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  • Makers of Sharon

    The MakerSpace Co-op of Sharon, Massachusetts, continues to make progress. See the latest video celebrating the creative people of the town. The group participated at a local event and continues build awareness and interest as a permanent location is sought for the makerspace. The MakerSpace Co-op of Sharon can be found on Facebook.  Read more

  • Slow Democracy and Co-ops

    I recently read the book Slow Democracy by Susan Clark and Woden Teachout, published by Chelsea Green Press. Slow democracy empowers communities with inclusive, diverse, and locally based organizing. Central to the concept is deliberation on community decisions by community stakeholders. With broad representation, inclusive deliberation allows for participation, listening, understanding, and confrontation of difficult… Read more

  • The Co-operative Economy in the Pioneer Valley

    “A recession? What is it?” said Philippe. We were meeting with Philippe Rigollaud from the worker-owned co-operative Pioneer Valley Photo Voltaics (PV)² in Greenfield MA. This co-op was one stop in a tour, my wife Ellen and I were on, of co-operatives in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. Read more

  • The Corporatization of Fair Trade

    Originally posted on Small Farmers. Big Change.: Many thanks to Chuck Bordman for this creative 48-second video about the corporatization of Fair Trade and the work of committed brands to support small farmers and Authentic Fair Trade in this context. ? ? To read the full comic book, “The History of Authentic Fair Trade, click… Read more

  • Co-ops Explained in Sixty Seconds

    A co-op can be difficult to explain. But KingBird Content has ventured to do it in sixty seconds. See the video below for the most essential aspects of co-operatives. Information collected in this video comes from the ICA definition of a co-op, and the ideas of Janelle Orsi, Marjorie Kelly, and Stacey Cordeiro. Read more

  • Elinor Ostrom for Worker Co-operatives

    In my previous CommonBound conference blog entry I described the workshop I attended with Marjorie Kelly and Janelle Orsi. I wanted to also write about their idea of applying Elinor Ostrom‘s “design principles” of stable local common pool resource management (CPR) to the governance of co-ops. Ostrom won a Nobel prize in 2009 for economics. Kelly and Orsi gave… Read more

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