Best of Communities

Best of Communities

Author: Jonathan Dawson

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 72

ISBN-13: 9781505422467

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XIII. Cooperative Economics and Creating Community Where You Are On the three-legged stool of sustainability, less attention has been given to economics than to the more robust ecological and social dimensions. But that doesn't mean it's less important. (It's hard to keep a stool upright with only two legs.) Half the articles in this bundle are focused on what we're learning about values-based ways to make a living (which is a quality of life issue if there ever was one). The other stories are devoted to taking the inspiration of community beyond the boundary of shared property. If you figure that there are only 100,000 people in the US living in some form of self-identified intentional community, yet 100 million wanting a greater sense of community in their life, it's obvious that we should be exporting what we're learning to neighborhoods, churches, schools, and workplaces almost everywhere. Half of the 20 articles in this bundle focus on that expansive task. This Digital Issue of Cooperative Economics and Creating Community Where You Are includes: 1. Recipe for a Thriving Community by Jonathan Dawson, #119 2. Regaining Our Sense of Oneness through Localization by Helena Norberg-Hodge, #154, 15-16 . 3. Our Own Money: A Recipe for Local Economic Revival (including Local Currencies, Stephen Burke) by by Albert Bates, #133 4. When a Dollar Is Worth More than 100 Cents by Gwynelle Dismukes, #136 5. Social Class & Money in Community by Allen Hancock, #98 6. Our Community Revolving Loan Fund: How Walnut Street Co-op Financed Its Property by Tree Bressen, #128 7. Inventing a Rural Economy, Business by Business: How The Farm Lost its Community Subsidy and Formed a Stable Economy in Its Place by Douglas Stephenson, #116 8. Self-Reliance, Right Livelihood, and Economic "Realities" Finding Peace in Compromise by Abeja Hummel, #158 9. Communities That Serve Others...and Love Doing It by Darin Fenger, #131 10. Free to Serve: Notes from a Needs-Based Economy by Chris Foraker, #141 11. Householding: Communal Living on a Small Scale by Elizabeth Barrette, #144 12. Balancing Act: How Much Are You Willing to Share? by Janel Healy, #152 13. The Values of Shared Ownership by Tim Miller, #159 14. The Quest for Community: A Personal Journey into the Grey Zone by Tree Bressen, #139 15. Gardens of Gratitude: ATwo-Day Garden Party Blitz in L.A. by Ginny LeRossignol Blades, #144 16. Chicken a la West Birch Avenue by Hilary Giovale, #142 17. Lighten Up: A Community Energy-Reduction Experiment by Kelly Barth, #143 18. What Are the Boundaries of an Intentional Community? An Experiment in Geographically-Dispersed Community-Building by Don Schneider and Elin England, #143 19. Greening Your H'Hood David Leach, #157 20. Let's Do Greywater First! by Laura Dvorak and J. Brush, #137


Collective Courage

Collective Courage

Author: Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2015-06-13

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0271064269

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In Collective Courage, Jessica Gordon Nembhard chronicles African American cooperative business ownership and its place in the movements for Black civil rights and economic equality. Not since W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1907 Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans has there been a full-length, nationwide study of African American cooperatives. Collective Courage extends that story into the twenty-first century. Many of the players are well known in the history of the African American experience: Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph and the Ladies' Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Jo Baker, George Schuyler and the Young Negroes’ Co-operative League, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party. Adding the cooperative movement to Black history results in a retelling of the African American experience, with an increased understanding of African American collective economic agency and grassroots economic organizing. To tell the story, Gordon Nembhard uses a variety of newspapers, period magazines, and journals; co-ops’ articles of incorporation, minutes from annual meetings, newsletters, budgets, and income statements; and scholarly books, memoirs, and biographies. These sources reveal the achievements and challenges of Black co-ops, collective economic action, and social entrepreneurship. Gordon Nembhard finds that African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefitted greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation’s history.


Finding Community

Finding Community

Author: Diana Leafe Christian

Publisher: New Society Publishers

Published: 2007-05-01

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1550923838

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How to research, visit, evaluate, and join the ecovillage or sustainable community of your dreams. Finding community is as critical as obtaining food and shelter, since the need to belong is what makes us human. The isolation and loneliness of modern life have led many people to search for deeper connection, which has resulted in a renewed interest in intentional communities. These intentional communities or ecovillages are an appealing choice for like-minded people who seek to create a family-oriented and ecologically sustainable lifestyle—a lifestyle they are unlikely to find anywhere else. However, the notion of an intentional community can still be a tremendous leap for some—deterred perhaps by a misguided vision of eking out a hardscrabble existence with little reward. In fact, successful ecovillages thrive because of the combined skills and resources of their members. Finding Community presents a thorough overview of ecovillages and intentional communities and offers solid advice on how to research thoroughly, visit thoughtfully, evaluate intelligently, and join gracefully. Useful considerations include: Important questions to ask (of members and of yourself) Signs of a healthy (and not-so-healthy) community Cost of joining (and staying) Common blunders to avoid Finding Community provides intriguing possibilities to readers who are seeking a more cooperative, sustainable, and meaningful life. Diana Leafe Christian is the author of Creating a Life Together and editor of Communities magazine. She lives at Earthhaven Ecovillage in North Carolina.


Creating a Life Together

Creating a Life Together

Author: Diana Leafe Christian

Publisher: New Society Publishers

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0865714711

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An intentional community is a group of people who have chosen to live or work together in pursuit of a common ideal or vision. An ecovillage is a village-scale intentional community that intends to create, ecological, social, economic, and spiritual sustainability over several generations. The 90s saw a revitalized surge of interest in intentional communities and ecovillages in North America: the number of intentional communities listed in the Communities Directory increased 60 percent between 1990 and 1995. But only 10 percent of the actual number of forming-community groups actually succeeded. Ninety percent failed, often in conflict and heartbreak. After visiting and interviewing founders of dozens of successful and failed communities, along with her own forming-community experiences, the author concluded that "the successful 10 percent" had all done the same five or six things right, and "the unsuccessful 90 percent" had made the same handful of mistakes. Recognizing that a wealth of wisdom were contained in these experiences, she set out to distill and capture them in one place. Creating a Life Together is the only resource available that provides step-by-step, practical "how-to" information on how to launch and sustain a successful ecovillage or intentional community. Through anecdotes, stories, and cautionary tales about real communities, and by profiling seven successful communities in depth, the book examines "the successful 10 percent" and why 90 percent fail; the role of community founders; getting a group off to a good start; vision and vision documents; decision-making and governance; agreements; legal options; finding, financing, and developing land; structuring a community economy; selecting new members; and communication, process, and dealing well with conflict. Sample vision documents, community agreements, and visioning exercises are included, along with abundant resources for learning more.


Together Resilient

Together Resilient

Author: Ma'ikwe Ludwig

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780971826472

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Advocates for citizen-led, community-based action first and foremost, instead of waiting for government to take action on climate change. From small solutions to the full re-invention of the systems we find ourselves in, Ludwig mixes anecdote with data-based research to offer readers a wide range of options that all embody compassion, creativity, and cooperation. --Adapted from publisher description.


Creating Cohousing

Creating Cohousing

Author: Kathryn McCamant

Publisher: New Society Publishers

Published: 2011-05-17

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0865716722

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The cohousing ?bible” by the US originators of the concept.


Freedom Farmers

Freedom Farmers

Author: Monica M. White

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2018-11-06

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1469643707

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In May 1967, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural and economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres, offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, and political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans--an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort. Freedom Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern Black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.


Strengthening the Cooperative Community

Strengthening the Cooperative Community

Author: E. G. Nadeau

Publisher:

Published: 2021-03

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9780998066240

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Strengthening the Cooperative Community by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D., draws on his 50 years of experience in researching, developing, teaching and writing about what makes cooperative businesses succeed or fail, and how to make co-ops an even more dynamic force for positive change that benefits people and the environment in the 21st century. The book first presents an historical review that derives lessons from a variety of cooperative sectors including insurance companies that emerged around 1700; grocery, financial and agricultural co-ops that originated in the 1800s; and electricity, employee-owned and social service co-ops that began in the 20th century. The book then focuses on examples of, and lessons from, Nadeau's 50 years of experience as a researcher and developer of dozens of cooperative projects in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.The third section of the book describes six "building blocks" of cooperative development that have proven to be key factors in creating successful co-ops and a thriving International co-op community with an estimated 1 billion members.The final section presents opportunities for cooperative development in the 21st century that have the potential to generate jobs and services for hundreds of millions of new co-op members and employees.The latter two sections of the book make 16 specific, practical recommendations for strengthening the cooperative community in the current decade.


Cooperative Rule

Cooperative Rule

Author: Aaron Windel

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2021-11-30

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0520381874

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Cooperative rule -- Pedagogies of community development -- Anti-empire, development, and emergency rule -- Uganda's anticolonial cooperative movement -- Cooperatives and decolonization in postwar Britain.