Co-op News (August 2019)
What is co-operative culture - and why does it matter? This issue looks at how co-op values intersect with the values in organisations, across movements and between countries. Plus 100 years of the Channel Islands Co-operative – and how the new Coop Exchange app is tackling the capital conundrum.
What is co-operative culture - and why does it matter? This issue looks at how co-op values intersect with the values in organisations, across movements and between countries. Plus 100 years of the Channel Islands Co-operative – and how the new Coop Exchange app is tackling the capital conundrum.
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Ted Howard: Architect of the Cleveland Model<br />
On 9 July <strong>2019</strong>, <strong>Co</strong>-<strong>op</strong>erative Futures and<br />
<strong>Co</strong>-<strong>op</strong>eratives West Midlands hosted an evening<br />
with Ted Howard, at the co-<strong>op</strong>eratively owned<br />
Warehouse Cafe in Birmingham.<br />
Mr Howard, who co-wrote The Making of<br />
a Democratic Economy with Marjorie Kelly (see<br />
review, left), has spent his career working in<br />
social justice advocacy and campaigning for<br />
a democratic economy. He co-founded the Democracy<br />
<strong>Co</strong>llaborative in 2000 (he remains executive<br />
director) and was the architect of the green jobs and<br />
wealth-building program in Cleveland, Ohio, known<br />
as the Evergreen <strong>Co</strong><strong>op</strong>eratives (or the Cleveland<br />
Model), which was based in part on the Mondragon<br />
<strong>Co</strong><strong>op</strong>eratives in the Basque region of Spain.<br />
In 2010 he was named one of ‘25 Visionaries Who<br />
Are Changing Your World’ by Utne Reader magazine.<br />
“I am convinced that there is a very interesting,<br />
dynamic dialogue between the UK and the US,”<br />
he said. Mr Howard highlighted how, in the 1970s<br />
and 80s, UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher and<br />
US president Ronald Regan ushered in a bold<br />
neoliberal agenda that swept the globe. But, but<br />
added, “I am h<strong>op</strong>eful a new expression is emerging<br />
for our countries and for the world – that of<br />
a democratic economy”.<br />
<strong>Co</strong>-founding the Democracy <strong>Co</strong>llaborative was a<br />
significant turning point for him. “That was when<br />
I began to make the journey beyond politics and<br />
policy reform to look at the key structural issues that<br />
are embedded in our capitalist economy,” he said.<br />
“What are alternative ways of organising<br />
enterprise that are more democratic, committed<br />
to and rooted in community, that produce greater<br />
benefit for pe<strong>op</strong>le? That journey has led me into<br />
an inquiry about how can we envision a political<br />
economy that is neither centralised state socialism<br />
[...] nor this hyper-corporate capitalism that<br />
we have now.”<br />
A second turning point was the experience<br />
of Mondragon, which he has now visited six times.<br />
“It has influenced the work we’re doing in Cleveland.<br />
It’s illuminating to see highly democratic worker<br />
ownership done at scale. But as they say there, this<br />
is not paradise and we are not angels. There are<br />
still challenges.”<br />
The third part of his journey came when he was<br />
challenged to actually build a co-<strong>op</strong> structure after<br />
years of researching and writing about the model. “This<br />
is our work in Cleveland,” he said. “When we started,<br />
I said ‘how hard can it be, this isn’t rocket science…’<br />
Eventually a friend of mine said ‘no, it’s not rocket<br />
science, it’s much harder than that’. The reality has<br />
been a transformative experience in my life.”<br />
In the 1950s and early 60s, Cleveland, Ohio was<br />
one of the five wealthiest cities in America, and one<br />
of the largest with a p<strong>op</strong>ulation of nearly 1 million.<br />
JD Rockefeller, the industrialist, was born there,<br />
and at one point it was home to 50% of the world’s<br />
millionaires. But then came the deindustrialisation<br />
of the 70s and 80s. Today Cleveland is one of the<br />
country’s five poorest cities, with a p<strong>op</strong>ulation<br />
of just 385,000.<br />
“There had been a sense of great futility,” said Mr<br />
Howard. “I was invited to come there by a number<br />
of institutions to try to find a new way to devel<strong>op</strong><br />
the economy. What we hit upon was to emphasise<br />
worker ownership rather than just a salary;<br />
emphasise decent work, not just a job; and we<br />
created a strategy, working with legacy institutions<br />
(universities, hospitals, cultural centres, etc) to<br />
encourage them to buy locally, while at the same<br />
time setting up worker co-<strong>op</strong>eratives in the city to<br />
provide the services they need.”<br />
One of the challenges was to find pe<strong>op</strong>le to run<br />
these services – often technical and complex, such<br />
as with industrial laundries – while remaining true<br />
to values. Bringing in co-<strong>op</strong>erators and training<br />
them in this work didn’t work. “What did work was<br />
bringing in corporate experts and training them in<br />
co-<strong>op</strong>erative culture,” says Mr Howard.<br />
“We made every possible mistake in the book,<br />
but we’re still standing.”<br />
AUGUST <strong>2019</strong> | 49