Beyond Reform or Revolution: Economic Transformation in the U.S.: A Roundtable Discussion

Part 1: Introduction; Part 2: Challenges; Part 3: Future

David Korten (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies)
Emily Kawano (Center for Popular Economics)
Dan Swinney (Center for Labor and Community Research)
Stephen Healy ()
Germai Medhanie (Guramylay: Growing the Green Economy)

Moderator: Julie Matthaei (Guramylay: Growing the Green Economy)

The roundtable discussion session had a two-fold focus: 1) to identify actually existing transformative economic values, practices and institutions such as worker coops, socially responsible economic decision-making, green enterprises, and the like, and 2) to discuss ways to work together across our organizations to support movement towards more fully egalitarian and democratic economic forms which are free of race, gender, sexuality, disability, environmental, and international domination and exploitation.

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Building Community Economies Any Time Any Place

Video Clips

We will share our experiences developing worker owned cooperatives, such as Collective Copies and creating complementary currencies, including the North Quabbin Time Bank in the deindustrialized towns of Orange and Athol, Massachusetts. We will put this work into a broader context about community economies, which we see as spaces of ethical decision making. We highlight an economy of trust through honor-system based exchanges at small farm stands in Western Massachusetts and cooperative decision making around economic surplus. Our aim is to make visible a broader spectrum of what economic development and interdependence can look like.

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Live Your Power:  Socially Responsible Consumption, Work, and Investment

Part I: Introduction and Discussion; Part II: Discussion Continued

Julie Matthaei (Guramylay: Growing the Green Economy)

A key way to transform and transcend unsustainable and oppressive economic institutions in the U.S. is to live our power -- by expressing liberatory, sustainable values in our everyday economic actions and choices. This session is about how we Americans are rejecting materialistic, competitive conditioning and are learning how to use our economic power to express just and sustainable values in every aspect of our daily economic lives, from consumption and investment decisions to work choices to socially responsible citizenship.

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There is an alternative: Economic Democracy

Part I: Debate; Part II: Questions and Answers

David Schweickart (Solidarityeconomy.net)
Michael Albert (Z Magazine)

Another world is possible? We keep repeating these words, but what exactly would that world look like? More specifically, what might be its underlying economic structure?
David Schweikart and Michael Albert propose two contrasting models of Economic Democracy. David Schweikart discusses market socialism featuring worker-self-management of enterprises and social control of investment. Michael Albert describes participatory economics, or parecon, a classless economic alternative to both capitalism and what Albert calls coordinatorism (including market and centrally planned socialism).

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Building a Solidarity Economy Fom Real World Practices

Video Clips

Emily Kawano (Center for Popular Economics)
Ethan Miller (Grassroots Economic Organizing)

This collaborative workshop will combine theater, art and economic analysis to create an active visual representation and experience of a Social/Solidarity Economy. A participatory introduction to the basic concepts and practices of this exciting alternative economic organizing concept.

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Solidarity Economy in Canada

Video Clips

Michael Lewis (B.C. - Alberta Research Alliance on the Social Economy)
Nancy Neantam (Chantier de l’économie Sociale)
Ethel Cote (Canadian Community Economy Development Network)

The social economy has a long history in Canada. In the last 25 years, many new initiatives have sprung up all over Canada. In particular, this renewal has been very strong in Quebec province. Networks and national organizations are also very active. The objective of the workshop is to share information and experience about the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) with U.S. counterparts to strengthen solidarity economy as part of the alternative globalization movement.

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Immigrants, Globalization and Organizing for Rights, Solidarity, and Economic Justice

Part 1: Germai's Talk; Part 2: Discussion

Germai Medhanie, (Guramylay: Growing the Green Economy)

This panel focused on issues of immigrant issues and organizing. Germai Medhanie discussed his experience as an Eritrean immigrant, including the global conditions causing Eritrea immigration to the U.S., the depoliticization of many first generation Eritrean and Ethiopian immigrants, the use of recent African immigrants as token Blacks in the labor market, and the need for African immigrants to build solidarity with African Americans and other people of color.

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High Road – Low Road

Video Clips

Dan Swinney (Center for Labor and Community Research)
Erica Swinney (GreenAction)

Our local development strategy in Chicago is to "lead the race to the top in global high performance/high value-added manufacturing" with a social high road partnership of labor, business, government, community, and educational institutions. Sharing work and ideas that are informed by 25 years in the trenches of community and economic development in Chicago as well as best international practice such as Mondragon in Spain and the Emilia Romangna model in Northern Italy, we hope  to contribute to the international discussion that seeks a competitive alternative to neo-liberalism.

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Spirituality and Economic Transformation

Video Clips

David Korten (Positive Futures Network)
Julie Matthaei (Guramylay: Growing the Green Economy)
Nicola Torbett (Network of Spiritual Progressives)

The U.S. economy is built on the myth that the search for money and power through consumerism and careerism can bring well-being and fulfillment. The spiritual emptiness of this narrow self-interested materialism, along with the anti-religious/anti-spiritual bias of the left, has helped feed the rise of the Religious Right in the U.S., and various forms of religious fundamentalism all over the world. This workshop focused on the important role that spiritual healing and spirituality-based activism plays in progressive economic transformation.

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Growing Transformative Businesses

Jessica Gordon Nemblard (Democracy Collaborative)
Ken White ()
Ann Barz (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies)
Adam Trott (Collective Copies)

Moderator: Germai Medhanie (Guramylay: Growing the Green Economy)

Key to economic transformation is the restructuring of business, from profit-centered transnational corporations which concentrate wealth and threaten human well-being and the health of the planet, to transformative businesses which take on the crucial work of redressing these imbalances. In this workshop, leaders in the movement to create businesses which are green, socially responsible, and/or worker- or community-owned will share their wisdom and experiences. They will discuss the growth of transformative businesses in the U.S., and successful strategies to encourage this growth, and will provide information about how to create transformative businesses for existing or would-be entrepreneurs, communities, and worker collectives.

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Another Workplace is Possible: Co-ops and Democracy in the Workplace

Video Clips

Melissa Hoover (U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives)

Looking for an alternative to corporate capitalism that works? Interested in the real everyday ways that economic democracy can support real political democracy and social change? This introductory workshop, for those new to worker cooperatives or curious about their basic functioning, will explain the worker-ownership and democratic workplace model that has inspired workers from Argentina and Venezuela to Italy and Spain, and is now a growing movement in the U.S. We'll answer some practical questions, make some connections to broader movements for social and economic justice, and talk about challenges and strategy facing  worker cooperatives in the U.S.

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