A New Economy Working Group
The work of Cooperation Eugene is totally in alignment with the principles of Just Transitions. Take some time to read what they have to say. https://climatejusticealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/CJA_JustTransition_Principles_final_hi-rez.pdf
Our upcoming event on May 26 (which will be recorded and posted here afterwards) is all about a method and technology to transition centralized extractive power infrastructure to community-based utilities and empowerment.
Solidarity Economy 101: “A solidarity economy is far more than cooperatives. Time banking, community land trusts, credit unions, barter networks, all of these sorts of things are ways that communities have been meeting needs, and can do it aside and beyond capitalism.” Read this excellent feature in Mic about the history and current state of the solidarity economy movement, featuring NEC members and friends the US Solidarity Economy Network, Kola Nut Collaborative, Cooperation Jackson, Solidarity Economy St Louis, CEANYC, Cooperation Humboldt, and more. Join in this Solidarity Economy 101 training today at 4:30ET for more!
Cooperation Eugene is partnering with the PROUT Institute to organize a collaborative challenge to develop new integrative design for housing and climate mitigation. Check out our project page for more details https://cooperationeugene.org/home-for-all/.
We are offering webinars to learn about component parts of this challenge. On that page you will see links to past webinars. This coming May 26 at noon we are excited to host a guest presentation from Green Island Denmark. How can fossil free utilities help make housing affordable? Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/97038741580.
This presentation will be recorded if you can’t make it at noon. The following Weds at 5 we will have a follow up discussion session on zoom https://zoom.us/j/99920188658.
The Eugene Community Newswire (ECN) is a new website located at newswire.kepw.org that aims to become Eugene’s hub for the kind of local news reporting that doesn’t make headlines in the corporate media, but that is nonetheless vitally important to those that would like be (and feel) more involved in what is happening in town.
The website is designed to foster a network of community journalists, who are in touch with what is going on locally, and can write up and submit articles to the website, as well as a more informed community of news readers who have a place to go for exposure to news from a broad spectrum of local sources. Check it out, and pass the word along!
If you are interested in submitting content but don’t feel like you know how to investigate or write up a good article, the Corporation for Public Community Newspapers is a site partner and offers free assistance in helping to make you a better reporter.
We are working with Jan Spencer to help produce his series of 7 Zoom presentations called “Towards a Healthy Society, Economy and Planet”. The first was recorded 2 weeks ago called “Transforming a Suburban Property”. The second was recorded yesterday called “Allies, Assets, and Actions in The Community”. Both can be found on our YouTube channel or on Jan’s channel which is linked from his website SuburbanPermaculture.org.
Here is the schedule for the final 5 presentations:
The presentations are happening over Zoom and you can join with the meeting code: 912 8956 7710 and the pass code is: 7544432
We have setup a new YouTube channel for Cooperation Eugene so we have the ability to post recordings of Zoom meetings we host for groups in the area that are doing related work. Now you can subscribe and get notified when new content is posted that you weren’t able to attend.
We hosted a great webinar yesterday called Divesting & Reinvesting in Housing Not Handcuffs. You can check it out here if you missed it.
Laws and policies – that violate constitutional rights, create arrest records, fines and fees that stand in the way of houseless people getting jobs or housing – don’t work. The evidence is clear that homelessness is reduced in communities that focus on housing, and not those that focus on handcuffs.
What is working in other communities and what are some pitfalls we should watch out for as we advocate for sweeping changes in the way we approach community safety? How do we organize our community to cultivate local resilience and implement strategies that invest in regional self-sufficiency instead of punitive measures?
Dear Cooperation Eugene community
These times call for deep thinking and fearless conversations. It is not a coincidence that the New Economy movement, which is the inspiration for Cooperation Eugene, is being spearheaded by Black communities around the country. Since our inception as an organization, almost 2 years ago, I have been pondering how our positionality, as a white organization in a white city in a state intentionally constructed as white from its exclusionary founding, informs our work as part of a national New Economy network. Some things I’ve observed: 1) our community is largely buffered from the harsh consequences of the dominant racialized economy, 2) that is not to say we don’t experience alienation from our labor, economic displacement, and the impacts of the global economy that motivate us to create something new, 3) while Eugene has a fine history of developing cooperatives and prizes itself as a liberal bastion, it does not have the history of radicalizing and persistent struggle that is experienced by many African American communities. We haven’t developed the muscles for sustained life and death collective action. 4) If we see ourselves as a node in a national network to shift the economy to the people, then our successful organizing, here in Eugene, is a stand in solidarity with African Americans and other marginalized peoples who are calling us to disinvest from this racist economy. (Movement Generation has a series of “course correction” webinars to learn about Just Transition that I recommend https://movementgeneration.org/our-work/training-analysis/coursecorrection/)
In March we were discussing convening a “Regenerative Futures Summit” to pull together the active solutions evinced in our community towards an effort to build infrastructures that can sustain a new economic ecosystem. One based on local resources for local needs, disinvesting our wealth from the global economy while reinvesting locally, and supporting economic democracy with cooperative ventures and participatory policy.
With Covid we were given an opportunity to pause. With Black Lives Matter we are experiencing the beginnings of systems shift that we have been longing for. The terrain is changing. What is the best use of our energies and how can we leverage our collective action toward this shift?
Our stance has always been “solutions focused” working from a framework of community ownership and empowerment that has been modeled historically by Black communities. A lot of our great ideas have had difficulty getting off the ground. Is it a matter of time? A matter of timing? A need for skill and resource development? Weaknesses in our abilities to cooperate? I don’t know, these are things we need to investigate. In the meantime, Black leadership has given us some challenges and direction.
As a relatively “woke” white community our job is to examine our relationship to the racialized economic system that we swim in and to listen to the perspectives of those who experience this system from a different vantage point. Ibram Kendi (How To Be An Anti-Racist – our study circle choice for August) is a good teacher.
“We have been taught that ignorance and hate lead to racist ideas, lead to racist policies,” Kendi said. “If the fundamental problem is ignorance and hate, then your solutions are going to be focused on education, and love and persuasion. But of course [Stamped from the Beginning] shows that the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural.” Self-interest drives racist policies that benefit that self-interest. When the policies are challenged because they produce inequalities, racist ideas spring up to justify those policies. Hate flows freely from there. (https://theundefeated.com/features/ibram-kendi-leading-scholar-of-racism-says-education-and-love-are-not-the-answer/?)
Let us have the courage to investigate deeply the economic and structural roots of our perspectives and feelings. Let us have the courage to step out of our comfort zones and into the leadership needed to transform our society. I am calling for a renewed team of leaders to focus on defining our next steps. Please email Clarestrawn@gmail.com if you have thoughts or intentions.
Cooperation Eugene stands in solidarity with our community members of color as the tragedy of the murder of another black man at the hands of white police officers once again dredges up the accumulated pain of hundreds of years of mistreatment and inequality. We need meaningful change and healing, and we need it now!
It has been a challenging time for organizations working to find a balance between keeping society functioning and keeping people healthy as the pandemic rages on. We truly appreciate the time and energy of everyone who has come together to keep this effort moving forward!
We must all be vigilant during times like this to ensure that important gains we have made as a society are not eroded by government and industry looking to exploit current circumstances, as well as keeping our eyes out for opportunities to make progress on creating a more just and compassionate economy for all.
We continue to host our informative Study Circles each month to help educate ourselves. We read about and discussed worker cooperatives at one recent meeting as well as working on gaining a deeper understanding of the importance of the commons in another. For our July meeting we will be doing a deep dive into the meaning of democracy.
After a couple Zoom gatherings with the LSSN time bank community we finally met up in person at a park last week on a beautifully sunny day. It was great to see people’s faces again in person, albeit from a safe distance! Inspired by the pandemic we have decided to switch to having picnics instead of potlucks for any in-person gatherings going forward.
And a surprise occurrence that came out of the need for most communication to move online is that we have started helping a few other groups who have related causes host their meetings online using Zoom. It is inspiring to see folks coming together to help each other out during this crisis.
Take care, stay healthy, and we hope to see you soon!
Hopefully this newsletter finds you all in good health and out enjoying the nice weather we’ve been having lately! Here’s what’s coming up on the CE calendar:
Economic Democracy
Cooperation Eugene is recruiting a team to organize a Regenerative Futures Summit. We want to bring together the many amazing projects in Eugene that are building new models to meet basic needs locally and build community wealth. How can we cross-pollinate silos and scale up community based systems?
If you are a systems thinker and want a project that you can dig into, or if you want to help out organizing community conversations, or if you do research or make info-graphics, we could use your help! Figure more or less one meeting for 2 hours a week plus individual projects or team work. We are learning while doing and welcome your voice. Email Clare at: clarestrawn [at] gmail [dot] com or call: 541-285-4504.
Study Circle
Our next meeting will be on April 7th. Check the Study Circle webpage soon for more details.
Lane Service Sharing Network Potluck
Want to live in a world that is beyond work that is unfulfilling? Where we can meet each other’s needs and get ours met as well? This is the first step. We will share food and share the gifts and talents we would like to share, and the needs and wants we would love our community to help with. The meeting of real needs forms a different kind of community. Come share!
Friday March 27th, 6-8:30 pm at McNail-Riley house 601 W 13th in Eugene, Dishes provided.
Collaboration Circle Update & Next Meeting
A big thanks to everyone who gathered for the first Collaboration Circle! It was very informative to hear more about what people and groups in our local community are working on, as well as what we are most interested in and concerned about. We had the opportunity to hear about the tiny house cooperative Emerald Village, which is an innovative example of a group working together with the community to create an affordable housing solution. Housing affordability emerged as the dominant theme of the evening.
We are looking forward to making this meeting a monthly event and an opportunity to have a community round-table where we can work to build a living network that connects individuals and groups that are focused on regenerative solutions to democratize our local economy. Let’s work together to increase collaboration and break down the silos that separate us! The next meeting will be at Emerald Village Community Room, 25 N. Polk at Railroad Ave (please park on Polk or in the lot across Polk from Emerald Village), 7pm Thursday January 9th, and we look forward to seeing you!
Study Circle January Event
We expect an interesting, real-world discussion this month. Cooperation Eugene is planning to host an economic democracy summit toward the end of 2020. This is a forum in which leaders from around Eugene from various sectors are invited to a discussion where we pose that the problems we all face are from a single underlying cause and the solutions lie in our ability to understand this and unite.
Poughkeepsie, NY, held a summit similar to this and wrote up a PDF how-to document which you will find here. The Study Circle discussion will consider how we can create a Eugene version of that project. Please read it sooner rather than later because you may wish to come to this one even if you’ve not attended previously, or invite someone you know who would be interested!
See our Study Circle page for more information.
Lane Service Sharing Network – Time Bank
LSSN is already making strides to demonstrate that a more friendly and community oriented economy is possible. We look forward to continuing to grow our sharing community in the new year. Please join us!
Cooperation Eugene is on Meetup.com
Now there’s another way to stay in touch with us. We’ve joined Meetup.com and you can join our events by visiting:
https://www.meetup.com/Cooperation-Eugene/