It’s been a bit quiet lately. Not that I don’t have ideas or am thinking about things, but nothing has been, shall we say, blog worthy lately. I will probably get something up in the next day or two about the incoming Republican majority and how we, as worker co-operators, need to consider our approach to this new dynamic.
What I would like to do today, is to renew my long-standing invitation to invite those of you with ideas of your own about the Worker C0-op world to join the conversation here. We need to get our voices out.
Here is the deal: If you are willing to contribute, I will be happy to adjust your status to allow you to independently post on this site. I want more voices on the movement.
Currently, Fred Schepartz and Bernard Marzelek have contributed. Gordan Edgar and John Atherton haven’t contributed yet, but have the ability if the chosse (ahem).
As publisher, I will only edit your post for the following reasons:
1. present a consistent format: put people’s names in bold (link to their web site or wiki page as apporpriate), put the names of businesses in bold (link to web site if a co-op).
2. Add tags and categories if you don’t
3. personal attacks (real persons, not corporations) or issues that really haven’t anything to do with the worker co-operative movement (i.e., if you want to talk about 9/11 Truth movement, the JFK assassination, or Ralph Nadar please start your own blog).
Please join–we need to have a discussion. I am going to work with GEO to see if we can mirror this site on to their site; however, we need our own space to talk about our movement. There are about 400-500 people who read this blog on a regular basis. I really want to hear from you. I want a conversation, not a broadcast.
If you currently blog, feel free to simply cross post your posts that deal with worker co-operatives here. It might be a way to increase your readership (and I will be happy to update our blog roll to include your site).
I’ve been reading “The Workers’ Paradise” for a year or so. I wish I could contribute more to the discussion, but I am mostly here to learn. I’m not involved in a worker co-op, but I am very interested in them. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any worker co-ops within at least 30 miles of where I live (far west suburbs of Chicago), and I don’t directly know anyone involved in one, either. I do know a few people around here who might be interested in working in a co-op, but as of yet no one has thought of a business to start that would take advantage of the skill sets of these people as well as would be likely to succeed in our area. There is also a major lack of information on how to go about starting a co-op. (For instance, I noticed recently that the Park District here offers for a small fee a course in how to go about founding a business. It would be very nice to have a similar crash course for starting a worker co-op.) I want to learn these things, and that’s why I’m reading this blog, and it’s also why I’m not able to contribute much.
Keep up the excellent work.
Cheers,
Mike V.
Mike,
Thanks for reading! Northcountry Cooperative Development Foundation has a decent “toolkit” on worker co-ops: http://www.northcountryfoundation.org/?s=library. Scroll down and download the pdf for free (hard copies are $15).
An alternative source for info on starting coops can also be found through the Food Coop 500 initiative of NCB the National Coop Bank and partners at
http://www.foodcoopinitiative.coop/about
and
http://www.ncb.coop/default.aspx?id=3968