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 list, or 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

April 7th – The discussion for the next salon will focus on material from the People’s Economy housing policy section: How We Build Our Neighborhoods

We will be meeting online using Zoom this month. Click this link at 7pm on April 7th to join the discussion.

On that page you will see a link to an advocacy one-pager, and three other pages via the “Read More” links on these three areas:

• Resource and incentivize community-owned and democratically-controlled housing solutions – Community Land Trusts (CLTs), Limited or Zero Equity Cooperatives, and Resident-Owned Communities
• Preserve existing affordable housing and protect residents from involuntary displacement – right of first refusal, rent control, just cause eviction, tenant right to counsel, zoning for affordable manufactured housing, ADUs, rebuild/rehab/democratize existing public housing
• Democratize the housing finance system by enabling Public Banking and community funding models – such as Permanent Real Estate Co-operatives, Community Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), and other collective platforms (NOTE: If you find this one a bit sparse, the People’s Economy includes much more on creative financing – even without public banks – located here )

None of these pages are very long, but all of them have links out to other material if you finish with the material on the website. If you find anything particularly noteworthy, feel free to email me (John Abbe) at: johnca [at] ourpla [dot] net and I’ll see if I can weave it into the questions.

We look forward to digging into all of this with you next month! If it goes well, future study circles may be on the other three areas (worker ownership, community-controlled housing, financial justice, and climate justice).

Previous Readings

• “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.