I saw a cartoon today that said that “Despair is the new hope”. That is not true for me and need not be true for you. It’s easy to be pessimistic given the daily stream of negative news that comes our way but it also is easy because if we believe nothing is worth doing, then we don’t really have to do anything. Ugh, what a way to live…..wake up hopeless about our shared future and go to bed hopeless.
I am not someone who is usually a fan. But, I am a big fan of Gar Alperovitz—probably not someone who instantly comes to your mind when you consider bigger names in the news to follow. So, just give me five minutes to make my case about why you should join me in my fandom.
Gar is a political historian, economist, change-agent, highly respected professor, much read author and a down to earth straight talking expert on what is happening in the New Economy. I met him in early 1990’s when he was already immersed in figuring out Alternative Economies to the existing one of “Big Business’s Profit over People & the Planet”.
Recently, I visited him in Washington DC and interviewed him for my Road Trip Video Series. On the tape, Gar speaks about an explosion of on the ground initiatives that have a powerful potential for addressing wealth inequity in this country. Click here to see video
However, right now I want to review highlights of his newest book, What Then Must We Do: Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution, which is chock full of positive economic happenings. He challenges us to think differently about the future: He writes: “We remember the future. We unconsciously project forward assumptions about what is possible based on our actual experience of the past.” So, if we think nothing has really worked to change our economy for the better for working people in the past, we’ll think it is not possible now.
He also writes: “We face systemic problems not simply political problems. We need to change the way things are rigged deeper down in the machinery of institutions, corporations, bureaucracy and all the other elements of the system that produce the outcomes we experience.” Politics won’t do that. As much as I want to hope that a new President and Congress will improve the wellbeing of people and communities, I agree with Gar–we need to address system change.
So, how do we begin to get a sense of what a better next system might entail? How do we begin to get from here to there? Gar replies: “We begin today with one bolt” and cites an inspiring story of how in the 1970’s one steelworker in a mill in Ohio that was about to close organized so that not only did that not happen,the workers ended up owning it. That initiative launched future changes that empower and benefit workers. Those changes include “many worker owned businesses in OH—a state that has established a support system for building them that is one of the best in the nation. In addition, the Employee Ownership Center at Kent State University provides assistance to workers and others to establish such firms. Now—after 30 years, even businessmen, many of whom aided by certain tax benefits sell their successful businesses to former employees when they retire.”
An example of an industrial sized worker owned cooperative that is providing good livelihoods and futures for its worker owners and at the same time increasing community prosperity is Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio. Its success has inspired over 100 cities around the country to hold economic roundtables on how to make it happen in their communities.
Worker Owned Cooperatives are only one approach of the New Economy that is happening now around the country. I will continue to blog about Gar’s strategizing and the efforts now going on to create an economy that works for all people. You can also read his realistic approach to a future that takes care of people and the planet in his book or visit the http://democracycollaborative.org/Democracy Collaborative.