5 Most Popular Worker Cooperative Videos of 2011 So Far

Several of these videos have multiple parts. Click on the title to watch the whole video. 1) The Mondragon Experiment, 1980 BBC Documentary A BBC Docmentary from the...

Several of these videos have multiple parts. Click on the title to watch the whole video.

1) The Mondragon Experiment, 1980 BBC Documentary

A BBC Docmentary from the 1980s about the origins and growth of the Basque cooperative corporation, including a short history of the Rochdale cooperatives that inspired the Don José María Arizmendiarrieta

2) MIT’s Community-Owned Enterprise and Civic Participation course

This course will examine literature and practice regarding community-owned enterprise as an alternative means of increasing community participation and development. The use of cooperatives, credit unions, land trusts, and limited stock ownership enterprises for increasing community participation and empowerment will be examined.  Lynn Benander and Shakoor Anjawani of the Cooperative Development Institute present MIT Urban Studies and Planning 11.954: Community-Owned Enterprise and Civic Participation.  Readings.  Assignments.  Seminars.

3) David Ellerman Talks about Human Rental and the Inalienable Rights of Labor

Mike Leung of Abolish Human Rentals interviews David Ellerman, theorist and activist for economic democracy.

Why abolish human rentals? Can the problems with the human rental contract (employment contract) be fixed simply by legislating and enforcing better treatment and compensation for workers? By analogy was there anything wrong with slavery that couldn’t be fixed by legally requiring the benevolent treatment of slaves combined with effective enforcement of those laws? Or was there something else wrong which required the abolition of slavery under any conditions? “The ownership or rental of humans both seek to violate the same inalienable rights, namely a person’s of decision making authority and responsibility for their actions. The issue at stake is the legal non-personhood of the slave or employee. While the specific treatment of people matters, we must also ask whether the structure of working relationships is internally consistent with people providing labor. In the case of both human ownership and human rentals they are not.”

4) Fault Lines Focuses on Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperatives

Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines program highlights the innovative Evergreen Coopertives in Cleveland in contrast to a closing Hugo Boss factory across town.  Presented by Avi Lewis, director of The Take.

5) Mandela Foods Cooperative and the West Oakland Youth Standing Empowered Program

“Over the last several years, Mandela MarketPlace formed strong partnerships with community members, agencies and organizations to forge a strategy for addressing root causes of poverty through entrepreneurship. Mandela Foods Cooperative formed from this partnership. Mandela Foods is a worker- and community-owned retail grocery store and nutrition education center in West Oakland that addresses economic empowerment and community health. It offers fresh, affordable produce from local family farms, food preparation classes and healthy prepared foods, as well as profit sharing with the community through community-investment accounts. “

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