B (15:52)

Sure, sure. The School of Labor and Urban Studies is the newest school at the City University of New York. But for 35 years we've been the Murphy Institute and well known within the left community and the labor community as a place for gathering. So this was our first faculty led conference under the aegis of the new School and I was asked if I would do it on the cooperative economics or economic Democracy. We pulled together faculty from around the city, the city University and a few people from outside Rutgers, Brissam players, some folks from different places to think about what we need to say if we're going to have a faculty conference. But the first thing we said was it has to be about practice too. So it's academics praxis. And in that space where we come together, we also wanted to bring policymakers. So the deputy mayor opened. Phil Thompson, deputy mayor for Strategic Initiatives, opened the morning and really helped lay a groundwork for what a new economy needs to look like. Much of what was discussed are things that you've covered in your shows. I don't want to be redundant in the short time we have. But what was so exciting with almost every section or session was someone who's been writing or studying it and some people who've been doing it. And so we really were very intentional about mixing the praxis with the academic space so everyone could leave with papers that were written, PowerPoints, but also stories and real organizations, businesses, folks who are putting this together.

A (17:16)

So tell me, is it reasonable for me to believe that this is an idea that's catching hold? That the whole notion that we could run our businesses in a democratic, cooperative way, that we don't have to accept the historical legacy of enterprises run by a tiny group at the top, Is this spreading? Is your conference a sign of that?

B (17:41)

I want to say yes. And on my way here, I was feeling depressed about the state of the world. And when I listened to your session this morning, furthermore, how absurd and how disgusting as you quoted the French, the system is when there's so much at the top and so little at the bottom. But in some ways that might be the actual reason why there is something bubbling up everywhere where people are saying we need something more. Just so. When I visited Zuccotti Park a number of years ago for the Occupy, there was a sign on a pizza box. Someone had written, compassion is our new currency. And I want to put that out as what I think also happens when everybody's trying to figure out how to do something other than what they saw witness with Amazon not coming to New York or with the billionaire, the billions that overnight appeared in France and go down the list, people are seeing something's not right and they're hungry to figure out how can we make compassion our new currency.

A (18:41)

Are there? Did examples come up at your conference of ongoing efforts at worker co ops? Tell us a little bit about what struck you there?

B (18:52)

Yeah, it was worker co ops. It was also all other types of cooperative enterprises. So I want to put worker co ops in the context of a cooperative economy. People were talking about land and land trusts and what do we do about land, banking and finance. I can go down the lists, but I don't want to go into all the details only to say that in every nook and cranny where people are trying to figure out how to do, you know, where people show up when they show up at school, how can that be run more democratically? So there was something about schools. So you can see it's not the traditional like, well, it is some businesses that people are trying to start, but it's not only businesses they're trying to start. It may be businesses they're already in, it may be enterprises they're already managing. Non profits folks are trying to figure out how can we run our nonprofits organizations more democratically. So I often say, and based. I've learned a lot from your show and others. Economic democracy requires two things. It requires transparency with the resources. So you look at the economy, how things are moved and how they're shared. What's the transparency? What do we know and understand about the resources and how do we make decisions democratically. And as soon as you start to bury unbury and uncover what that looks like, people need to be more. To be more democratic. They have to undo the hierarchical thinking that capitalism has given us. So you start undoing racism, undoing sexism, undoing classism right in place. You start to undo a hierarchical power structure and people start to be a lot enlivened with what's possible.

A (20:29)

Are people excited?

B (20:31)

Absolutely. We had.

A (20:32)

Because part of this will have to be carried by. By a kind of explosion of feeling about the importance of doing this right.

B (20:40)

And I'm talking some about the feeling. And some of my more academic partners might say, what about the thinking? I'll say it's the head and the heart and the hand. So all these things have to be in it together. So in the academic space, although we're a school where we have degrees in urban studies and labor studies, we have to learn a little bit more about business. If someone's going to run something democratically, they have to know how to read the spreadsheet and they have to understand the market that they're in. Becomes a political question. You know, why do we have certain things we have and how can we control the market? The capitalists have figured out how to control the market. How do we control the market? So there's that, but there's also people who were there, psychologists, sociologists, lawyers. I mean, a very broad swath of folks. There's almost, I'd like to say there's no wrong door to enter a place of practice for economic democracy.

A (21:34)

Were there any links to the other efforts in other parts of the world? You know, the Mondragon experiment in Spain, that is such an extraordinary achievement. Or the Emilia Romagna economy in Italy. How do your activities connect or do they with the rest of the world's interest in economic democracy?

B (21:54)

So everybody who's involved is trying to learn from what has already happened or is happening in other places. Jessica Gordon Nembord has written a book, Collective Courage that people Know. I think you've had her on your show. And she's a faculty member at John Jay. And her research uncovered the wealth of things that have happened out of the black community over time and understanding that collective, as she calls it, courage. But collective activism happens in the face of struggle. So what we saw in Mondragon when they started almost 60 years ago, similarly was in the face of struggle, what can we do? So what's happening when we look around the world is we see what people are doing in the face of really a lot of suffering or austerity or lack, then come together for abundance. And abundance can be forged. One of the things about Italy that we see is it's often how do we look at the public sector and public needs. So really there's a look across now that people, people are saying against privatization. We need to have a different sense of control of what's in the public, what belongs to us in the commons. Our second speaker was Sheila Foster, who's written a lot about the commons and the Co City, along with Roger Greene and Carmen Huerta Noble, who is. They're both with cuny. But Sheila was able to really bring out this whole notion of what belongs in the commons and how do we steward what is ours. And so when we look, if we look at Mondragon or Italy or Japan or anyplace else, we can also hearken back to the native people right here in the Northeast and understand that human beings figured out how to do things collectively forever around the globe and will again. It just. We have to wrestle that control so that we can. And I think some of it is the suffering that comes our way actually opens up the possibility.

A (23:48)

Yeah, I think this show, doing interviews as I've done them now for some years, reinforces what you're saying that a number of the people who have been on the show and talked about worker co ops, they've been part of talk about how the depression of the experience of being a drone in a place where you have no control, no idea of what's being planned, no idea of what's going to happen to you literally from week to week becomes unbelievably burdensome. So that when you're part of the knowledge of the decision making of the design of the enterprise, it's like a liberation. It's like a whole different part of your life going to work from what it was before.

B (24:31)

Yeah, it's. Let's be the change we want to see in the world. Right. So when people think about running something, we are battling in our heads often, I don't want to say always, but there is this battle of what it looks like to run something that hierarchical. Who's at the top telling everybody what to do? Oh, I'm at the top now I'll tell everybody what to do, which is actually not the goal if we're trying to do something that's more egalitarian. And so we have to start fighting. Also some of those internal messages that told us what control looks like, because control also looks like sitting in a circle and figuring out and giving everybody a voice.

A (25:07)

No, it's a real step forward, I think, because of exactly what you said, that if you have no new model in your head, then even if you win in a struggle, you then reproduce that which trapped you before. Because winning the control is only the first step to changing the system.

B (25:28)

And I want to say, because I think why now is different? We can hope, right? One example, but it's a very important one for us in America is Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter is putting out into the world that there is a notion that we have to listen to those who have been least listened to. The notion after Occupy, we are the 99%. Similarly, that there's something happening that's saying we versus I. And if we figure this out, we can come at it differently.

A (25:58)

Where do you see the future for economic democracy, for worker co ops, other kinds of co ops? Do you see a growing social movement? Do you see a proliferation of conferences and little organizations? How do you. And I don't want you to predict the future. Maybe I should put it differently. What do you hope will be emerging here?

B (26:19)

It's funny you say don't predict the future because I consider myself a bit of a science fiction fanatic. And I'm often seeing the future of what I would like to see.

A (26:28)

Good, then tell us what you see.

B (26:30)

What I'd like to see is that there's more circles and less hierarchy and there's more engagement wherever people are. And I think that that begins to happen again in small spaces as much as there might be structural ones. So structurally speaking, we have participatory budgeting that's now happened in New York City and growing around the globe, actually. And there's a participatory budgeting project that's taking it every place. When you say, here's a million dollars, here's $400 to a group of people, and they have to figure out how to spend it together, you are putting into practice what I refer to as the transparency with the resources and the democratic decision making. The two ingredients. Same thing happens in a family if people are transparent. So if we start to promote these Things in little places, they bubble up. But we also need policy from the top down. So we had at the conference a few policymakers who were speaking, Councilmember Brad Lander, we had Assemblyman Kim from the state. And they were speaking about what things can be pushed out in terms of policy to make a shared decision making and shared expenditures make more sense.

A (27:34)

So there even are some politicians in our system that are open to this.

B (27:38)

Well, some people are opting to get into politics to make this change.

A (27:42)

There we go.

B (27:43)

At the school we have a course, a non credit course on civil engagement, civic engagement, that helps people figure out how to run for office with these ideas.

A (27:53)

Very good.

B (27:53)

We're putting one of the things I hope to get out of the conference is, or a lot of us hope actually, is to really promote more of an academic field of study that would put a lot of this together in something we would all want to call economic democracy or cooperative enterprise management.

A (28:09)

I've always been amazed with your final point there that business schools in a country that calls itself democracy and a democratic society have a curriculum for democratic organizations of business instead of giving only courses as if there was one kind of economic organization.

B (28:25)

Well, let's make that one of our goals.

A (28:27)

Thank you very much, Rebecca. Wonderful to talk to you. And for all of you, a sign what Rebecca has been doing, her conference, her center, her project. This is part of a really revolutionary change from the bottom about our workplaces and their importance in our lives. So I'm proud that we have these conversations and I look forward to continuing them with you next week.