Coops Around the World

Cooperatives are a growing alternative to working for a corporation, an alternative where there are no bosses, workers own and manage their own business and receive the benefits of their work rather than enriching absentee investors. Such democratic workplaces are found in the US, here in Mexico, elsewhere in Latin America and in Europe. Sometimes they are started from scratch, sometimes when workers take over a business being abandoned by capitalists.

Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo will discuss the solidarity economy movement in the United States. She is an active member of Grassroots Economic Organizing (www.geo.coop), a decentralized collective of educators, researchers and grassroots activists working to promote an economy based on democratic participation, worker and community ownership, social and economic justice, and ecological sustainability--a "solidarity economy." Yolanda Millan, who leads the Center for Global Justice's coop workshops in the San Miguel area, will discuss the international Workers Economy meetings that have been taking place around the world and the plans for a North American regional meeting that will take place in Mexico this fall. Cliff DuRand will discuss Cuba’s new cooperatives.