A new economic model in Cleveland

[Willinois]

Exciting stuff. This is what should have been done with GM after the bailout. Or at Republic Windows after the strike.

A co-op movement grows in Cleveland

Quote:Conventional wisdom holds that the forward-looking coastal enclaves of the United States are where we're supposed to expect cutting edge experiments in building a green economy. But if Ted Howard has his way, every activist who wants to promote green jobs and economic growth should turn instead to the city of Cleveland, Ohio, for inspiration.

Howard is one of the chief architects of the "Cleveland Model" -- an effort to create good jobs in depressed urban neighborhoods by fostering for-profit cooperatives founded on a principle of environmental sustainability. The neighborhoods targeted by Howard's Evergreen Cooperative Initiative suffer from 40 percent unemployment, but he suggests tossing out any preconceptions one might have about whether or not desperately poor people care about the environment. Howard recounts one cooperative worker telling him, "I thought I'd have to move to Portland to become part of the green revolution, and now I can say that we lead the way in Cleveland."

He has two green companies started so far.

Quote:The new companies do not quite follow the rules of capitalism as we know them, says the 61-year-old Howard, who traces his dedication to progressive social change to his days "matriculating in anti-war organizing" at Georgetown University in the late '60s. The cooperatives are worker-owned, and must commit to contributing 10 percent of their annual profits in perpetuity back into a general fund intended to finance further expansion of the network. The goal, eventually, is to create something as vibrant as the famed Mondragon Corporation in the Basque region of Spain. With 256 interlinked businesses, over 80,000 workers and annual revenues of over $20 billion in 2010, the Mondragon Corporation has proven that worker-owned cooperatives can flourish.