I had an amazing chat with Emily M Lippold Cheney after meeting serendipitously at a Libre Fest in Cambridge. She agreed to do a GWOBcast on the overlap of digital response and the history of cooperatives. It reminded me a bit about the Brainmeats Lisha and I did awhile ago on The Culture of Eviction.
CRISIS/VOID RESPONSE
- ACDI-VOCA: Coops in Crisis Response Paper (.pdf): This is an international cooperative development org largely funded by USAID, so it uses a democratic model within an not-so-democratic development industry.
- Isla Vista Community Network: This is the group that just started meeting together in an unincorporated area and, by sheer persistence and existence, started being seen as a representative body that had some authority. Recently, through the work of this network and some of its members, the community was able to save some buildings from being demolished by the County and have the turned into (much needed) community centers. The IVCN is going to be meeting and taking the lead on deciding the how/who of using the buildings.
COOPS FOR THE PEOPLE
- Identity/Experience Focused Development: WAGES in the Bay and Center for Family Life in Brooklyn are good examples of this.
- Cooperatives Expanding into Low-Income/Communities of Color: LaDonna Redmond is leading the expansion of a traditional, consumer-owned, natural health food cooperative into a “food desert” that is mostly inhabited by folks who do not shop at an area cooperative. She says themessage that translates across culture/class/town is justice.
- Cooperatives & Civil Rights Movement: Jessica Gordon-Nembhard does some really solid research for the movement, includinghttp://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-06216-7.htmlthis soon-to-be seminal reader on the aforementioned topic.