I blogged this article last week here on RealNEO. It had 160 reads, but no comments... I think I would add it in with my other blog about grey power (200+ reads) and ask -

why is no one in NEO reporting about this????

If you google "evergreen coop cleveland" you will see that several others have reported it.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Worker coops in Cleveland to build wealth for inner-city residents

Evergreen Laundry is the first of of several cooperative ventures in University Circle

Now they're up and running and now the Nation picked up on it. We don't all always get to all the realtime news. And some publications don't publish daily or hourly.

There are other ventures in this coop model - even some being explored in the "a road will save this" Opportunity Corridor area.

 I mean seriously - they're not even really in the Greater Cleveland Metro area - nice work!

I sort of meant the peewee peedee... peepee twiddle dee duMb

la tee da... there's sO much we don't know and never will because of editorial license.....

but there's also another issue here that interests - the vilification of the poor. its something that has been kicking around in my head the last couple of years as the economy has worsened. it just seems the conservatives need to uphold the idea that poor people are lazy, worthless and deserve their misery and poverty. It allows them to conveniently ignore the idea that maybe their policies a mean and selfish.

and of course, a story like this would just blow that idea up....

I miss lots of news stories, but someone usually links them up for me at my usual watering holes.

I wonder how many people saw The Nation's headline and prepared to read about the model of how a city fails miserably. There's plenty of bad to report. But so far, this is not your basic Forbes story that has generated so much buzz - you know, Forbes says it sucks to be Cleveland. My retort - Dear Forbes - It sucks to be you. It sucks to make your dwindling profits on the suffering of others and especially in such a petty, small, low manner.  Manners!?! You need to learn some. Grow up or go out of business. I've had enough of the defensiveness around the stupid Forbes article. Buzz off Forbes. When I ran a dance company I used to become angry at times when the critic picked at some insignificant factor or wrote about things we couldn't control, like the temperature in the theater in our review. It seemed at times that she was digging deep for something negative to say. Someone told me to relax and remember that "scandal sells newspapers". I seem to be able to verify that regularly.

I do seem to recall reading about Evergeen in the Plain Dealer. Yep, here it is.

Evergreen Cooperative Laundry aims to help struggling neighborhoods around Cleveland's University Circle

By Tom Breckenridge October 20, 2009, 5:17PM

More about Evergreen at Ohio Employee Ownership Center. They don't yet have The Nation's article posted, but there is more coverage linked here.

This is positive change. Good to know. It does seem that most days there is more bad news and more misery. Cleveland has gone down. There are lots of poor people here. The boom times of weapons manufacturing are over. It is time to come to grips with a new economy and I think this is a start. In the video, you will hear Ms. Stopkay say that the laundry, solar and growers coops are a start, but that 40 businesses would be more like success. Hope is not a strategy. This is a strategy.

Can Cleveland's worker owned coops learn from the mistakes at Mondragon? We're about to find out. But as some reviewers of this book (The Myth of Mondragon) say, it is so much better than the conditions under Franco in the Basque region of Spain where the model began. Learn more about Mondragon.

I've always thought Cleveland to be a real gem in the rough. My dream for Cleveland is an egalitarian, intelligent, "green", multi-cultural city. I just don't know if I want to live here and find out.

We have all the pieces parts for that, but not if corporate Cleveland and the legacy of the likes of M. Brock Weir get in their way, putting obscene profit and selfish greed ahead of commonweath and general well-being.

Anyway - great links!

I suspect we all have our evacuation dreams. Do I want to stick it out in Cleveland to see the recovery? How long might it take? Will I be allowed to be part of that recovery or will I be trampled by the cavalry of white horses?

I dream of living quietly in a sleepy tiny town on Florida's panhandle. It's easier when you're unemployed to think about pulling up stakes and moving the tent. Problem is I don't live in a tent. I am paying a bank for the house I live in, so it's not just tent stakes. A house is pretty hard to offload these days. Plus - there's lots of fresh water here (even if it is nasty fresh water with PFCs).

The grass is always greener. I recommend compost to green this grass and ripping out lots of grass, replacing it with cover crops for half a decade and applying compost to grow food. Hell, it can't be much more carcinogenic than that glass of water, can it?

"Don't drink the water ... there's blood in the water..." Or, think for yourself, question verify. We all have to decide where we might cast down our buckets.