Here's a clip of the documentary

http://www.foodforchangemovie.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=arti...

Co-ops are experiencing a resurgence like the one that took place during the Great Depression (see clip from movie). To succeed, we would be wise to learn the lessons of the past while we work to create communities that bring out the best in all of us.

In the days after September 11, 2001, a panic-ridden city rounded up the usual suspects. Those not here legally were looked at with suspicion. A pizza delivery guy in my neighborhood who had come from Egypt and lived here for two decades was arrested, taken away from his family to be questioned. Undocumented immigrants were detained, many without access to lawyers or information about the charges against them. Although the legal principal of habeas corpus has been around since the Magna Carta of 1215, the U.S. government saw fit to do away with it after 9/11.

With Labor Day just a few weeks away and badly in need of an event to celebrate, an historic agreement was signed on August 24. Written in legalese, the statement commits Sodexo, a gigantic global food service company employing some 500,000 workers to partner with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a tiny organization of some 4000 members, to respond to "consumer demand for sustainable food" and to join forces to "improve farm worker wages and working conditions" in the pivotal tomato fields of Immokalee, Florida.

This agreement binds Sodexo in the U.S.

Someone looking at for the first time at the agricultural system in the US, in particular the crops dependent on hand-harvesting such as most fruit and vegetable production, would see a system that is starkly racially divided - with the overwhelming majority of owner-operators being white and the overwhelming majority of field workers being people of color. 99% of the nation's migrant farmworkers belong to racial and ethnic minorities, the vast majority immigrants - with those from Mexico representing the largest share.

After a dozen years in community-based participatory development, the Agricultural Justice Project is launching its Food Justice certification program nation-wide. Coinciding with this launch is the publication of the revised AJP standards that set the domestic fair trade and fair labor bar for farms, handlers/processors, food retailers and restaurants (see www.agriculturaljusticeproject.org).

Leonor Hurtado

As I arrived for my appointment at Kaiser Medical Center in Oakland, under grey skies, I noticed farmers busily organizing their stands with mouthwatering fruit and vegetables out front. I was eager to return after my appointment.

August 31, 2010
United Food and Commercial Workers Union

Executive Summary

The Cuban government has consciously incorporated worker cooperatives into its revolutionary project. This is not a discussion about the Cuban politics, as cooperativism can't be confined by socialism. Rather, Cuba shows us very simply that if a government decides to support the development of worker-led coops, they can thrive. 

The Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives is one of the most successful cooperative franchises in the Bay Area. Drawing its name from the last name of the founder of the famous Mondragón Cooperative in Basque country, Arizmendi has become an institution of good food and good jobs.