Cooperation Eugene

The Lane Service Sharing Network (LSSN) is a concrete manifestation of caring community for Eugene, Springfield, and all of Lane County, Oregon. It’s a way for people to give and receive valuable skills outside the monetary economy along the model of a “neighbors helping neighbors” Time Bank or Hours Exchange.

In this type of system 1 hour always equals 1 hour, no matter the service being exchanged. You give your time and skills to someone in the network and receive time credits which you can then use with anyone else in the network for a service they provide.

LSSN allows us to ask the questions, “How can I serve?” and “What do I need?” rather than “Can I afford it?” and “Does it pay enough?”. It gives us a structure to get our needs met through community, even if the mainstream economic system were to collapse.

If you are 18 years of age or older and live in Eugene, Springfield, or anywhere in Lane County you are eligible to join! See the “How Do I Become a Participant” page of the LSSN time banking website for more details.

The Cooperation Eugene Study Circle learns about the theory and practice of systems change for the regenerative economy. We organize monthly conversations about books, articles, movies, podcasts, videos, etc. that address “What’s next?” more than “What’s wrong?”

We meet the first Tuesday of the month at 7 pm. For the duration of the period where we are all being called upon to practice social distancing we will be having the meetings online using Zoom. See the description below for the meeting room link.

Membership consists of an email list that will be notified of upcoming titles. To get on the Study Circle mailing list you can visit our mailing list subscription page to add yourself. If you have any questions send email to: StudyCircle [at] CooperationEugene [dot] org or call Alberta at 818-903-6125. Members can choose to attend only the meetings with topics of interest to them.

Join us for an educational discussion!

Upcoming Meetings

July 7th – For July’s Study Circle we will take a deep dive into democracy. Most everyone in the US thinks they know what ‘democracy’ means, but very few take the time to stop and really think about it.

Author Astra Taylor explores this idea in her 2019 book “Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone”. In preparation for our July meeting we’ll be reading the introduction to the book, which is relatively short, surprisingly thought provoking, and available for free. In addition to that reading, you are also welcome to read the rest of the book if you feel so moved. You can find the introduction on the publisher’s website here:
Democracy May Not Exist but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone

Another option for more material is the movie she directed in 2018 called “What is Democracy?”. It’s available to rent from YouTube, iTunes, or Amazon streaming for $4.99. The movie takes a more experiential approach to the same type of material that is covered conceptually in the book intro.

To join the meeting click on this Zoom link at 7pm on July 7th.

Previous Readings

• “Think like a Commoner, A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons”, by David Bollier
• Cooperatives – The Working World (Video), TESA Collective (Video), Worker Cooperative People Skills (ebook)
• People’s Economy housing policy section: How We Build Our Neighborhoods
• “Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation to Join the Conversation on Next-Stage Organizations”, by Frederic Laloux
• Just Transitions strategy for moving to a regenerative economy – we read these three PDF files and we watched this YouTube video.
• “Sparking the conversation in your community: A DIY guide to planning your own community wealth building summit“, by Justine Porter
• “The Making of a Democratic Economy: How to Build Prosperity for the Many, Not the Few”, by Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard
• “Sacred Economics”, by Charles Eisenstein
• “The Approaching Great Transformation: Toward a Livable Post Carbon Economy”, by Joel Magnuson
• “Community: The structure of belonging”, by Peter Block
• “The Fifth Sacred Thing”, by Starhawk
• “Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World”, by Paul Hawken
• “Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds”, by Adrienne Maree Brown

We have a number of ideas for future projects we would like to pursue. We are also open to proposals. The New Economy movement is ripe with possibility and there are so many great things going on all over the world that serve as inspiration. Here are a few of our ideas:

Community Development Financial Institution – We want to offer people a way to invest their money locally. This may start on a smaller scale of peer to peer lending and/or organized crowd sourcing. We hope to support purchases of land and start-ups of worker cooperatives.

Community Land Trusts – We have already had folks in our community talk to us about how to transform their private property to community assets. Some neighbors want to take land out of the speculative market and develop it for affordable housing. Creative models for this kind of community housing solution are in the works by other Eugene organizations. Let’s collaborate!

Cooperative Enterprise Incubation – There are many creative people in this community that want to put their ideas into action. Let’s build businesses that meet local needs, provide good paying and meaningful work, and give stakeholders ownership.