Dear Colleague,
As we near the end of 2010, I wanted to share a few news items that I thought you might find of interest:
- The Evergreen Cooperative Initiative was prominently featured in a nationwide PBS broadcast in late November.Fixing the Future, hosted by the journalist David Brancaccio, contains a 6 1/2 minute segment on our work in Cleveland with Evergreen. You can access it on line here. Scroll down the page to find the segment on Evergreen, featuring operations manager Medrick Addison of the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry.
- Evergreen was also recently the focus of a story by reporter John Yang of the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. You can view it on line here.
- Democracy Collaborative co-founder Gar Alperovitz, Lionel Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, was cited by New York Times reporter Davis Segal in an article titled, Some Very Creative Economic Fix-Its. Dr. Alperovitz suggests that the growing cooperative movement in Cleveland and elsewhere around the country represents "the stirrings of a movement animated by the cold reality that neither the government nor private enterprise is on the verge of large-scale hiring."
I also wanted to share with you The Democracy Collaborative's most recent publication: The Road Half Traveled: University Engagement at a Crossroads. The report is our most comprehensive study to date of university strategies focused on community building and economic development. As the authors note, "While still a minority within higher education, a growing number of universities have actively and increasingly effectively embraced their role as local economic anchors." Our objective is to assess how such strategies can be more sharply focused for greatest impact, particularly to benefit low-income neighborhoods and families locked in generational poverty.
We'll be back in touch in late January with a full update of Community-Wealth.org and our usual array of recommended publications, news items, websites, and on-the-ground innovations. Until then, we wish you happy holidays and a peaceful conclusion to your year. Onward to 2011!
Ted Howard
Executive Director, The Democracy Collaborative