departments, including some with over 400 employees, and successfully guided complex projects and partnerships, featuring actors with divergent interests. A graduate of L.A. Loyola High School, he has studied at the University of Washington and Harvard University programs.

Niki Okuk and Damien Goodmon, discuss plans to Reinvent Crenshaw Mall as an Urban Village

Everything Co-op

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