David Lidz’, CEO, Reflections on the Worker Co-op Conference
Do you want to talk about a cool way to celebrate one’s 59th birthday? How about having it on Friday the 13th?
In Chicago? At a worker cooperative conference? With five other worker owners from your groundbreaking avant guard Baltimore neighborhood rebuilding cooperative? Yes, sounds good, right? Well that’s exactly what I did.
It was a gift from the universe, really. How it went down was like this. Last spring, Paul Bindel (from Denver’s Center for Community Wealth Building) invited Camille Kerr (from Chicago’s Upside Down Consulting), Nyah Griffin (from Chicago’s Jumpstart Housing Co-op) and me to join a panel called “Community Owned and Stewarded Real Estate for Worker Cooperatives” at the September United States Federation of Worker Cooperative (USFWC) Conference in Chicago.
Of course I was delighted and honored. Of course, I accepted. I got right to work registering for the conference, which got me to studying up on USFWC, which led me to suggesting an idea to our own WaterBottle cooperative: Hey, I said, we definitely should become members of this Federation, and we definitely should send a group of us to Chicago!
So, members we became, and off to Chicago went Eva, Xiopy, Jeremy, Arda, Yessy and I!
So much coolness ensued.
First thing that I found so cool and gratifying was the Conference’s commitment to multilingualism. Translators and translation equipment everywhere and even all Spanish sessions!
Other highlights from the conference
We got to witness Poder Emma’s Alan Ramirez presenti our own Baltimore movement builder Red Emma’s with - wait for it - The USFCW 2024 Movement Builders award!
We saw dozens in the auditorium jump to their feet when Alan said: If you have ever been impacted by the work of the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Development or Red Emma’s, please stand up!
I participated in a forum led by great minds like Alison Lingane from Ownership Capital Lap and start.coop’s Greg Brodsky, which dared to ask the question: what would it take to grow to $1B in assets for co-op loan funds? I had great discussions with other thought leaders like Seed Commons co-director Kate Khatib, Co-op Cincy co-director Ellen Vera, and Cooperation Works’ Alex Stone.
I finally got to meet the amazing Miriam Gee and Declan O’Keefe of Co-everything, Jacqueline Radebaugh of Jason Wiener Law, Thomas Becket of Carolina Common Enterprise, Joey Valle, Amyas McKnight (and so many others) in person. So cool when you discover that the brilliant #solidarityeconomy faces you’ve only seen beaming through a zoom screen turn out in fact to be real-live flesh and blood human beings!
We reconvened with our North Carolina comrades, met some new ones, and tightened up plans for a fall trip to visit Poder Emma’s, La Esperanza, Quetzal, Mahetsi, Sourwood, Industrial Commons, and Carolina Common Enterprise.
Detroit was in the house! I have long aspired to explore bringing our Impact Real Estate Portfolio model to Detroit, and, in Chicago, I convened with Joey Valle, Margo Dalal from Seed Commons, and Jarrel Lowman from Handy Relocations,about doing just that!
Bumped into Charity Schmidt, who in addition to having a resume that includes currently serving as ACE Vice Chair, Shared Capital Board Member, cooperative development specialist at the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, and Madison Cooperative Development Coalition (MCDC) Coordinator. That’s just what she’s doing now! You should’ve heard what she told me about her Occupy Wall Street days! Charity introduced me to the renowned Frida Ballard Worker Organizer at Worker Justice Wisconsin, Founder of Zapata Housing Cooperative.
