Posted by:
John Duda
Event to take place July 8-10 in Baltimore
The Democracy Collaborative is proud to be a contributor to the 2011 Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy, where representatives of democratic workplaces—worker coops, ESOP’s, and more—are convening in Baltimore for three days of conversations (July 8th-10th) on the nuts and bolts of building employee owned enterprises, as well as about the longer term strategies using workplace democracy to build economic justice in our communities. Register for the conference here.
The conference kicks off on Friday July 8th with both an intensive pre-conference on Advancing the Development of Worker Coops organized by our friends at Grassroots Economic Organizing and a series of events highlighting economic democracy in action in Baltimore. A bus tour will visit:
- Sojourner-Douglass College, where an innovative experiment in community wealth building driven by a local university engaged with the Oldtown neighborhood is underway
- Maryland Brush, a 100% employee-owned industrial manufacturing company in West Baltimore
- AK Press, a collectively owned anarchist publisher that’s been in business for over two decades and which has recently opened its second US office in Baltimore
- Real Food Farm, where six acres of intensive urban agriculture is bringing together youth jobs, food justice, and community economic development
Meanwhile, a walking tour, led by a worker-owner from the three-city pet care collective Just Walk will visit some of the many spaces using collective and cooperative models to build grassroots democracy, education, sustainability, and culture in Baltimore City:
Later on Friday evening, a cooperative showcase and dinner featuring the Sojourner-Douglass Oldtown project, Just Walk, AK Press, plus Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, who will give a short talk on the history of black cooperatives in Baltimore, and the United Workers, a grassroots poor people’s economic human rights organization fighting for fair development in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, will take place at 2640, a collectively-managed community events venue.
And that’s just the first day! Saturday and Sunday are packed with an amazing program of workshops, talks, panels and more, be sure to check out the full schedule and don’t miss the Sunday morning talk by our Research Director Steve Dubb, “How to Bring Evergreen to your Community” to find out how to adapt the “Cleveland Model” of using anchor institutions to build worker coops in low-income communities to your own local situation.