yes! P owerful I deas , P ractical A ctions
spring
6 Strategies for a Cooperative Takeover Don’t Like Your Health Insurance? Make Your Own Survival of the Nicest: New Theory of Evolution
2013
Worker-owners in training at Equal Exchange
HOW
Cooperatives ARE DRIVING THE NEW ECONOMY
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Canada’s Indigenous Uprising: It’s About All of Us Why You Don’t Frack With John Lennon’s Farm
photo by Brennan Cavanaugh
Occupy Sandy and Time’s Up! volunteers bring food, clothing, bike repair, and other aid to the Rockaways in New York.
“You have demonstrated the power of people caring for both neighbors and strangers. You have shown what organization and compassion can accomplish together. You have given us a vision of a cooperative society.” Occupy Oakland’s proposed resolution in solidarity with Occupy Sandy and allies
FROM THE EDITOR
The Cooperative Way
YesMagazine.org/quotes Download your favorite Quote Pages from this and past issues of YES! Hang them up and share the inspiration.
Our little group of a dozen families was running out of time. After meeting every weekend for three years to plan our hopedfor cohousing community, and after investing much of our savings to acquire a few acres of land, it looked as though our dream would fail. We couldn’t find a bank that would finance a cooperative. It was our local credit union that saved us. “You’re owned by your members? What’s so odd about that? We’re owned by our members,” the president of the Kitsap Credit Union mused. With that financing, we were able to build 30 affordable homes and a common house, and to make space available for gardens, an orchard, a playfield, and a tiny urban forest. In 1992, we moved into Winslow Cohousing, the first member-developed cohousing community in the United States. Co-ops—just like people—can get more done together than anyone can do alone. The good news is that co-ops come in many forms and are more common than you might imagine. They are owned by workers, residents, consumers, farmers, craftspeople, the community, or any combination. What they have in common is that they circulate the benefits back to their member-owners, and these benefits ripple out to the broader community. As Marjorie Kelly explains (see page 18), cooperative forms of ownership allow the well-being of people, the planet, and future generations to take priority over profits for shareholders and executives. This is an exciting moment for cooperatives. A growing disillusionment with big banks and corporations is sparking interest in economic alternatives, and new opportunities are opening up: • The United Steelworkers and other unions are exploring worker-ownership as a means to assure stable, living-wage jobs that can’t be outsourced to low-wage regions (see page 26).
• Communities seeking alternatives to profit-driven corporate health insurance are forming health care co-ops (page 36). • Hundreds of thousands of people who “moved their money” from Wall Street banks to local banks and credit unions now have a say in how their money is used. • Consumers are turning to co-ops like Equal Exchange for ethically produced goods, and Equal Exchange, in turn, supports co-ops made up of farmers and producers in some of the world’s poorest regions (page 18). These cooperatives can be powerful forces for change. Vancity, Canada’s largest credit union, targets its investments to local enterprises that have positive impacts. It divested its holdings in Enbridge due to concerns about the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. And it adopted a living wage policy that applies to its own employees and to service providers. Cooperative structures can strengthen an economy. For example, Italy’s Emilia Romagna region, where about a third of the economy is cooperative and has far less inequality. Most people there can find living wage jobs, and quality of life is high. Last year, Winslow Cohousing celebrated its 20th year, and the grown sons and daughters of the early members returned to share what it meant to them to grow up in a community, surrounded by love and support. My hope? That many more children have the opportunity to grow up in cooperative spaces; that more adults get the respect and empowerment that comes from working in cooperatives and buying from co-ops; and that over time, diverse forms of democratic ownership displace predatory capitalism as the foundation for our economy.
Sarah van Gelder Co-founder and Executive Editor yesmagazine . org
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THE ISSUE 65 THEME
A Cooperative Economy
The Mission of YES! is to support you in building a just and sustainable world. In each issue we focus on a different theme through these lenses: NEW VISIONS Solving today’s big problems will take more than a quick fix. These authors offer clarity about the roots of our problems and visions of a better way.
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24
Guide to the THEME SECTION
photo by stephen o’byrne for yes! magazine
18 How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy To make an economy that serves us, we need to own the jobs and the businesses—together. By Marjorie Kelly 23 : : Just the Facts—What’s So Good About Co-ops?
WORLD & COMMUNITY New models that foster justice and real prosperity, and sustain the Earth’s living systems. How can we bring these models to life and put them to work?
THE POWER OF ONE Stories of people who find their courage, open their hearts, and discover what it means to be human in today’s world.
BREAKING OPEN Humor, storytelling, and the arts— taking you into unexpected spaces where business-as-usual breaks open into new possibilities.
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32
Why Unions Are Going Into the Co-op Business
Big Dividends for Your Community
Steelworkers believe they can put the Rust Belt back to work— Basque style. By Amy Dean
What if your bank’s first priority was to do good? By Colleen Kimmett
24 7 Ways to Own It Together Co-op Academy, 24 ... Red Clouds Collective, 29 ... Quimper Mercantile, 33 ... Seward Cafe and Hard Times Cafe, 35 ... Patient/Physician Co-op, 36 ... Mobile home land ownership, 45 ... Community food forests, 48. By Claudia Rowe
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48
Cooperative Takeover
Survival of the Nicest
Six strategies to help cooperatives take off and become business as usual. By Sven Eberlein
A new theory of human origins says cooperation—not competition—is instinctive. By Eric Michael Johnson
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OTHER FEATURES
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12 Canada’s Indigenous Uprising When a new law paved the way for tar sands pipelines and other fossil fuel development on native lands, four women swore to be “idle no more.” The idea took off. Interview by Sarah van Gelder
56 Why You Don’t Frack With John Lennon’s Farm Their water supply threatened, neighbors join to fight fracking. It’s just that some of the neighbors are named Lennon, Ruffalo, and Winger. By Lisa Mullenneaux
photo by phil didion
30 Chicago Factory Workers to the Rescue First they occupied the factory. Now they own it. Republic Windows and Doors rises again. By Laura Flanders
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Homegrown Health Insurance
Community Wealth
Health care co-ops could have been a solution. Then Congress cut the funding. What now? By Nina Rogozen
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56
A low-income community boosts its local economy, one enterprise at a time. By Abby Scher
on THE COVER
Green Power Surge Electric co-ops lead the way to green energy in rural America. By Brooke Jarvis
Andrew Dwyer and Shawn Seebach are in their first year at Equal Exchange, where they are learning the business of coffee as well as how to work in a cooperative. Photographed by Paul Dunn for YES! Magazine.
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FROM THE EDITOR
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READERS FORUM
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SIGNS OF LIFE : : Divestment for guns and fossil fuels, Tar Sands pipeline resistance, Tax credits for wind power, Walmart protests go global
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PEOPLE WE LOVE
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COMMENTARY : : A cure for violence from Poka Laenui
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THE PAGE THAT COUNTS
50
FROM THE PUBLISHER : : Thanks to our donors
54
YES! BUT HOW? : : Share your books
61
IN REVIEW : : The Seed Underground, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
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ISSUE 65
THE Economy Under New OwneRSHIP HOW cooperatives are leading the way TO empowered workers and healthy communitIES
Marjorie Kelly
P
ushing my grocery cart down the aisle,
I spot on the fruit counter a dozen plastic bags of bananas labeled “Organic, Equal Exchange.” My heart leaps a little. I’d been thrilled, months earlier, when I found my local grocer carrying bananas—a new product from Equal Exchange—because this employee-owned cooperative outside Boston is one of my favorite companies. Its main business remains the fair trade coffee and chocolate the company started with in 1986. Since then, the company has flourished, and its mission remains supporting small farmer co-ops in developing countries and giving power to employees through ownership. It’s as close to an ideal company as I’ve found. And I’m delighted to see their banana business thriving, since I know it was rocky for a time. (Hence the leaping of my heart.) I happen to know a bit more than
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the average shopper about Equal Exchange, because I count myself lucky to be one of its few investors who are not worker-owners. Over more than 20 years, it has paid investors a steady and impressive average of 5 percent annually (these days, a coveted return). Maneuvering my cart toward the dairy case, I search out butter made by Cabot Creamery, and pick up some Cabot cheddar cheese. I choose Cabot because, like Equal Exchange, it’s a cooperative, owned by dairy farmers since 1919. At the checkout, I hand over my Visa card from Summit Credit Union, a depositor-owned bank in Madison, Wis., where I lived years ago. Credit unions are another type of cooperative, meaning that members like me are partial owners, so Summit doesn’t charge us the usurious penalty rate of 25 percent or more levied by other banks at the merest breath of a late
payment. They’re loyal to me, and I’m loyal to them. On my way home, I pull up to the drive-through at Beverly Cooperative Bank to make a withdrawal. This bank is yet another kind of cooperative— owned by customers and designed to serve them. Though it’s small—with only $700 million in assets, and just four branches (all of which I could reach on my bike)—its ATM card is recognized everywhere. I’ve used it even in Copenhagen and London. With this series of transactions on one afternoon, I am weaving my way through a profoundly different and virtually invisible world: the cooperative economy. It’s an economy that aims to serve customers, rather than extract maximum profits from them. It operates through various models, which share the goal of treating suppliers, employees, and investors fairly. The cooperative economy has dwelled alongside the corporate economy for
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p hoto b y pa ul dunn for yes ! ma gazin e
A DIFFERENT KIND OF BOARDROOM At the end of a workday at the Portland Equal Exchange office employees test coffee to ensure roasting quality. Equal Exchange is the oldest and largest fair-trade coffee company in the nation. It is also a worker-owned cooperative. From bottom left, clockwise: Adam Schaeffer, Shawn Seebach, Wells Neal, Jim Feldmann, Greta Merrick, and Anna Canning.
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ISSUE 65
Own It
Together
Green Worker Cooperative’s Co-op Academy The Bronx, N.Y. I d e a s f o r c o - o p s may flourish, but few people understand exactly how to make theirs real. The Co-op Academy is providing answers. Founded four years ago by Omar Freilla (who recently made Ebony magazine’s list of the Power 100), the academy runs 16-week courses that offer intensive mentoring, legal and financial advice, and help designing logos and websites. Run by the South Bronx-based Green Worker Cooperative, the academy guides up to four teams per session through the startup process and has graduated four organizations now thriving in New York City. These include Caracol Interpreters, which is raising the bar on interpreter wages, and Concrete Green, which focuses on environmentally sound landscaping. Six more co-ops are in the pipeline. “I’m amazed at how little knowledge and information is out there for the average person about how co-ops function and how to start one,” says Janvieve Williams Comrie, whose mother-owned cooperative Ginger Moon also came out of the program. “That’s one thing the Co-op Academy really provides, the handson know-how.” Even money for tuition ($1,500 per team) gets the treatment. Freilla is adamant that teams fundraise to cover that cost—even if they can foot the bill themselves. “By fundraising for the registration fee, you are promoting the vision for your cooperative, gaining supporters, and creating a buzz before the program even starts,” he says. “That is just the kind of support that will propel your business forward, and while you’re doing it you’ll be getting an early opportunity to see just how well you and your teammates work together.”
Shown here: Janvieve Williams Comrie and Omar Freilla are surrounded by Co-op Academy graduates. Co-ops represented from left to right: Caracol Interpreters, Ginger Moon, Green Worker Cooperatives, HTINK, and Concrete Green. photo by Stephen O’Byrne for yes! magazine
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What’s So Good About Co-ops? 1 They Build Healthy Local Economies Food Co-ops Food co-ops Conventional grocers
Revenues spent locally:
38%
Benefits for
Jobs created for every $1 million in sales:
43% full time
Benefits for
By conventional grocers
24%
68%
$1000
5.8
spent at a food co-op means
That’s
6%
17% more money that stays
$10.37
2
9.3
in the community.
Small footprint Sales per square foot
By food co-ops
for the local economy.
Products sourced locally:
Plastic recycled
$8.55
81%
29%
Organic produce 82%
Sources: “Measuring the Social and Economic Impact of Food Co-ops” 2012 report by Strongertogether.coop
12%
They Exist to Serve Their Members Credit Unions
Mortgage approval rates for low to moderate incomes
During the recession, banks stopped lending. Credit unions kept going. Credit unions Banks Business loans
+42%
25% Credit unions
67% Credit unions
52% Banks
61% full time
$1606 20%
56%
22%
of all credit union mortgage approvals go to members with low to moderate incomes.
35%
Real estate loans Total loans
+14%
Banks
Mortgage denial rates for all nonwhites
Even with taking on more borrowers that banks find “too risky” ...
... loan delinquencies and bankruptcies declined in 2012 at a higher rate than at banks.
–3%
–15%
+7% –7%
Growth in lending December 2007 to September 2011
YES! Magazine Graphic 2013 Research by Laura Beans, Tracy Loeffelholz Dunn, and Doug Pibel Sources: 2012 NCUA reports, 2009 REIC University of Wisconsin study Complete citations at yesmagazine.org/jtf65 yesmagazine . org
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ISSUE 65
Big Dividends for Your Community how Credit unions put members’ money to work RIGHT WHERE THEY LIVE
Colleen Kimmett
Ken Vallee of Sole Food Street Farms, the largest urban farming operation in Vancouver. The nonprofit got its start with seed money from a credit union. photo by Michael Ableman Founder/Director Solefood
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Ken Vallee welcomes cust o m e r s to his booth at the Vancouver farmers market with a wide grin, gently urging them to come a little closer and check out the fresh kale and radishes. He is the proud “poster boy,” he says, of Vancouver City Savings Credit Union (Vancity) ads plastered on ATMs and bus shelters throughout the city. After suffering a severe neck injury, Vallee had a hard time finding a job that would accommodate his need for shorter shifts and time off for doctors’ appointments. He now works for Sole Food Street Farms, the largest urban agriculture operation in Vancouver. It was launched in 2009 on a half-acre lot and has grown to include four more sites across the city thanks in part to loans and grants from Vancity. Now, the not-for-profit social enterprise produces tens of thousands of pounds of organic fruits and vegetables each year, while providing meaningful work for people like Vallee who, for various reasons, face barriers to employment. Vancity’s model has always been grounded in the local economy. But in the past five years, under the leadership of President and CEO Tamara Vrooman (who served as British Columbia’s deputy finance minister before taking her post at Vancity), it has taken a more targeted approach to community development. The credit union has
ISSUE 65
Empowered by the Past A century ago, cooperatives electrified the poorest counties in the nation. today, can they lead the way to a smarter, cleaner grid?
Cooperatives began to spread across rural America after President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration in 1935. The public-private partnerships brought electric power to any community willing to organize cooperatively. Many of those co-ops still exist today. At right, Berea, Ky., homeowner Charles Cotton (center) was able to make energy efficiency improvements with the help of his electric cooperative, Jackson Energy, which has been around since the 1930s. Left is MACED Executive Director Justin Maxson and right is Program Coordinator Bill Blair. photo by adam padgett for yes! magazine photo at left, library of congress
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Brooke Jarvis
C
harles Cotton never gave much thought to the fact that he owns a piece of Jackson Energy Cooperative, the utility that delivers power to his home in Berea, Ky. His grandparents used to go every year to the co-op’s annual meeting and cook-out, where member-owners elect representatives and vote on cooperative business, but Cotton himself has never gone. He uses Jackson Energy simply because it’s the only utility serving his region. But last November, Cotton’s membership paid off in a way he hadn’t expected: The cooperative gave him an energy upgrade, installing a plastic moisture barrier underneath his house and replacing his old furnace with an efficient heat pump. Cotton’s home now feels warmer and his electric bills have dropped significantly, but he never paid a dime up front.
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ISSUE 65
Don’t Like Your Health Insurance? Make Your Own the affordable care act hopes to DRIVE EXPANSION OF health care co-opS
Nina Rogozen M i l l i o n s o f A m e r i c a n s lack adequate health care, using emergency rooms as a costly alternative or getting no care at all. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), often called “Obamacare,” opened the door for an affordable option. The December 31, 2012 deal between Congress and the administration that avoided the so-called “fiscal cliff” has, at least for the moment, closed that door for 26 states.
Own It
ACA loans for health care cooperatives
The ACA funds private, nonprofit health insurers called Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans—CO-OPs. It originally set aside $3.4 billion for lowinterest loans—seed money for at least one health cooperative in each state, plus Washington, D.C. “Start-up loans” cover such development costs as renting office space, developing provider networks or obtaining contracts with existing
Together
Patient/Physician Co-ops Houston Don McCormick, a former health insurance executive, opened a free, charityfunded clinic to better understand the problems in health care and stumbled onto something that surprised him: Uninsured people were willing to pay a nominal monthly fee—like $18—if it guaranteed access to medical care. Then McCormick learned that doctors actually earned more by billing patients directly—even at those nominal fees—than they did by going through Medicare, Medicaid, or HMOs. With that realization, McCormick founded the Houston-based Patient/Physician Cooperative in 2005, which now has 60 participating clinics. Members of PPC function as a group, which allows them to purchase health care at affordable prices. There are no co-payments or qualifications for those with pre-existing conditions, and the model has since spread to North Carolina and Portland, Ore. “This turned into a very practical solution,” McCormick says, “and it’s better than what anyone else is proposing.” photo by everything possible / shutterstock
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24 States Got CO-OP Funding Before “fiscal cliff” negotiations killed further health-care co-op funding, nonprofits in 24 states received seed money from the government totaling nearly $2 billion.
W NJ
DC
Source: HealthC are.gov, updated Dec. 21, 2012 yes! magazine graphic 2013
provider groups, hiring managers, educating members on how co-ops work, and building enrollment. ACA “solvency loans” are intended to help CO-OPs satisfy state monetary reserve requirements for health insurers. According to the Center for Medicare Services, CO-OP loans could fund cooperatives that operate health care facilities or cooperative insurance that would cover treatment at participating medical organizations. Interest in CO-OPs has been keen. The healthcare.gov website states that, as of December 21, 2012, 24 nonprofits offering coverage in 24 states have been awarded nearly $2 billion. One of those is the Colorado Health Insurance Cooperative, which received a $69 million ACA grant. “Our state does have a long history of supporting agricultural co-ops to receive better deals and services,” CEO Julie Hutchins says. In fact, the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, founded in 1907, sponsors the new CO-OP. “The CO-OP will be a unique option for the thousands of newly insured Coloradans that will flood the market in 2014,” says Hutchins. “We also hope to be a resource for rural Coloradans to access better coverage as
these areas of the state have been left with few options in recent years.” She expects a minimum of 8,000 people to join the CO-OP in its first year. Why create CO-OPs?
Health care CO-OPs are not your usual health insurance companies. The National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) says, “Cooperatives are owned and democratically controlled by their members … not by outside investors.” Health care cooperatives use the money that a private insurer would take as profit to lower premiums, expand benefits, or improve the quality of care for their members. In the medical cooperative model, members are active in the decisionmaking process, from setting policy to electing, and even sitting on, the board of directors. Group Health Cooperative (GHC), established in 1946 in Washington state, involves consumers in committees, advocacy caucuses, forums, and focus groups. Through GHC’s member website, patients have better access to their doctors and their personal medical records. The organization’s longevity is a strong indication that this
model, with its emphasis on consumer engagement, is viable in the long run. That conclusion is borne out by the success of other cooperatives as well. The National Alliance of State Health Cooperatives (NASHCO) points out that “Member ownership [in cooperatives] has worked to serve millions of working families with electrical, telephone, food, farm, and financial services.” Infusing the Market with Real Choice
Michael Booth of the Denver Post reports that CO-OPs receiving ACA grants are “meant to compete with private insurers and bureaucratic nonprofits, adding a consumerfocused policy to the state health benefits exchanges.” These insurance exchanges go live in January 2014. Functioning as online marketplaces, they will contain information (and phone assistance) on health care plans available to individuals, families, and businesses with 100 or fewer employees. The public can also discuss plans with informed insurance brokers. An estimated 19 million previously uninsured Americans will use these insurance exchanges in 2014 to buy health coverage, increasing to 30 million by 2022. ACA CO-OP funding will continue in the 24 states where CO-OPs have already been approved in 2012. But, because of the “fiscal cliff” deal, funds have been cut for the additional 26 states still applying for capital loans. NASHCO has fast-tracked their lobbying efforts and is already advocating for the restoration of original ACA CO-OP funding levels. Perhaps, as the new CO-OPs become operational, they will demonstrate the value of this form of health care and lead to reinstatement of funding for all states, if that has not been accomplished by the time the funded CO-OPs go live. y Nina Rogozen is a freelance writer and editor based in the Seattle area. Her main, but not only, areas of professional expertise and passion are health care and education.
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