Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet
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SOLIDARITY ECONOMY: BUILDING ALTERNATIVES FOR PEOPLE AND PLANET PAPERS AND REPORTS FROM THE U.S. SOCIAL FORUM 2007 Edited by Jenna Allard, Carl Davidson, and Julie Matthaei ChangeMaker Publications Chicago IL USA Copyright © 2008, U.S. Solidarity Economy Network All rights reserved ORDERING INFORMATION For individual copies, order online from ChangeMaker Publications, Chicago IL USA, www.lulu.com/changemaker For bulk orders, special discounts may be available. Contact Germai Medhanie at Guramylay: Growing the Green Economy, [email protected], 617-868-6133. For college textbook orders, or orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesal- ers contact Germai Medhanie at Guramylay: Growing the Green Economy, [email protected], 617-868-6133. Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-6151-9489-9 Globe Cover Graphic: Tiffany Sankary, www.movementbuilding.org/tiffany Cover Design: Carl Davidson To Father Jose Maria Arizmendi (1915-1976) who thought deeply, put human solidarity first, made tools our servants rather than the reverse, and together with his students, brought the Mondragon cooperatives into this world, to blaze a path forward To Alice Lovelace and the other organizers of the U.S. Social Forum 2007 for making this all possible To the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network, may it thrive and grow And to the second superpower the millions of people around the globe who are bringing about a better world for us all About Our Editors Jenna Allard is an editor of TransformationCentral.org, and works for Guramylay: Growing the Green Economy. She is also part of the Coordinating Committee for the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network. She graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Political Science and Peace and Justice Studies. She was excited to be part of the first U.S. Social Forum, and spent most of her time there behind the single eye of a camera lens, recording workshops in the solidarity economy track and the caucuses. She has been passionate about studying and experiencing the solidarity economy ever since she traveled to Brazil and visited a small women’s handicraft cooperative in an informal community on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Carl Davidson writes on the social theory of globalization–CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age' with Jerry Harris. He is publisher and editor of Changemaker Publications, and a founder of the Global Studies Association, North America. Carl is also an IT consultant and webmaster for the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and SolidarityEconomy.net, as well as a national steering committee member of United for Peace and Justice and a national commit- tee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He was a writer and news editor for many years for The Guardian newsweekly, New York City. Carl is also prominent in the community technology movement—as a founding national board mem- ber of the Community Technology Center Network (CTCNet), as a technical skills trainer for ex-offenders with the Prison Action Committee, and as school technology specialist for the Small Schools Workshop. He was on the design team for Austin Polytechnical Academy, a new high school in Chicago. In the 1960s, he was a national secretary of Students for a De- mocratic Society, a freedom marcher in Mississippi, and a national leader of the Vietnam-era antiwar movement. His academic work in the 1960s was in philosophy, which he studied and taught at Penn State University and the University of Nebraska. Julie Matthaei is an economist who has spent over thirty years studying U.S. economic his- tory and the current forces for positive economic transformation. Active in the anti-Vietnam- war, ecology, and feminist movements while an undergraduate at Stanford, Julie went on to study economics at Yale University, receiving her Ph.D. in Economics in 1978. A professor of economics at Wellesley College, she is the author of An Economic History of Women in America (1982); of Race, Gender and Work: A Multicultural Economic History of Women in the U.S. (1991 and 1996), with Teresa Amott; and of articles in The Review of Radical Political Economics, Feminist Economics, and other progressive journals and collections. For the last ten years, Julie has shifted her research focus to the present economic historical conjuncture and possible ways forward, and is writing a book with Barbara Brandt on The Transformative Moment. A big fan of (and participant in) the Social Forum movement, she was a member of the Working Group for the US Social Forum which planned the caucuses and sessions which are documented in this book. She is currently Co-Director of Guramylay: Growing the Green Economy, and a member of the US Solidarity Economy Network Coordinating Committee. v Contents Acknowledgements................................................................................. ix Introduction Jenna Allard and Julie Matthaei ................................................ 1 I. NEW VISIONS AND MODELS 1. Why We Need Another World: Introduction to Neoliberalism Helen Garrett-Peltier and Helen Scharber .............................. 19 2. Social Economy & Solidarity Economy: Transformative Concepts for Unprecedented Times? Michael Lewis and Dan Swinney............................................... 28 3. Between Global and Local: Alternatives to Globalization Sally Kohn ................................................................................. 42 4. There is An Alternative: Economic Democracy & Participatory Economics, A Debate Michael Albert and David Schweickart ♦ David Schweickart’s Presentation .......................................... 47 ♦ Michael Albert’s Presentation ............................................... 57 ♦ Questions from the Audience ................................................ 70 5. Introduction to the Economics of Liberation: An Overview of PROUT Nada Khader ............................................................................. 83 II. DEFINING THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY THROUGH DIVERSE PRACTICES 6. Building a Solidarity Economy from Real World Practices Ethan Miller and Emily Kawano ............................................. 93 7. Beyond Reform or Revolution: Economic Transformation in the U.S., A Roundtable Discussion Julie Matthaei, David Korten, Emily Kawano, Dan Swinney, Germai Medhanie, and Stephen Healy .................................. 100 vi 8. Building Community Economies Any Time Any Place Community Economies Collective ♦ Introduction and Summary Stephen Healy ...........................124 ♦ The Iceberg Exercise Janelle Cornwall............................... 126 ♦ Economies of Trust Ted White .............................................130 ♦ Understanding and Reclaiming Money Creation Karen Werner .............................................................139 III. BUILDING THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY THROUGH SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 9. Feminist Economic Transformation Julie Matthaei .........................................................................157 10. Immigrants, Globalization, and Organizing for Rights, Solidarity, and Economic Justice Germai Medhanie ...................................................................183 11. Just Between Us: Women in Struggle in Africa and the African Diaspora Rose Brewer.............................................................................200 IV. BUILDING THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY THROUGH COOPERATIVES AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS 12. Growing Transformative Businesses ♦ Moderator’s Introduction Germai Medhanie .......................211 ♦ Community-Based Economic Development Jessica Gordon Nembhard..........................................211 ♦ The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies Ann Bartz ...................................................................221 ♦ The Story of Collective Copies Adam Trott .........................224 13. Competing by Cooperating in Italy: The Cooperative District of Imola Matt Hancock ..........................................................................228 14. Another Workplace is Possible: Co-ops and Workplace Democracy Melissa Hoover .......................................................................239 vii V. BUILDING THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY THROUGH NETWORKING AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZING 15. Solidarity Economy as a Strategy for Changing the Economy ♦ The Canadian Community Economic Development Network Ethel Cote ................................................................. 257 ♦ Chantier l’Economie Sociale Nancy Neamtan ......................................................... 268 ♦ Building the Solidarity Economy in Peru Nedda Angulo Villareal ........................................... 277 16. High Road Community Development, Public Schools, and the Solidarity Economy Dan Swinney ........................................................................... 281 VI. BUILDING THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY THROUGH PUBLIC POLICY 17. Participatory Budgeting: From Porto Alegre, Brazil to the U.S. Michael Menser and Juscha Robinson ................................. 291 18. The Sky as a Common Resource Matthew Riddle ...................................................................... 304 19. U.S. Economic Inequality and What We Can Do About It Thomas Masterson and Suresh Naidu ................................... 312 20. You Are What You Eat Helen Scharber and Heather Schoonover ............................. 320 VII. BUILDING THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY THROUGH DAILY PRACTICE 21. Live Your Power: Socially Responsible Consumption, Work, and Investment