I’m thrilled to tell you about Ownership Matters. We’re a newsletter that aims to be your biweekly nuts-and-bolts guide to the emerging movement toward building inclusive equity and economic democracy.
Ownership is the gravitational field that holds our economy in its orbit, locking us all into behaviors that lead to financial excess and ecological overshoot.
Marjorie Kelly, Owning Our Future
The vision for this new project is to help folks track the growth of democratic ownership models (co-ops, employee ownership, steward ownership) and do so in a way that helps them practically see how they can invest, find organizations and resources that help them — and do so in a way with accountability to movement leaders.
It’s a tall order, but I’m hopeful.
Since Elizabeth Garlow and I co-facilitated the Investing in Livable Futures Workshop in March 2021, the participants have committed more than $7 million to Black-led and employee owned enterprises.
We can do this.
Each issue of Ownership Matters contains original content (interviews with founders, profiles of funders, opinion pieces, case studies), plus curated links to relevant news, events, and resources.
https://newsletter.ownershipmatters.net/archive/are-you-seeing-what-were-seeing/
Part of what gives me hope is the groundswell of young people that I know are being turned on to these questions — and the shoulders we collectively stand on with folks like Fr. Arizmendi and the 100,000+ worker-owner cooperative: Mondragon that he founded.
Some examples of Fr. Arizmendi’s thought shared in our first issue of Ownership Matters:
All economic, political, and social problems can ultimately be reduced to the human problem.
We aspire to economic development not as an end, but a means.
The cooperative ideal is to make people more human.
Before we dream of making leaders, we have to think about making people. Before teaching them public relations and manners, we have to get them used to forgetting about themselves.
Fr. Arizmendi, founder, Mondragon
On April 22, Solidarity Hall held a global book launch and reading of this new English translation of Fr. Arizmendi’s Reflections (co-sponsored by Zebras Unite). The Crowdcast event recording is here.
If you’d like to join attendees of that event in receiving a pre-print-edition PDF of the new book, simply send a request to info@solidarityhall.org.
All of that and more was included in the first issue of Ownership Matters: Are you seeing what we’re seeing?
I hope you’ll share your email and follow along.
https://newsletter.ownershipmatters.net/subscribe/
