S1.E9: Organized Money II: Economic Democracy & the Solidarity Economy Artwork

Listen, Organize, Act! Organizing & Democratic Politics

The Listen, Organize, Act podcast focuses on the history and contemporary practice of community organizing and democratic politics. Alongside this specific focus are two others: the first is to explore how organizing connects democracy and religion, particularly at a local level; the second is to explore the visions and practices that shape small 'd,' participatory democratic politics. The name of the podcast reflects these concerns. Through a series of conversations with folk who live and breathe the work of organizing, each series looks at democracy as not first and foremost about a system of government, or set of laws, or an ideology but as rooted in three things. The first is a commitment to listen to others different to oneself because their experience, their story, who they are as a person matters. Listening honors fundamental premises of democracy, as it marks a way of respecting the dignity of each individual, the importance of dialogue as against killing and coercion as means of resolving conflicts, and that people should have a say in decisions that affect them. The second is that democracy does not just happen, it needs organizing. And if it is to be democratic, it needs people organizing between themselves to determine their living and working conditions. If ordinary people don’t get organized then they are subject to others acting on them and their living and working conditions being determined by systems and structures controlled by others who either won’t listen to them, don’t have their interests at heart, or are actively hostile, wanting them silenced or disenfranchised. And finally, democracy lives or dies by shared action. Listening and organizing generate the means of coming together, but at a certain point people must act together to move the world as it is towards becoming a more just and generous one in which all may flourish. Each episode is a stand alone discussion, but when listened to together, the episodes build on each other to form an integrated series. Season 1 is a foundational course in the meaning, purpose and mechanics of how to do community organizing and build a more just and generous common life through democratic means. Season 2 is a foundational course in the meaning, purpose, and character of democracy.

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Listen, Organize, Act! Organizing & Democratic Politics

S1.E9: Organized Money II: Economic Democracy & the Solidarity Economy

April 14, 2021 • Felipe Witchger, Molly Hemstreet • Season 1 • Episode 9

This episode focuses on is how to organize money so that it fosters the flourishing of where we live and work through generating different kinds of institutions and ways of building wealth in a community to those that dominate the existing economy. Alternative, more democratic forms of economic production and investment and ways of structuring work and ownership are needed to address economic inequality, issues of racial equity, and the need for environmentally attuned forms of business. To discuss what is sometimes called the "solidarity economy," I talked to Felipe Witchger and Molly Hemstreet about the imaginative ways they are organizing money, how this work is embodied in a particular form of economic democracy - the cooperative - and how they envision a more just and generous kind of economy.

Guests

Molly Hemstreet is the Executive Co-director for The Industrial Commons. She co-founded the organization in 2015 to support industrial workers across her region. She is a native of Morganton, North Carolina where she continues to work and raise her family. After leaving university and working for a bit as a teacher, she worked for the Center for Participatory Change organizing economic development initiatives across rural Western North Carolina in a response to the need for fair livelihoods, and then, in 2008, she founded Opportunity Threads, currently the largest, US based worker-owned company that does cut and sew work. She also co-founded the Carolina Textile District in 2013, which supports the resurgence of textiles across the Carolinas. Molly has also served on the national board of the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI) and the Board for the NC Employee Ownership Center.

Felipe Witchger organizes at the intersection of cooperatives and financial investment. He co-convenes the US Economy of Francesco, at network of Catholics responding to Pope Francis’s call for a more holistic vision of economic development, serves on the Board of Start.coop, and is Co-Founder of the Community Purchasing Alliance (CPA). Felipe has spent 10 years organizing education and faith leaders into a purchasing cooperative which is designed, governed, and owned by the communities it serves. Prior to CPA, Felipe led energy research and consulting initiatives with agencies such as Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF) and Groundswell.

Resources for Going Deeper

Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, Civil Economy: Another Idea of the Market, trans., N. Michael Brennen (Agenda Publishing, 2016);

Gary Dorrien, ‘Rethinking and Renewing Economic Democracy,’ Economy, Difference, Empire: Social Ethics for Social Justice (Columbia University Press, 2010), Ch. 9;

Vera Zamagni, “A Worldwide Historical Perspective on Cooperatives and Their Evolution,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mutual, Co-Operative, and Co-Owned Business, ed., Jonathan Michie, Joseph Blasi, and Cario Borzaga (Oxford University Press, 2017), Ch. 7;

Jean-Louis Laville, “Social and Solidarity Economy in Historical Perspective,” in Social and Solidarity Economy: Beyond the Fringe, ed., Peter Utting (Zed Books, 2015), Ch. 1;

Jessica Gordon Nembhard, ‘Introduction: A Continuous and Hidden History of Economic Defense and Collective Well-Being,’ Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice

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For readings to download relevant to or discussed in an episode visit: https://ormondcenter.com/listen-organize-act-podcast