Author Gar Alperovitz on Democracy and the New Economy

August 3rd, 2012

Gar Alperovitz, a leading scholar and activist in the building of a new economy, will speak on “Democratizing the Emerging Economy.”

When: Thursday, September 13th

Where: 5604 Manor Rd. @ 7pm

Cooperatives, social enterprises, public banks and other new structures provide a new vision for the next economy. Alperovitz, the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, will explain how this work, especially the various forms of cooperative ownership, is helping to lay the groundwork for important new directions in the coming era that will see major political and economic changes.

Alperovitz’s latest book is America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy, which diagnoses the long-term structural crisis of the US economic and political system and offers detailed, practical answers to the problems. He is also the author of Unjust Deserts: Wealth and Equality in the Knowledge Economy (with Lew Daly), Making a Place For Community (with Thad Williamson and David Imbroscio), Rebuilding America (with Jeff Faux), Atomic Diplomacy and The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.Alperovitz is a founding principal of the University of Maryland-based Democracy Collaborative, a research institution developing practical, policy-focused, and systematic paths towards ecologically sustainable, community-oriented change and the democratization of wealth.

Alperovitz’s talk is sponsored by Cooperation Texas, an Austin-based non-profit committed to the creation of sustainable jobs through the development, support and promotion of worker-owned cooperatives.

A suggested donation of $10 (no one turned away for lack funds) will support the work of Cooperation Texas. For more information, contact info@cooperationtexas.coop.  You can RSVP on Facebook by CLICKING HERE.

“Worker-Owners of America, Unite!”

December 15th, 2011

Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative discusses his op-ed in the New York Times on Democracy Now!

America Beyond Capitalism

November 14th, 2011

Reposted via Dollars & Sense.

America Beyond Capitalism

How thousands of co-ops, worker-owned businesses, land trusts, and municipal enterprises are quietly beginning to democratize the deep substructure of the American economic system.

By GAR ALPEROVITZ

“Black Monday,” September 19, 1977, was the day 34 years ago when the shuttering of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube steel mill threw 5,000 steelworkers onto the streets of their decaying Midwestern hometown. No local, state or federal programs offered significant help. Steelworkers called training programs “funeral insurance”: they led nowhere since there were no other jobs available. Inspired by a young steelworker, an ecumenical religious coalition put forward a plan for community-worker ownership of the giant mill. The plan captured widespread media attention, the support of numerous Democrats and Republicans (including the conservative governor of the state at the time), and an initial $200 million in loan guarantees from the Carter administration.

Corporate and other political maneuvering in the end undercut the Youngstown initiative. Nonetheless, the effort had ongoing impact, especially in Ohio, where the idea of worker-ownership became widespread in significant part as the result of publicity and educational efforts traceable to the Youngstown effort—and because of the depth of policy failures and the continuing pain of deindustrialization throughout the state. In the more than three decades since that effott, numerous employee-owned companies—inspired directly and indirectly by the effort to save the Youngstown mill—have been developed in Ohio. Individual lives were also changed, among them that of the late John Logue, a professor at Kent State University who established the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, an organization that provides technical and other assistance to help firms across the state become worker-owned. Read the rest of this entry »