“Let’s take back our economy. Let’s decentralize and democratize it,” Heather Young said, kicking off the panel called “Building the Alternative” at the Festival of Grassroots Economics, held September 26 at the Humanist Hall in Oakland.

Heather Young was one of the main organizers of the festival, a free, day-long gathering of several hundred Bay Area people who gathered to meet and discuss how to evolve alternative economies that benefit working people, support local small businesses, support pay equity, and address work through the framework of race, class and privilege.  Young, a co-founder of Bay Area Community Exchange wanted to make sure everyone arriving for the day understood that finding new economic models was the essence of the festival, whose slogan was “Building an Economy for the People and the Planet.”

Held in Humanist Hall just north of downtown Oakland, the event was organized with no external funding by JASecon (Just. Alternative. Sustainable. Economics) and a handful of local citizens and workers in cooperatives and non-profits interested in finding new ways to do business in the local economy.  Some of these new ways adopt different ownership models and some don’t involve Uncle Sam’s dollar at all.

Worker Cooperatives: Keeping Jobs, Profits and the Economy Local

Even as the main hall was abuzz with people exchanging information and networking, the festival kicked off in the main yard with a discussion of worker co-operatives as concrete and successful models of alternative economic enterprises that are locally rooted. They result in more equitable workplace structures and provide multiple community benefits.  The panel was a primer on democratic workplaces, covering organizational, legal and financial aspects of worker-owned cooperatives, while highlighting concrete examples of how one functions.

Source: Oakland Local