TRANSCRIPT:

David: Howdy folks, welcome to Redneck Gone Green.

I’m your host David Cobb and I am the Redneck and you bet I’ve gone green and I’m trying to convince you to do it too, and as you know we come onto this platform once a week. We’re on YouTube, we’re on Rumble, we also record an audio podcast and make that available to you.

So, I’m going to ask you however you’re watching, if you’re watching live you can please Like, Comment, and Share to control what is being heard because remember this is non-corporately filtered news information and analysis that is designed to not just have a ain’t it awful conversation but to actually win a new world.

I always like to remind folks that we follow the no feel do model here on Redneck Gone Green in other words we ask ourselves what do we want y’all to know about and that we want you to know that we are past too many tipping points that continuing to just tweak things at the margin is not going to get her done and that we’ve got to make transformational change.

That means we want you to feel both a sense of urgency but also a sense of genuine hope that there is in fact something that can be done because what we want you to do is to participate in this conversation and be inspired to do the things that we’re talking about on this show because every week it is our task and challenge to bring you examples concretely of people doing the work where they live, work, pray and play, to not just complain about things, although there are plenty of things to complain about, and not just to envision a new world, although visioning that new world is possible.

But we’re also talking to people who are doing it on the ground, actually making that change happen, and this week, our guest is a perfect example of that.

Emily Kawano is the founder and co-coordinator of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and co-director of the Wellspring Cooperative Corporation, which is seeking to create a new community-based job creation program in her community in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Wellspring’s goal is to use what they call anchor institutions to purchase and create a network of worker owned businesses located in the inner city that will provide both job training and entry level jobs to both unemployed and underemployed people.

Emily is an economist by training and has served in academia. In fact, she served as the Director of the Center for Popular Economics from 2004 to 2013. Before that, she actually taught economics at Smith College. She’s worked as the National Economic Justice Representative for the American Friends Service Committee. You may be more familiar with it as the Quakers.And in Northern Ireland, she founded a popular economics program with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.So Emily’s got a very impressive resume and is a personal friend.

Emily Kawano, welcome to Redneck Gone Green.

Emily: Thanks so much. It’s great to be here.

David: All right. So listen, Emily, you heard that introduction. I set a high bar for you, lady. So, what I want you to do, though, is to start big picture because the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network is where I remember meeting you at the U.S. Social Forum back in, what was that, 2007 in Atlanta, Georgia, right? And I remember you and your colleagues, Julie Matai and a host of others had an entire series of events that y’all did around cooperative economics or solidarity economics. So, before we get to Wellspring, I want you to share with Redneck Gone Green viewers and listeners, what the heck is the Solidarity Economy Network and where did it come from?

Emily: Right. Okay, so yeah, Solidarity Economy Network emerged out of that U.S. Social Forum, indeed, in Atlanta in 2007. I was at the Center for Popular Economics at the time. I was the director there, and we helped to organize a whole track of workshops on Solidarity Economy. I’ll say what that is in a second. And we also held a couple of meetings in addition to those workshops and out of those meetings emerged or was launched the U.S.Solidarity Economy Network.

At the time in 2007, I would say that the term and the framework of the Solidarity Economy was pretty much completely unknown. And so, I’m really happy to say that now, 15 years later or so, It’s a term that’s very widely known in progressive, sort of on the left, social movements and organizations.

David: You know, that was certainly true for me, Emily, because I remember back in 2007, I had not heard that term specifically. I’m going to be honest with you. And folks, I have to admit, so I’m the co-coordinator of the currently of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network with Emily Kawano.

And Emily, back in 2007, I remember thinking, listen, I’m glad that that’s all well and good, and I’m glad that that there are people trying to do co-ops, but I’m a serious revolutionary. I’m trying to restructure all of society. And the reality is I, over the last, what, you know, 15 years. I have not only been won over. I’ve actually like I’m all the way in. And the reason I’m all the way in is because it’s not just tweaking capitalism, is it?

Emily: Right. Solidarity economy is really clear about where we stand on that spectrum. Do you believe that capitalism can be reformed to be a more just and sustainable and democratic and cooperative world? Or do you believe that we have to move beyond capitalism? So, solidarity economy is very, very clear that we have to move beyond. There are too many things sort of intrinsic to capitalism. We’re not going to get there where we want to get to through reforming capitalism.

So yeah, that’s something that we’re very clear about and, you know, there are a lot of different strands of trying to make the world a better place. And a lot of them fudge on that issue, right? Let’s just do good things and support good works.

But without that clarity, about where you’re trying to go in the long term, it’s pretty likely you’ll end up reforming capitalism and sometimes even strengthening capitalism by reforming it and making it a little maybe kinder, a little more gentle, but it’ll actually reinforce capitalism and we don’t believe that ultimately that’s the way to go.

David: And I’m going to use this opportunity then to say, all right, so tell us what are the core principles of the Solidarity Economy Framework?

Emily: Right, so solidarity economy is absolutely grounded in values. And those values will look slightly different in different places, different countries, different regions. The US solidarity economy network uses five.

So, solidarity, cooperation, mutualism, all that kind of stuff. So that’s one. Participatory democracy, so certainly beyond the voting booth, right? Democracy in communities, democracy in the workplace, democracy, right? So that really bringing it into all aspects of our lives. Sustainability, pretty self-explanatory these days. Equity, we talk about equity in all dimensions. So, race, class, gender, ableism, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the last one is pluralism, which is very important. It means that this is not a one-size-fits-all model. We don’t have a blueprint. We don’t claim to have the right answer.

There are many different approaches that fit under this big tent. And we have to be humble. And instead of throwing stones at fellow travelers and saying, no, you’re wrong. My way is right. We should be respectful, see what works, hear each other out, engage in good debate. Good, principled, constructive debate, and build our path on these options

David: So, Emily, I’m going to back up and really go deep on this pluralism piece, because for me, this is one of the things that is both most inspiring and can sometimes be the most challenging, right? Because the solidarity economy principles are, as you say, very clear. There’s a framework, and Solidarity Economy as a Framework is explicitly post-capitalist.

But the framework itself says pluralism, try other things, be willing to be open, and that includes reforming, right? So, one of the things that I think has been incredibly inspiring to me and I’ll admit sometimes challenging is to hold the space to say, looky here, Solidarity Economy is post-capitalist, but you can do things within the capitalist framework that still are Solidarity Economy practices, and we’re going to applaud and lift that up. And I feel like that tension, a creative tension, can really be a spot of some real juiciness.

Emily: Yeah. People are in different places about this. Some people will really try to draw a hard line. Me personally, the way I look at it is a reform is post-capitalist. If that’s your long if that’s where you’re headed. So, I often use the example of the fight for 15. Which, you know, if you’re on the left, you can’t argue with that, of course, you’re going to support the, you know, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. If that’s where you end, right, if that’s your end goal, just fight for 15, get that $15 an hour wage. I think I would say that’s reformist, right?

It’s still completely within a capitalist context, you’re making things a little bit better. But, you know, capitalism is very malleable and can absorb that and move on. If your goal is to fight for better working conditions, but your long-term goal is to transform the system, then you’ll use that fight for 15 to build towards real transformation.

So, I think most things, most reforms can be transformative or non-reformist reforms. If you have that long term vision, and you know that you’re moving beyond capitalism, if that’s always the context, within which you’re working, then I consider it a transformative reform.

David: And, you know, Emily, that reminds me that FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, credited with the New Deal that had some fantastic reforms. I mean, you know, I’m looking forward to get some of that good socialized medicine when I turn 65. I mean, you know, I’ve been paying into Social Security. I mean, you know, we can go down the list of those, you know, really quality reforms that made people’s lives better and I remember my ma and pa talking about how that made their lives better. My pa actually went to work during the WPA, right? 

But FDR actually said, “I saved capitalism.” He said, “I don’t know why all the industrialists and business leaders are so angry with me. I saved capitalism.” And I would argue he did.

Emily: Absolutely. And I think that this is a great example.

David: Right. And so, Emily, like I kind of we’ve had lots of guests that have done a great job of critiquing the current capitalist system and then offering visions for, you know, like a new world. I set you up though with Wellspring as an example of somebody who was putting these principles and values into practice, right? So now that we’ve talked about the solidarity economy framework, I’m going to challenge you to give us an example there in Western Massachusetts about what it looks like to apply these principles and values.

Emily: So, I went from being the executive director of the Center for Popular Economics, so we’re a collective of progressive economists, progressive to radical economists, that are all about helping people better understand how the economy works or doesn’t work. I think we had always done a bang-up job critiquing capitalism and we did a less good job helping people imagine and engage with what is the alternative until we really turned to a solidarity economy framework.

That was really helpful for us, and we went from embracing that as part of our bag of teaching tools and frameworks to thinking about getting our hands dirty, getting involved locally in economic development work. And so we were thinking about applied research to support solidarity economy initiatives and as well as actually developing solidarity economy initiatives.

At the time I met my co-director Fred Rose and we started shopping around this idea about building on an anchor institution model, which at the time was being pioneered by Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland. So building these relationships with anchor institutions to develop cooperative businesses that could meet the needs of the anchor institutions.

So maybe the anchor institutions then had some bragging rights about buying local and supporting local job creation and wealth building. So, we started shopping around that idea and that part started to take off. So, there were a number of years where I was working at CPE but some of my time was spent building up Wellspring.

Eventually the Center for Popular Economics decided to stick with a popular economics education and not do the research and not do the economic development. And in 2013, I switched over to work full time at Wellspring. An example of where the division was important.

So, I was absolutely bringing a solidarity economy framework with me. But that’s not where we built our collaboration, right? I did not start talking about solidarity economy for quite a long time. It was years before I started even talking about that because the people that we were working with, anchor institutions, the hospitals, the colleges, and then other folks in Springfield, Massachusetts, I wouldn’t say most of them were particularly radical, right?

So, we started with talking about cooperative businesses. being owned by workers and you know democracy and it um that was appealing to people we talked about wealth creation so that if the if the co-op thrives workers get to uh engage in profit sharing and build up some some some wealth that was appealing right like we got zero pushback on that and in fact at the same at the same time there were people um in the initial circle that were saying things like This is great. This is great, like leveraging anchor institution purchasing.

But look, there’s this small business and that small business, and why don’t we support them, right? So, they were about local small businesses, and we really had to push back and hold the line on no, we’re committed to cooperatives. And we didn’t necessarily say cooperatives are not a capitalist enterprise, right? We didn’t necessarily go into that. But we had to hold our ground.

I really believe that we could easily have lost that thread. We could easily have been about just any small business, whether it’s a cooperative and democratically owned and managed, or just any old local small business and get that anchor institution support that we could have easily fallen into that because there was a lot of pushback in the early days about that. So, it’s just an example where that long-term vision of knowing where you’re going is really, really important.

David: You know, it really is. And again, that’s that creative tension around being genuinely pluralistic, but having a core set of principles to make sure that, you know, you don’t lose that.

I want to circle back about a couple of things. One, I want you to explain a little more about the anchor institution strategy and what that means. So, if folks are not familiar already, with the Evergreen Cooperative in Cleveland. Just like imagine somebody doesn’t know what anchor institutions mean. Walk us through that again, please.

Emily: Right. So, an anchor institution is usually a large institution, often eds and meds. So educational institutions and health care systems, hospitals that are anchored in place. Like we only work with, in terms of our anchor institutions, we work with non-profits. So they’re anchored in place, right?

Those colleges, those universities, those hospitals, they’re not going anywhere. They’re not picking up stakes and moving to someplace with lower wages, right? They’re anchored in place. But they’re also anchors of the local economy.

Like between UMass and like the major healthcare system, Bay State. I mean, it’s a, those are two of the largest employers in in Western Mass. So that’s what it means to work with these anchor institutions. And it’s a long process of building that relationship.

We spent a good Two years just building those relationships and also doing the research like what are, what do they purchase, what do they purchase where we might be able to form a co-op around and also what do they purchase where they’re purchasing from far away so that maybe we could build a local supplier.

David: Folks, you’re listening and or watching Redneck Gone Green. I’m your host, David Cobb. I am the redneck and I’ve gone green and I’m trying to convince you to do it too. And by the way, that does mean green party, but it also means deep ecology. It means rethinking how we live, work, play, and pray together in community. It means I don’t make any bones about it. I’m trying to red the greens and I’m trying to green the reds.

Right, I’m trying to actually normalize the idea that we can meet all of our needs to not just survive, but to thrive, live rich and meaningful lives without exploiting anyone, without allowing anybody to exploit us. And get this, it could literally be done in a truly ecologically sustainable way in genuine balance with Mother Earth.

And here’s the kick, y’all. That’s not a new way of doing things. That’s the ancient way of doing things. This is how human beings have lived on planet Earth for about 97,000 of the 100,000 years that we’ve been on this planet as Homo sapiens, more or less.

I would argue that this solidarity economy way of doing things of like actually doing commerce and creating things for use value for us to use and doing it together collectively. That’s our birthright.

We’re speaking with Emily Kawano. She is the co-coordinator of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and the co-director of the Wellspring Cooperative.

Emily, I want to circle or dig deep onto one thing. You mentioned that there were a lot of folk who got really excited about, okay, let’s do this. But hey, look at all these small businesses. Let’s support local small businesses. And you and others really held the line there. And one of the things that I want to invite you to talk about is what some of the good methodological-based science shows about worker-owned cooperatives.

Like, I remember the first, like, worker-owned co-ops, like, appeal to my principles, but one of the things that I was astounded by was the amount of research that shows worker owned cooperatives last longer by far than traditional businesses. Can you talk about that and why?

Emily: Yeah, so a lot of the data shows that worker cooperatives have better survival rates, right? Survival rates for small businesses is really high. I mean, depending, the estimates vary, but it can be as high as 80% in the first five years. And worker co-ops do better than that. They tend to survive longer. They tend to have much less turnover, better promotional opportunities.

They tend to have better benefits and better wages in that same sector. This is an interesting one, they tend to correlate with more civic engagement, because I think once you get used to having a voice in your workplace it tends to spill over into your community. 

Yeah, in general, like the multiplier effect, how much the dollar circulates locally, tends to be higher for co-ops, because they will have a focus, they’ll do their best to spend locally. So yeah, there’s a lot of oh, job satisfaction is consistently higher. So, there are a lot of there’s a lot of data that show that they do better than traditional capitalist businesses. There’s plenty of ways to go wrong. It’s still a small business, right? t still has to contend with all the challenges of a small business.

And there are also challenges that come with collectively managing, which doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a flat management style right there can still be a hierarchy within a co-op but there is much more voice built into a worker co-op than in a traditional business where there is no guarantee that workers have any voice, any rights at all.

David: And that’s the thing that I think is important. Look, you talked about the multiplier some economists call the elasticity of money, you know, how often dollars circulate in the local economy, and it’s really interesting to me.

I think I first came across that, as an economist, you were probably steeped in it. But I was exposed to it probably about the time I met you through the folks at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. And I remember diving deep on it and they actually showed, again, with good methodological research data, that a dollar spent on the same exact good or service

If you spend that dollar at a corporate franchise, a local corporate franchise, it tends to circulate about two, up to three times in the community before that dollar leaves. If you spend that exact same dollar on the exact same good or service in a locally owned business, it tends to circulate about seven times before it leaves.

The Democracy at Work Institute did a study on that money I remember asking why and the answer was because the locally owned independent business just naturally does that right. But co-ops tend to have a principled ideological position, and seek it out. And so, it ends up multiplying even more. And this is the thing that became really fascinating to me. And again, I got one over.

Like if you had told me 20 years ago, you know, that I would be like a co-op champion and that I’d spend a lot of time incubating co-ops, I would have literally said, look, co-ops are all well and good, but we can’t co-op our way past capitalism any more than we can recycle our way into ecological sustainability. And I’ll say, I still believe that, but I’ll tell you this. If we create co-ops with the intentionality of supplanting and transitioning out of the capitalist framework, I think we might actually be able to do that. I think we could literally replace the entire capitalist system If we actually show, not just tell, but show people this is what it’s like to be an empowered worker. This is what it feels like to actually own your own labor, to own your own mind, to be able to participate in these sort of things.

So to me, Emily, like this idea of having a core set of principles and values and then applying them in the real world with people who may not share our collective vision, that’s both a sweet spot, but it can also be pretty rocky sometimes. 

Emily: Yeah, I do want to say I agree with you that we are not going to co-op our way out of capitalism. And I want to emphasize that solidarity economy is not just co-ops. It’s a whole universe of things, some of which is market-based, its about producing things for sale, but some of it is asking ourselves what can we do on a local community level, produced for ourselves, right? It might be growing our own food, it might be, you know, mutual aid, it might be tool shares, etc, etc, etc.

So, there’s, there’s a whole host of examples of things that align with solid practices, I call them solidarity economy practices, that align with the solidarity economy principles. And that is the solidarity economy, right? It’s a huge foundation that we have to build on, but right now all these things, so co-ops and participatory budgeting and public banks and local currencies and etc, etc, etc, right? There’s really a lot.

They tend to be somewhat either invisible or they’re treated like cute little things, like that’s a cute little co-op because it’s seen in isolation from the others. Solidarity Economy is all about creating a framework or maybe a skeleton to start knitting these different practices together so that we can see that there’s this huge foundation.

There is a foundation of a different kind of economy and world that exists. It just doesn’t operate. The dominant system is still capitalism. The dominant logic that we learn is still capitalist.

David: You know, Emily, you, you wrote a seminal essay that really helped to win me over and I think a lot of other people. And in that I remember you described the difference between, and I remember as an undergraduate coming across a homo economicus. And I’m going to invite you, see if you remember your own writing, to tell us who and what Homo economicus is and your reframe of that person.

Emily: Yeah, so economists, right, like economics, which is a study of the economy, economic theory, it’s a story, right? It’s just one story. There have been other stories, there have been other economic systems. Capitalism is still relatively young, couple, you know, couple hundred years, couple hundred plus years. So pretty young.

Anyway, capitalism tells a story, and every story needs a character and the central character in capitalism is homo economicus, rational man and literally man. So the assumption is that we are all rational, calculating, self-interested, And that we’re always doing this calculation about what’s going to give us the biggest bang for our buck. And yet the theory is that by everybody behaving like homo economicus and pursuing their own individual self-interest, we will get the greatest good for everybody, right? That’s capitalism.

David: I gotta tell you, in what world have we ever said, like, if we just let everybody be greedy for themselves that somehow everybody comes out, like, that’s, like, on its face that seems crazy, right?

Emily: But well, there’s a whole economic theory about why that is. And there is a certain there is a certain story there, right? That if you’re a bad act, so if you have a business, and you’re a bad actor, you’re trying to, you’re acting really in a greedy manner, but you’re doing it by cheating people, eventually, some competitors going to come along, and everybody’s going to flock to them.

So that’s the kind of, you can be self-interested, but you will be forced to behave in a somewhat principled way otherwise you’re going to get wiped out. Now we know that that actually isn’t what’s happening and especially once you obtain sort of monopoly power then you’re free to be as abusive as you want because there’s no alternative, right? And you can prevent those alternatives or those competitors from springing up and giving you any trouble.

So anyway, there’s lots of problems with homo economicus but the assumption is that we are also competitive, right? And in a whole bunch of disciplines from anthropology to sociology to biology to physics even, right? There is more and more and more evidence that we are hardwired to cooperate.

Yes, I would not ever deny that there is some of homo economicus in all of us, right? We all have some self-interested motivation, but we are also hardwired to cooperate and to engage in also altruistic behavior, right? It’s not always even that it’s going to come back in some favorable way to us. There is some compassion and kindness, and dare I say love that is intrinsic to human beings, and without which the human species would not have survived

David: Science actually shows us that, and I think one of the things I really appreciated about that essay and about the solidarity economy is that it doesn’t assume human beings are demonic, it doesn’t assume they are angelic. It says look, humans tend to do what we’re incentivized to do. We tend towards wanting nice things, right? Like we’re not sociopaths, although there is something about that 1%, like we got to think about the magic of we are the 99% and who the hell are those 1% sociopaths that tend to end up as CEOs of transnational corporations?

But the point is, y’all, that the solidarity economy framework says, let’s incentivize the kind of things and the virtues that we say that we want. And to me, that’s something I think that is incredibly both inspiring and actually quite practical.

I also want to let you know, Emily, we’ve had some great comments in the chat I want to get to. Z Mani asks, what role does grassroots community media play in these communities in your experience? I think that’s a great question and I’m going to ask you as a both theorist and a practitioner in your local community, grassroots community media, what role, if any?

Emily: Good question. I’m not very well qualified to answer that. Certainly not where I work, which is in the lower valley of the Connecticut River Valley, lower valley, which is where the urban centers are. There is no, there is not much community media and certainly the community media that exists has not cottoned on to solidarity economy. Whereas in the upper valley, where the colleges are, there is lots and lots of media that really does play an important role in promoting these ideas.

David: Thank you for the questions, Z Mani, and for the candid answer, Emily. You know, I have the privilege of living in Humboldt County, California. What we laughingly tell people in San Francisco Bay Area is the real Northern California, right? Like, it’s very rural, but it’s also remote. And so for us, media is a lifeblood.

Why? Because like, we just don’t have the kind of corporate like, corporate media can be consumed, but the local community radio, there’s still a local newspaper that is thriving. There is all sorts of local community radio that is non-corporate filtered. I can tell you myself I have been a content creator and still am on our local radio station, and its been a lifeblood for us. So Z Mani to quote Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, don’t hate the corporate media, become the people’s media, and that’s what we’re trying to do on Redneck Gone Green. 

I want to turn also to Catherine who asks, is it possible for a solidarity economy to exist alongside a capitalist system or is it either or? And I got to tell you, Catherine, like you have teed Emily Kawano up because I have heard her answer this question.

Emily, what do you say? Either or?

Emily: Hmm. I mean, I would say solidarity economy exists now, right? It’s just not very well connected up so that we can see it and perceive it as a different system. But these practices exist all around. I mean, a couple ways in which probably many of us are already engaged in solidarity economy. Solidarity economy would certainly count.

Unpaid care work is an important economic activity and just because it’s not waged, not paid for, doesn’t mean that it’s not vitally important and should be supported in terms of policies. So probably we all, you know, are carers in one way for our parents, for our kids, for our siblings, for our neighbors, right?

We all engage in that kind of stuff. And why do we do it? We don’t do it for profit, right? We do it out of out of a sense of care and solidarity, right? And it makes us feel good.

So, there’s lots of ways in which people I mean, a lot of people belong to a credit union. And I’m not sure how many people realize that a credit union is a type of a cooperative. Whether or not that credit union does good education about what it is, in theory it is owned by its depositors.

David: And in fact, remember, credit unions, the board of directors are actually elected by the members, right? So, there is a democratic framework. It’s usually not utilized, in my opinion, in my experience, right? But they are.

Emily: But the structure is there.

David: It is absolutely there.

Emily: There are a lot of things that could be a lot more democratic and a lot more, um, yeah, in some ways, a lot more progressive that have kind of gotten absorbed into the system. So, in my neck of the woods, there’s a very large mutual, uh, mass mutual is a big, um, what do you call it?

The kind of, what is it? Life insurance company, really big, and so they started off it was people coming together as a mutual society pulling their money um for for funerals and burial services right and there is a way in which um they’re so big now they’ve a little bit lost that those roots um yeah there’s a lot of examples like that but the potential is there right for them to be much more democratic and accountable and transparent and you know work where the stakeholders can participate in decision making.

David: Emily, I’m going to circle us back. Earlier, you talked about the Wellspring ecosystem. And for those who are watching, you’re going to actually get a chance to see it. But I’m going to invite you to read it out for those who are listening to the podcast. Tell us a little bit more about the ecosystem.

Emily: So, I would say this is particularly important if you are engaged in co-op development in struggling, underserved, marginalized communities, which is where we are. And that is our mission, right? Springfield is a, you know, your typical de-industrialized city that is really, is really struggling. Majority people of color, large immigrant population, you know, the usual, right?

In the Upper Valley, right, that I mentioned, where there are the five colleges, it’s a different world. It’s just a completely different world. And co-ops thrive in the Upper Valley. I believe if we ran the numbers, we would have one of the most worker co-op dense regions in the entire country, given that we’re relatively rural.

They don’t need this ecosystem, right? But the communities that we’re working in, they need this kind of support. So yeah, we found in helping to, to jumpstart to incubate these co-ops, there is a need for we provide some of that co-op business TA technical assistance, but also there are others like connecting them to other to lenders, to other people who have other kinds of business, technical assistance, whether it’s co-op or not, because there’s a lot of lessons and skills that are just common to all businesses, whether it’s a co-op or not.

We know that we need to build that public sector support and supportive policies. So, engaging with city council and on a statewide level, we’re starting to build that out, that movement in Massachusetts. We know that a lot of our folks, a lot of our workers really need various kinds of social service supports, whether it’s transportation or childcare or housing or mental health support. And we’ve been trying for many years to try to build those connections with social service providers. There’s many, many, many, but to be able to do a warm handoff instead of just a cold referral.

So, building those relationships is important. From the get-go, we were very deliberate about building our table, not only with the anchor institutions, but also with community organizations and labor organizations. So, we always want to make sure that they had just as much voice as the anchor institutions.

And so that’s the last category, just building these relationships with the large institutions. I would say we’ve gone beyond this in some ways. So, we do talk about a co-op ecosystem, but we also expanded our mission a couple of years ago from developing cooperative businesses to also supporting the development of solidarity economy initiatives. For people that don’t know that terminology, we’ll call it a cooperative community initiative. Because in our neck of the woods, it’s still quite a, it’s still not a well-known term.

But we have found, let me just say why. Just even, these are valuable in and of themselves. Like what can communities, what can folks do for themselves? Especially collectively, but also trying to build the on-ramp to either become a worker in a worker co-op or a group that might think about starting up their own cooperative business um most people that were most of the communities like people are not ready to be able to do that and so having some experience with some kind of a cooperative initiative is an is we see that also as an on ramp to the cooperative business development and also the workforce right like worker owners.

David: So, this literally leads into a comment that Kelly made that I want to lift up. Kelly observes scarcity or the idea of scarcity drives so much of the greed. As we look further into the climate crisis, could you talk about the solidarity economy and the community that can help prepare for the impacts of the climate crisis? It’s not coming, it’s literally here and getting worse.

Emily: Right, right, right. So, you know, there is scarcity if everybody wants to consume like the 1%. And there is abundance if, if we share, but also, it’s sharing, but it is also like, not everybody can even share a yacht. And a fleet of big cars, etc. So those are for some people, it is a hard pill to swallow, so we do have to think about the overall level of consumption that is often what people aspire to. Some people can’t afford to consume at that level, but that is often the level of consumption people aspire to, and that is not sustainable.

David: It’s not sustainable, and Emily, I’m going to grapple with you a bit about this, because I would argue if we take a look at Edward Bernays and by the way there’s a special place in hell for Edward Bernays if folks don’t know about who that is, Jack, let’s take a note I think you and I ought to do a deep dive on Edward Bernays sometime on here on Redneck Gone Green but I would argue that so much of the materialism and the consumerism that is hyper destroying the planet now is literally being created right like it’s like a crack addiction where the moment of acquisition is what we’ve been sort of programmed to want. It’s not the inherent act of having this cup. It is to like, oh, I want to purchase this thing. So, it becomes like a crack cocaine addiction and it’s just in the moment of acquisition. So, we just, yeah.

Emily: And it’s no accident, right? This is one of the kind of intrinsic problems of capitalism, right? Businesses are all trying to get, maximize their profits, right? In order to do that they have to sell you stuff. And so, to crank up people’s aspirations of consumption is absolutely critical and intrinsic to capitalism.

David: And it’s not intrinsic to economics, the idea of producing and distributing goods and services, capitalism created that in order for profit maximization. Because this idea if the narrative of Homo Economicus is your driving narrative, then the consequences will follow.

What I think Emily and I are suggesting is if we had a different narrative about why, who we are, and what is the good life, and I would argue this, Emily, like, you know, we’re told by the ruling, no, correction, not the ruling elite. They’re not better than us.

The predatory class tries to say that people are lazy, they don’t want to work, etc. And I call bullshit on that. Because, like, my lived experience is people want to work. If by work, we understand meaningful, productive human activity. If you’re going to do something that is lifted up and applauded and appreciated by your community, and other people go, way to go, Emily, like, you know, thank you for that. like, that feels good to us, right? It is.

Emily: But they don’t want to work on something that is just awful and alienating and frustrating. And you have no voice, and you have no control, and you have some, yeah, a terrible workplace, right? Like that’s terrible. And you spend, you know, maybe a third of your life in that that place. It’s really a terrible thing.

But I do want to get back to the climate change thing and solidarity economy. I do think solidarity economy has some thoughts about ways forward, you know, the fundamental, true, it’s the narrative, it’s the very fundamental logic of what solidarity is about, right, that we, we exist, and we live, and we work and we, we socialize in order to meet our own needs, which are both material and immaterial. And right now, it’s so skewed towards the material needs and more, more, more.

So that is driving us this climate crisis, right? It is unsustainable. And so that’s part of it, right? Like understanding that a really basic part of human needs, right, just like shelter and food and clothing, is that need to connect with each other.

And so, if we spent a little less time working in order to buy stuff, and spending more time connecting with each other, like there is this moment here where this that that I think is kind of interesting to think about leveraging, right? The search in general has declared that there’s this crisis and epidemic of loneliness, right? And there’s all kinds of statistics about how it shortens your life and leads to Hard and this, that and the other, all kinds of diseases, right?

And solidarity economy is about those human connections, which in so many ways, capitalism isolates us, right? And we just get absorbed in the work and the earning and the purchasing, right? The consumption and not the connecting and the community and being with other people. Those things don’t cost anything, and it doesn’t need to draw on the resources of Mother Earth, right, like hanging out together. And so that’s a lot of what solidarity economy is about, right?

David: And what’s what I love about it is it is again, it’s not actually new. It’s a return to how all humans once existed. And I like to say all the time, I’m a guest on Wiyot ancestral territory, here in far northern Humboldt County. But what I do know is that I, just like Emily, and you the listener viewer, we all descend from indigenous peoples. All of our ancestors once lived in balance, in right relationship, before, and usually with the enclosure movement, of either imperialists and or others which brings me to Z Manny’s next comment which is this logic of enclosing the commons to seize and privatize common resources then base quote industry on gatekeeping after that He goes on to say, but there seems to be a deep desire for this more cooperative scenario.

And I want to, I’ve heard you talk about this before, Emily, and this so-called tragedy of the commons. And I want to invite you to break that down a little bit. Is it really true that, that people can share the commons or is there going to be this constant ultimate destruction of the commons if, if, if folks are not forced to do something?

Emily: So, if people know the work of Eleanor Ostrom, she won the Nobel Prize in Economics some years ago. Her work was looking at the at the commons, right, and she really decimated that tragedy of the commons piece. She did research into these common pool resources that were collectively managed.

So, for example, fisheries and forests and found that if there are no rules, and it’s a free for all, it is pretty likely that there will be this like the temptation to, to take more than your share, right, which will destroy the commons. is likely to happen. So, if you are going to create these commons, there do need to be clear, well-known rules. And there needs to be surveillance or there needs to be an awareness of if somebody violates those rules. And there also needs to be some consequences. And without that, there will be abuses.

So, I think what’s brilliant about that is saying absolutely there are societies that have used a commons framework for millennia very, very, very successfully, more successfully than managed through private hands. But we shouldn’t be all Pollyanna about it and just think, oh, we’re just angels, right? We’re just, we’re just good and we’re loving and we’re sharing and caring. We are that, but we also have to be realistic that we do need at the same time, you know, policies and rules and everybody needs to know what they are. And if somebody abuses, you need a way to know that and for there to be repercussions.

David: And that’s why I would argue, Emily, it’s important that we incentivize the kind of conduct that we want to see. It’s about systems. And I want to lift up Catherine. responded in the chat, it was like that, that is the sharing during World War II when I was a girl.

Rationing caused no real conflict because we just shared what was available. And I think that there is something to that, right? And I am now noticing, Emily, that the time has just flown by. We’ve been at it for an hour. So, I do want to give you an opportunity and an invitation for any final thoughts or closing remarks.

Emily: Well, I guess I would, I would close by saying that circling back to what you opened with, of hopefully seeding some hope. I think these are really dire times. I think these are really scary times. I’ve been cynical since I was very young. And so whatever, whatever kind of crises came, never particularly worried me. But now, right now, I am worried between climate change and this, the threat of fascism and this kind of virulent fanning of hatred and nativism is really scary.

And for me personally, working on building solidarity economy is what keeps me sane, right? Like I feel like I’m doing something. I feel like it is hopeful. I feel like this is a moment that is so urgent to be pulling together and building this other world and connecting the dots.

There’s a huge foundation to build on. And no matter where you are, no, no matter what you do, you can engage, right? Even if it is just being a little, a little more kind, a little bit more compassionate, a little bit more patient, a little bit more cooperative, a little bit what, you know, that’s part of it, right? How we are as human beings.

Capitalism will feed and incentivize and nurture that homo economicus but there is within all of us the homo solidaricus right there is that that turning towards all that good stuff are are better angels and um that’s part of building the solidarity economy and and even if you feel like oh there’s no co-op near me or there’s no community land trust near me or there’s no you can practice this just in the way you are and the way you are with other people and the Way You Treat the Earth.David: Thank you so much, Emily Kawano. Folks, we’ve been talking to Emily Kawano, who’s the co-coordinator of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and co-director of the Wellspring Cooperative Corporation that are incubating and seeding solidarity economy practices and principles across her community in Springfield, Massachusetts.

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