The workers of the just-formed New Era Windows cooperative in Chicago—the same workers who sat in and forced Serious Energy to back down on a hasty shutdown of their Goose Island plant a few months ago, and famously occupied the same factory for six days in December 2008—not only are putting together a bo

The Cleveland Model: building green worker cooperatives within a community framework that leverages the procurem

The recent Public Banking conference held in Philadelphia offered a message that is at once so simple - but also so bold - it is hard for most Americans to pause long enough to understand how profoundly their thinking had been corralled by the masters of finance - in ways far, far, far more insidious and powerful than even the latest financial crisis suggests.

Beyond Corporate Capitalism: Not So Wild a Dream

Public ownership offers a powerful alternative to traditional progressive approaches to fighting corporate domination. 

Activists, theorists, organizations and ordinary citizens are rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up.

 TRANSCRIPT:

What’s interesting—and, again, the press doesn’t cover this—is just below the surface of what the press normally sees. There are thousands and thousands of institutions that democratize the ownership of wealth. Political and economic systems are defined in terms of their power. But who owns the capital?

History is paradoxical: Our politics are stalemated, our economy stagnating.

Ross MacDonald

College Park, Md.

The idea that we need a “new economy”—that the entire economic system must be radically restructured if critical social and environmental goals are to be met—runs directly counter to the American creed that capitalism as we know it is the best, and only possible, option.

Something important is happening in Cleveland: a new model of large-scale worker- and community-benefiting enterprises is beginning to build serious momentum in one of the cities most dramatically impacted by the nation's decaying economy. The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry (ECL)--a worker-owned, industrial-size, thoroughly "green" operation--opened its doors late last fall in Glenville, a neighborhood with a median income hovering around $18,000.