Builders, farmers, advocates, artists, business owners and enablers, educators, writers, investors and healers—we joined together to reflect on the idea of reciprocity.

I attended “Design a Cooperative Business,” one of the sessions on Saturday 5/14. There were 4 presenters, including Hélène Lesterlin of the Good Work Institute, which is itself a form of cooperative, called a worker self-directed nonprofit. She is also co-founder of CO, a cooperatively-owned and -managed co-working space in Rhinebeck. The others were Shawn Berry of Lift Economy, Johan Matthews of Mutual Design and Cooperative Fund of the Northeast, and Angela DeFelice of Co-op Hudson Valley. 

We started by learning what cooperative businesses (“co-ops”) are. The inspiration for forming a co-op is to solve a problem and/or meet an unmet need in the community. We got a quick overview of thevarious types of co-ops:

• There are producer co-ops, where a group comes together to meet a shared need, such as buying supplies at a cheaper price.
• Consumer co-ops are those owned by the customers – the company REI is one well-known example.
• With worker co-ops, the business is owned and managed by the workers – Earth Designs Cooperative is a local example.
• Platform co-ops are digital platforms — a website or mobile app that is designed to provide a service or sell a product — that are collectively owned and governed by the people who depend on and participate in it. The Driver’s Co-op in NYC is an example (competing with Uber).
• In a housing co-op, the residents of the property are the owners of the property.
• There are also hybrid co-ops, which can combine more than one type. The coming Kingston Food Co-op is intended to be a hybrid, with both consumers and workers owning the business. CO is another example of a multi-stakeholder co-op.

There was a short Q&A following the presentation. Someone asked about the benefits of being a worker-owner. It was agreed that this is a personal choice, one that gives more freedom and more choice, but also more responsibility. There was a question about the relationship between Co-ops and Community Organizing. Johan compared the structure of co-ops to those of traditional non-profits and corporate businesses. He argued that both of these entities incorporate “disconnection by design” in their structures, where there is a large separation between those in power and the workers/people served. It was suggested that Community Organizing is “soil in which cooperative businesses grow.” Ultimately, being part of co-op involves a big shift in how one sees themselves and their relationship to goods and services. 

Since co-ops result from identifying an unmet need, we next brainstormed unmet needs in our community. We came up with a list and then self-selected into 4 groups to create hypothetical co-ops.

My group worked on creating a co-op to address a need within the broad topic of education. The other topics were housing, interclass relationships, and loneliness. Myself, the three other group members, and our facilitator Angela, brainstormed some possible co-ops that could contribute solutions in the education realm. We came up with the idea of an accessible after-school program. Someone pointed out that these programs don’t work for the most at-risk students because often they need to work after school. We decided that we would create a program to address another need we see in the community – training youth to become experts in conflict resolution – and then provide them with paid opportunities to use these skills. It was really fun to think about the impact such a program could have! There were many, many details to work out in the course of the 25 minutes we had, but it gave us a sense of all the planning it takes to get a co-op off the ground.

We came back together and heard everyone’s ideas. It’s amazing what can happen in a short time when creative, inspired people get together!

My big takeaway from the workshop was that my ideas about what a business is, with one owner who presides over their employees, is not the only possibility, and many structures exist that give more power to people to have a say and a stake in not only their own jobs, but their community.

There are abundant resources available to anyone interested in starting a co-op here in the Hudson Valley!

Stephanie Ellis is the mom of 2 teenagers and the owner/operator of Creekside Acupuncture in Rosendale, NY. She has lived in Rosendale for 26 years. She supports the work of GWI because working on Just Transition is the key to the health and wellbeing of our community.

As a documentary filmmaker, my passion is to explore questions about how culture can be a catalyst for social change. Our economic systems are an obvious axis of power, but it’s easy to forget that these systems are fundamentally dependent upon cultural agreements and assumptions about what we value.

Over the years, I’ve developed a deep curiosity and respect for people making efforts to prioritize equity and caring in their communities by actively challenging and/or reinventing our cultural agreements related to money, property, ownership, labor, economic growth, generosity, reciprocity, etc. This work is complex, yet vital. As we deepen our conversations about these topics in our own community, I wanted to share a few resources that have helped me expand my understanding of this layered landscape of possibility.

• Common Future is a national organization focusing on new visions of sustainable, equitable economies, including initiatives related to addressing the race and wealth gap, self-determination in local communities, transforming the extractive economy and more. An extensive collection of articles on their website digs into these topics.

• Schumacher Center for Local Economics (based in Great Barrington, MA) has a lot of great informational resources about regenerative economies, including spotlights on local currencies and community land trusts.

• Homestead Community Land Trust (based in Seattle, WA) is a 25 year old organization successfully using the land trust model to create affordable housing for low and moderate income residents.

• “Beyond Greed and Scarcity” is a provocative back and forth conversation between economist Bernard Lietaer and YES! Magazine co-founder Sarah van Gelder, exploring some of the ideas underpinning community currencies. 

• Bernard Lietaer has also written a book titled “Beyond Greed & Scarcity” and an online primer about community currencies.

• Over the past 35 years, Thomas Greco has written extensively about local currencies and moneyless exchange systems.

• Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) is a decentralized mutual credit system conceptualized by Michael Linton (based in British Columbia, Canada).

• “Community Currencies at a Crossroads New Ways Forward” by Tim Cohen-Mitchell is short article that provides a bit of historical context for understanding community currencies and time banking projects.
• The Center for Economic Democracy (based in Boston, MA), is spearheading a variety of projects, including time-banking by and for Boston’s working class BIPOC communities and a podcast called Economics for Emancipation.
• Vicki Robin is well known for her book Your Money or Your Life, first published in 1992, which offers a framework for transforming our relationship with money in order to prioritize living more in alignment with our values. In partnership with the Post Carbon Institute, she now has a podcast What Could Possibly Go Right in which she interviews cultural luminaries on topics such as mutual aid, reparations, sustainable development, regenerative practices, simple living, and much more.

• Cecile Andrews has organized “simplicity circles” and “sharing economy” community groups in the Pacific Northwest, as well as written books and articles about voluntary simplicity and the sharing economy.

• Simplicity Collective is a blog with a wealth of information about voluntary simplicity.

• GIFT, a documentary by Robin McKenna, is an intimate exploration of real-life gift economies and a reflection on the creative process.

• GRAB, a documentary by Billy Luther about “Grab Day”, which occurs in the villages of the Laguna Pueblo tribe. Water and food are tossed from rooftops to people standing below, in the tradition of gift economies.

• A STRICT LAW BIDS US DANCE (1975) is a rare documentary focusing on the history of the Coast Salish First Nations’ tradition of potlatch. The film itself is difficult to track down, but potlatch is a powerful example of a gift economy and worth learning about.

Fiona Otway is a documentary filmmaker based in the Hudson Valley.

Everyday we meet people who show us that an education is not the great democratizer of wealth we once thought it was.

Technology has provided a fertile field for those working to destabilize democracy around the world. Can we turn this on its head, and use tech to democratize the creation of what comes next?

We would like to invite you to submit a blog post for the Rooted Resources blog series. Read on for info on guidelines and submissions.