Key Historical Co-op Movements - mcdc.coop · Key Historical Co-op Movements ... Founders of the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union Houston ... –Practicality

Key Historical Co-op Movements –viewed through the lens of what motivates people to organize co-ops

Montana Cooperative SummitFairmont Hot Springs

March 7, 2018

Brianna EwertCooperative Development Program Manager

Lake County Community Development Corp.

With credit to:

Margaret M. BauCooperative Development Specialist

USDA Rural Development

What motivates people to

organize cooperatives?

Are there common themes?

What motivates people to

organize cooperatives?

• Market failure and power imbalances

• Perseverance in hostile conditions

• Equity and social justice

• Practicality

• Middle Way (between corporate capitalism and socialism)

Co-op history

illustrated through

stories…

The Rochdale PioneersEngland, 1840s

Overcoming Market Failure and

Power Imbalances

Cooperatives formed by African-AmericansPerseverance in the Midst of Hostility

Collective Courage: A History of African American

Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice

Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Founders of the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union

Houston County, Texas, 1886

Fannie Lou Hamer

Freedom Farm Cooperative

Alice Wine, cashier at the Progressive Club. She was a participant in the first Citizenship

School at the co-op and the first student to gain the right to vote. Circa early 1950s

The Progressive Club Food Co-op, Johns Island, South Carolina

Esau Jenkins of the Progressive Club and Myles Horton of the Highlander Center

Desjardins

Credit Unions(Quebec, 1900 – today)

Equity and Social Justice

Home of Alfonse Desjardins and site of

the first caisse founded in 1900

Rural Electric Co-ops in the US(1935-1945)

Practicality to Efficiently Achieve a Major Goal

Photo courtesy of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association

FDR signs the Rural Electrification

Administration act

Mondragon worker co-ops(Spanish Basque region, 1956-today)

A Middle Way

steering a middle course between investor and state owned businesses

Basic Principles of the

Mondragon Cooperative Experience

1. Open admission

2. Democratic organization

3. Sovereignty of labor

4. Instrumental and subordinate character of capital

5. Participatory management

6. Payment solidarity

7. Inter-cooperation

8. Social transformation

9. Universality

10.Education

What have we

learned?

Observations from History

• In the spirit of “a middle way”…

– Practicality AND movement building

– Self-help, self-responsibility AND equity, solidarity

• When going to scale

– Access to model, financing, administration AND

study circles, adult education

What motivates

you?

For More Information

Margaret BauCooperative Development Specialist

USDA Rural Development (715) 345-7671

[email protected]

USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.