{"id":9175,"date":"2018-07-21T11:57:20","date_gmt":"2018-07-21T18:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=9175"},"modified":"2018-07-21T11:57:20","modified_gmt":"2018-07-21T18:57:20","slug":"from-co-op-to-co-op","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2018\/07\/21\/from-co-op-to-co-op\/","title":{"rendered":"From Co-op to Co-op"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"field-wrapper-attribution\" class=\"field-wrapper content-container clearfix inline-fields\">\n<div class=\"field field--name-field-article-date field--type-datestamp field--label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field__items\">\n<div class=\"field__item even\"><span class=\"pb-timestamp\"><span class=\"date-display-single\">July 20, 2018\u00a0<\/span><\/span>by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Common Dreams<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field--name-field-subtitle field--type-text-long field--label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field__items\">\n<div class=\"field__item even\">\n<div>\n<h4>Worker-owned co-ops are part of Labour\u2019s larger plan to put national investment into locally-determined development through spending locally, owning locally, and making local decisions<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"field-wrapper-authors\" class=\"field-wrapper content-container clearfix inline-fields\">\n<div class=\"grouping-prefix\">by\u00a0<span class=\"pb-byline\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/author\/laura-flanders\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Laura Flanders<\/a>\u00a0(CommonDreams.org)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"shr_canvas2\" class=\"shareaholic-canvas shareaholic-ui shareaholic-resolved-canvas ng-scope\" data-app-id=\"6840209\" data-app-id-name=\"views_article_above_content\" data-app=\"share_buttons\" data-title=\"From Co-op to Co-op\" data-link=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/2018\/07\/20\/co-op-co-op\" data-summary=\"\">\n<div class=\"ng-scope shareaholic-share_buttons\" translate=\"no\">\n<div class=\"shareaholic-share-buttons-container shareaholic-ui shr-no-print shareaholic-flat shareaholic- shareaholic-block shareaholic-horizontal  shareaholic-mini\">\n<div class=\"shareaholic-share-buttons-wrapper shareaholic-ui\">\n<div class=\"shareaholic-share-buttons-animation-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"shareaholic-share-buttons-heading shareaholic-custom\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"ng-binding ng-scope\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"shareaholic-share-button-container\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field--name-field-article-img field--type-image field--label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field__items\">\n<div class=\"field__item even\">\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"caption-processed\" src=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/cd_large\/public\/views-article\/banana_table_1.jpeg?itok=0AqLlhpc\" alt=\"\" width=\"955\" height=\"500\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field__items\">\n<div class=\"field__item even\">\n<div>\n<p>From Brooklyn to Brattleboro, I just drove four and a half hours to go from co-op to co-op.<\/p>\n<p>In Brooklyn, it\u2019s the Park Slope Food Co-op\u2014one of the nation\u2019s, and the world\u2019s, largest. A history-making experiment in pooling resources and worker hours to access high quality food at affordable prices. Now the place has more workers than it can use and produces more revenue per square foot than the fancy grocery store Whole Foods. That\u2019s not my research; it was conducted by Forbes.<\/p>\n<p>Here in Vermont, the Putney Food Co-op is another bustling place where members work their shifts, purchase in bulk, and enjoy low member prices, making decisions together. Even non-members can enjoy extraordinarily low prices on local blueberries, bulk teas, and just about everything and anything made out of maple syrup.<\/p>\n<p>Co-operatives, as they say, are a thing. This May, I visited the Toad Lane co-operative in Rochdale, the founders of the modern worker co-operative movement. There, workers in textile mills and fields were pulled in and out of work during the early years of the Industrial Revolution, and, in the 1840s, got together and started their own business. Initially, as purchasers in a co-op, they bought from farmers they knew and sold to families in need. No credit, no debt. They were wise to the perils of the loan shark. They also made decisions together, and that came in handy. One member, one vote.<\/p>\n<p>By the time the civil war in the US broke out, the Rochdale Pioneers were in a quandary. Like all of the textile producers in Lancashire, they depended on raw cotton from America\u2019s South. While most of the aristocracy was rooting for the slave states and attempting to break the blockade imposed by the North, Rochdale\u2019s Pioneers, in loud fiery meetings, decided at last that they shared more with the slaves than the slave owners, and they stood by the North. Instead of closing their mill and laying people off for lack of cotton, they just reorganized and kept the place open for just a few shifts each week and kept all the workers employed.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s more to that story too, more significantly, what happened after. Today, the co-operative stores that pepper most British shopping streets trace their origins back to Rochdale. Across the world, a billion people\u2014one-seventh of the population\u2014are either users or members of some sort of co-op, and the Labour Party, which stands an odds-on chance of forming the next national government in the UK, includes support for co-ops in its platform, or manifesto.<\/p>\n<p>When I talked to Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn this spring, he said that if Labour were in office and somebody decided to asset-strip their business to make a profit, shut down, and move out, they\u2019d say, &#8220;Hang on, you can&#8217;t do that. You&#8217;ve got to offer it to the workers that have run it first.\u201d \u00a0Worker-owned co-ops are part of Labour\u2019s larger plan to put national investment into locally-determined development through spending locally, owning locally, and making local decisions. Sounds socialist? Strange? Foreign? Think again. Socialism like this is as here and now and close as your closest co-op.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"field-wrapper-copyright-cond\" class=\"field-wrapper content-container clearfix\">\n<div class=\"field field--name-field-copyright field--type-text field--label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field__items\">\n<div class=\"field__item even\"><em>This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July 20, 2018\u00a0by Common Dreams Worker-owned co-ops are part of Labour\u2019s larger plan to put national investment into locally-determined development through spending locally, owning locally, and making local decisions by\u00a0Laura Flanders\u00a0(CommonDreams.org) From Brooklyn to Brattleboro, I just drove four and a half hours to go from co-op to co-op. In&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2018\/07\/21\/from-co-op-to-co-op\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9176,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9175\/revisions\/9176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}