D&S co-editor Chris Sturr and business manager Esther Cervantes spent the weekend in New York at the 2nd US Federation of Worker Cooperatives conference. Panel topics ranged from nuts-and-bolts—How to Make Your Co-op Loan-Ready—to big-picture—Unions and Worker Cooperatives: Is There Room for Collaboration?. And we got to meet tons of people who work in co-ops, to discuss their models of worker participation and ownership, and learn about the products and services they offer. There are small non-profit collectives like D&S, large, for-profit, employee-owned service providers like Cooperative Home Care Associates, and everything in between. And co-ops offer everything from publications and home health care to haute cuisine and web design, coffee, cheese, bike repairs, and car parts. (Check out the list of USFWC members.)
Highlights for D&S included raising awareness about the magazine, especially through our special joint issue with Grassroots Economic Organizing on cooperatives and the solidarity economy, raising funds for USFWC by auctioning off a D&Ssubscription and books, and learning how D&S helps activists, organizers, and other co-ops. During the conference's opening reception at Colors restaurant, a manager came up to us and said that two diners in the past week told her they went to Colors because they heard about it in D&S. (coverage: 2006; 2004)