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Evergreen Cooperatives: The Cleveland Model

Gar Alperovitz is a historian, political economist, activist, and writer. He has written many books, including The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, and, more recently, What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution. He grew up in Racine, Wisconsin, and has contributed to numerous efforts at economic reconstruction, including in Youngstown and Cleveland, Ohio. All of which he discussed with n+1.

n+1: What is the Cleveland Model?


GA: The idea is to set up an institution, not a corporation, but something else, within a geographic community. And then on that structure you build worker-owned and multi-stakeholder firms that cannot be sold off, which is critical. This means that any growth that happens is distributed more equally because everybody collectively and individually owns a piece of the asset whose value is appreciating, whose revenue is growing.

Then you’ve got these anchor institutions I was talking about earlier: hospitals and universities—Case Western, Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals. Medicare, Medicaid, education efforts—lots of public money in the area: Those three Cleveland institutions alone purchase $3 billion in goods and services a year. That’s leaving aside salaries and construction—just what they buy. And, until now, none of it from that area. So the model directs some of that purchasing power to the multi-stakeholder firms and co-ops.

Now, these are not your traditional small-scale co-ops. The model draws heavily on the experience of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in the Basque Country of Spain, the world’s most successful large-scale cooperative effort, which now employs around eighty thousand workers in more than 250 high-tech, industrial, service, construction, financial, and other largely cooperatively owned businesses.

In Cleveland now, there are three such firms. The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry [ECL] is the flagship, and it capitalizes on the expanding demand for laundry services from the health-care sector, which is huge, something like 18 percent of the national GDP and growing. After a six-month initial “probationary” period, employees begin to buy into the co-op through payroll deductions of fifty cents an hour over three years (for a total of $3,000). Employee-owners build an equity stake in the business over time—a potentially substantial amount of money in a tough neighborhood. Also, it’s totally green, with the smallest carbon footprint of any industrial-scale laundry in northeast Ohio. Most industrial-scale laundries use four to five gallons of water per pound of laundry; ECL uses eight-tenths of a gallon to do the same job.

The second employee-owned enterprise is Evergreen Energy Solutions, which does large-scale solar panel installations on the roofs of the city’s largest nonprofit health, education, and municipal buildings—again, those anchor institutions I was talking about.

The third enterprise is Green City Growers, which operates a year-round hydroponic food production greenhouse in the midst of the Glendale neighborhood in east Cleveland. The 230,000-square-foot greenhouse—larger than the average Walmart superstore—will be producing more than three million heads of fresh lettuce and nearly half a million pounds of (highly profitable) basil and other herbs a year.

Does Cleveland Know the Secret to Building Wealth Without Gentrification? – Next City.

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07/02/2015
DW
civic engagement, cooperatives, economic development issues, environmental issues, farmers/farming information, public health, regional food
Cleveland Model, cooperatives, Evergreen Cooperatives

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Darlene Wolnik-Helping Public Markets Grow

Recent work (2011-2019) while working as an Independent Researcher and Analyst (as of November 2019, took on role as FMC’s Training and Technical Assistance Director)

•AMS TA project: Mentor for national technical assistance project for current FMLFPP grantees led by the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development at Penn State University.
•Brooklyn NYC: Assisted BDPHO with developing farmers market technical assistance programs.
•Report on BDPHO’s 5-year market capacity project.
•Farmers Market Coalition Senior Research Associate for Farmers Market Metrics project creation (2015-)

• Farmers Market Coalition’s Senior Advisor, focusing on technical assistance for markets and networks (2015-)
•Illinois: Worked with ILFMA on evaluation plan for integration and upgrade of statewide fms and DTC information on integrated platforms.
•Louisiana: Assisted students at Southeastern University in Hammond with food system research and farmers market strategy.
•Louisiana: Assisted ReFresh Market and Garden with evaluation plan (2017)
•Louisiana: Working with Ruston Farmers Market on outreach strategy for new location

• Helping to craft resources and training for 2019 Fresh Central Certified Institute for Central Louisiana markets and producers with CLEDA.

•Louisiana: Organized first statewide farmers market conference for LSU Ag Center archives found at: lafarmersmarkets dot blogspot dot com

•Maine: Researched farmers market job descriptions found at www.helpingpublicmarketsgrow.com

• Mississippi: Providing research and analysis for City of Hernando MS 3-year project to grow flagship market

•Mississippi: Assisted Gulf Coast markets with FMPP project on analyzing access to markets for Gulfport resident and farmers. 2014 Local Food Awareness Report for Gulfport MS, found at www.helpingpublicmarketsgrow.com

•Vermont: Providing analysis and resource development for NOFA-VT’s annual data on farmers markets.
•Vermont: Researched and wrote report on SNAP, FMNP technology and policy answers for VT farmers markets in collaboration with NOFA-VT and VAAFM, 2013 Vermont Market Currency Feasibility Report found at www.helpingpublicmarketsgrow.com
•Vermont: Working with Vermont Law School on legal resources for farmers and market organizations.

•Vermont: Assisting with 3 year project to build capacity for direct marketing farmers and outlets through DIY data collection and use.

Wallace Center: Moderator of FSLN, advisory to the 2020 NGFN Conference to be held in New Orleans in March of 2020

•Why Hunger: Created online toolkit for grassroots communities.

Feel free to contact me at my name at gmail dot com if I might be able to help your market or business.
Thanks
Dar Wolnik

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