Industrial Symbiosis Kalundborg, Denmark

Pathways to Sustainable Self-Governance: Democratic Open-Source Food and Manufacturing Networks

Short Description

Worker Cooperative Networks for Sovereignty of Food, Commerce, & Community: Panel/Breakouts/Discussion to Envision & Chart Implementation Framework of Industrial Permaculture Ecology

Full Workshop Proposal

Pathways to Sustainable Self-Governance: Democratic Open-Source Food and Manufacturing Networks

Workshop Information
Event Date: Fri, 06/25/2010 – 3:30pm – 5:30pm
Event Location: Wayne County Community College: 23A

Full Description:

This workshop outlines a vision for a democratic, worker-owned, advanced industrial ecology society. We seek pathways to provide the burgeoning food education/justice movement with the tools to become economically sustainable, and to link the emerging green industrial worker cooperatives with them into sovereign networks. Once active, such networks can become the basis for sustainable, socially just communities that revitalize locales via open source sustainable agriculture and manufacturing methods. Our panel — with academic, commercial, and school of hard knocks experience — will frame the demonstrated solutions, numerous pieces of the puzzle that we as a society need to put together.

Pathways to Sustainable Self-Governance: Democratic Open-Source Food and Manufacturing Networks

Short Description

Worker Cooperative Networks for Sovereignty of Food, Commerce, & Community: Panel/Breakouts/Discussion to Envision & Chart Implementation Framework of Industrial Permaculture Ecology

Full Workshop Proposal

Pathways to Sustainable Self-Governance: Democratic Open-Source Food and Manufacturing Networks

Collaborating Organizations

Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives (2543) | Mandela Marketplace (2339) | Planting Justice (1407) | Mandela Foods Cooperative (2340) | Abolish Human Rentals (1460) | Permaculture Cooperative (1720)

Photo: Oakland Sol: Oakland Sustaining Ourselves Locally who generously provided accommodation, workspace and knowledge during incubation of this workshop

Collaborating Organizations

Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives (2543)

The Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives is itself a cooperative made up of five member businesses: four cooperative bakeries and a development and support collective. Members share a common mission, share ongoing accounting, legal, educational and other support services, and support the development of new member cooperatives by the Association. http://arizmendi.coop

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Mandela Marketplace (2339)

Mandela Market Place is a pioneer in development, application and assessment of community food systems. The organization evolved since 2001, first as a project of the Environmental Justice Institute – Tides Center, until incorporating in 2005 as a stand-alone 501c3 organization with a goal to strengthen community health, integrity and indentity by providing economic opportunity and empowerment for inner-city Oakland residents and businesses, and local family farms. Mandela MarketPlace works directly with community residents, local, state and federal agencies, non-profits, small business owners, and farmers to support strategies to meet food needs, expand economic opportunity and increase self-reliance of low-income and disenfranchised people. http://mandelamarketplace.org

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Planting Justice (1407)

Planting Justice is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, CA dedicated to food justice, economic justice, and sustainable local food systems. We are the first organization of our kind to combine ecological training and urban food production with a grassroots door-to-door organizing model that will vastly increase our educational community outreach, help us to recruit volunteers, decentralize our fundraising sources, and provide local jobs that also train young community organizers. http://www.plantingjustice.org

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Mandela Foods Cooperative (2340)

Mandela Foods Cooperative is a locally-owned and operated full-service grocery store and nutrition education center located in West Oakland, a community long underserved in grocery retail. The present undersupply of food retail in West Oakland represents an opportunity to leverage untapped local buying power into new business and employment opportunities and healthy eating options for West Oakland residents. The Cooperative will offer local goods, wholesome, fresh and affordable foods grown on family farms, nutrition education classes and a cooperative economic investment program that provides multi-level investment for community residents. http://www.mandelafoods.com

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Abolish Human Rentals (1460)

Abolish Human Rentals is dedicated to bringing an old idea into the public conscience, that the standard employment relationship, a contract for the rental of people, is invalid due to the inalienable rights of humans. It is based on the already widely held principle of the non-transferability of responsibility for one’s actions. That principle, taken to its logical conclusion, means the rental of humans have no more legitimacy than their sale. http://www.abolishhumanrentals.org

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Collaborating Organizations:
Arizmendi Assn. of Cooperatives (2543) — http://arizmendi.coop — and
Mandela Marketplace (2339) — http://mandelamarketplace.org — and
Planting Justice (1407) — http://www.plantingjustice.org — and
Mandela Foods Cooperative (2340) — http://www.mandelafoods.com — and
Abolish Human Rentals (1460) — http://www.abolishhumanrentals.org

Language(s): English
Tracks:
Climate Justice: sustainability, resources and land
Democracy and Governance

Important pieces that will be presented here include the successful strategies employed in the worker cooperative networks/alliances of Mondragon, Ohio, and the San Francisco Bay Area, Permaculture design strategies implemented even in harsh climate zones, Denmark’s national industrial symbiosis program, non-parasitic capitalization of non-hierarchical enterprises, and regenerative urban food justice paradigms.

Participants will self-organize into groups to construct models that put some of the pieces together. Workshop participants will then seek to bolster viability of the proposed models, emphasizing possible pilot programs in Detroit, Oakland and in Brooklyn.

Panel members include Quinton Sankofa of Mandela Marketplace and James Berk of Mandela Foods Cooperative, Mike Leung of the embryonic Worker Cooperative Credit Union, and Gavin Raiders of Planting Justice. Facilitator: Kirstie Stramler of Permaculture Cooperative.

For updates leading up to USSF 2010, see the panel and workshop group pages on http://organize.ussf2010.org and videos on http://permaculture.tv/tag/ussf2010/ .

Organizer Name: Kirstie Stramler
Organizer Email: kirstie@permaculture.tv
First Sponsoring Organization Name: Permaculture Cooperative