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  • From: Permaculture Cooperative <permaculturecoop@gmail.com>
  • To: pil-pc-oceania@lists.permacultureinternational.org, permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Fwd: Permaculture TV - Mondragon Permaculture and Mondragon Official Oral History - cooperative and town
  • Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:27:27 -0800

Permaculture TV - Mondragon Permaculture and Mondragon Official Oral
History - cooperative and town <http://permaculture.tv>

<http://fusion.google.com/add?source=atgs&feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/permaculture/EHmn>
------------------------------

- Mondragon Permaculture and Mondragon Official Oral History -
cooperative and town <#12628e860c486ad2_1>
- UK Youth says COP15 worse than useless, but fun! <#12628e860c486ad2_2>
- Global Scenarios Group - The Great Transition <#12628e860c486ad2_3>
- Hungary Permaculture Renaissance <#12628e860c486ad2_4>

Mondragon Permaculture and Mondragon Official Oral History - cooperative
and
town<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/permaculture/EHmn/~3/EZjQQ4GfpWY/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 12 Jan 2010 01:06 PM PST

While researching a *Permaculture Cooperative*
[blog<http://gaiapermaculture.com/projects/permaculturecooperative/blog/>]
[video <http://permaculture.tv/tag/mondragon/>] in the summer of 2009 we
visited *Mondragon Cooperative* [video<http://permaculture.tv/tag/mondragon/>]
[photos <http://picasaweb.google.com/permaculturecoop>]
[blog<http://gaiapermaculture.com/projects/permaculturecooperative/blog/category/mondragon/>]
and enjoyed a day-tour of the cooperative, which included a factory tour and
a lunch, history and business workshop. This video presentation includes an
oral history from the days of the founder Don José María Arizmendiarrieta as
the oldest farmers son and revolutionary journalist to the modern
cooperative. Photos of the cooperative headquarters, the historical museum
and the town of Arrasate.

Photo Credits: Kirstie Stramler and Nicholas Roberts

[image: Mondragon boardroom]

The oral history if given by Mikel Lezamiz who is the educational director
of the Mondragon Cooperatives Corporation, the world’s largest consortium of
worker-owned businesses located in the Basque Country of Northern Spain.
Lezamiz is one of the most knowledgeable sources on the history and current
operations of Mondragon’s 120 worker-owned businesses.

We went to Mondragon to research a Permaculture
Cooperative<http://gaiapermaculture.com/projects/permaculturecooperative/blog/>:
a global network of sustainability worker cooperatives. The Mondragon
Permaculture.TV
collection <http://permaculture.tv/tag/mondragon/>

*To jumpstart US job market, turn workers into owners*
*Many Americans build wealth through their home. Why not through work?*

In hard times like these, the co-op model makes sense. After all, public
confidence in corporations, banks, and the larger financial system is at low
ebb, while unemployment is at its highest level in 25 years. Homeownership,
historically a reliable way to build equity, has been rocked by
foreclosures. People are looking for other ways to do business and save
money.

Many people think of co-ops as the hippie-dippy grocery store that sells
organic goods. In fact, a 2009 study by the University of Wisconsin Center
for Cooperatives found more than 29,000 cooperatives in the US, which make
$500 billion in annual revenue, support 83,000 people, and pay $25 billion
in wages and benefits. They include national firms such as credit unions,
and local businesses such as the Alvarado Street Bakery in Petaluma, Calif.,
or the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry in Cleveland.

Source: Christian Science
Monitor<http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0111/To-jumpstart-US-job-market-turn-workers-into-owners>

*Bringing Mondragon to America*
*by Chris Lindstrom on September 09, 2009*

These core principles help provide the cooperative members with basic
guidelines for working together in a cooperative environment, to commit
themselves to personal development, teamwork, participatory management,
joint projects, social entrepreneurialism, and finally, corporate
excellence. The role of the Management Model is not just to make managers
responsible for the success of their cooperative, but how to get workers to
take on this responsibility and enthusiasm as well. It is not my impression
that they have achieved this 100%, but I think that for an industrial
community, they have perhaps set the highest standard for honoring worker
rights than any other place in the world. However, this remains only to
exist within the Basque region and has not spread in any major way to the
multitude of companies that have come under MMC ownership in the past couple
years.

The MCC claims that they are being very mindful of the environment by doing
things such as reducing their carbon emissions in all of their cooperatives.
While, in certain areas they were undoubtedly far ahead of countries such as
the US, they were not quite as active in areas of sustainable agriculture.
Agricultural production as a commercial sector simply was not as much of a
priority as residential goods or the retail of non local food products. So
it can be safely said that the MCC is by no means perfect. However, it
provides one of the most sophisticated institutional examples of a truly
egalitarian and socially just economic system.

Source: Economics of
Peace<http://www.economicsofpeace.net/blog/article-bringing-mondragon-to-america.html>

*Mondragón and the United Steelworkers/ New opportunity for the co-op and
labor movements?
**B Y E R B I N C R O W E L L *

Here in the U.S., we have sewn many of the seeds of such a cooperative
economy. For example, food co-ops have been partners in the success of
worker co-ops Equal Exchange and Alvarado Street Bakery. Food co-ops and
others have created loan funds, such as the Cooperative Fund of New England
and Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund, that support cross-sector
co-op development. We have worker co-ops that have integrated union
representation, such as Collective Copies, and examples of multi-stakeholder
co-ops, such as Weaver Street Market and FEDCO Co-op Seeds, that bring
workers and consumers together within a single enterprise. We have
international management training programs such as the St. Mary’s University
Master of Management: Co-operatives and Credit Unions, and cross-sector
organizations such as the National Cooperative Business Association. And we
have a growing awareness that “co-operation among co-ops” is not just a
principle but a key competitive advantage.

In this context, the agreement signed by Mondragón and the United
Steelworkers is much more than a piece of paper. For unions, it’s a new
opportunity to explore the human and economic potential of cooperative
ownership, rather than settling for adversarial relationships with
capitalist enterprises. For worker co-ops, this may be an opening to deepen
solidarity with organized labor through new and innovative structures. And
for the cooperative movement as a whole, we have an opportunity to reassess
our assumptions about the role of workers, the meaning of membership, and
the potential for engaging employees in nonadversarial settings
characterized by shared ownership.

Multi-stakeholder co-ops, highlighted by Mondragón’s astonishing success,
would seem to offer a promising area for exploration among co-ops in the
U.S. These structures contribute a uniquely cooperative approach to labor
relations that would strengthen our competitive advantage in an increasingly
challenging global economy.

Source: Cooperative
Grocer<http://www.cooperativegrocer.coop/articles/index.php?id=923>

*Mondragon Permaculture with Bill Mollison*

In the Mp3 audio of Bill Mollison 1983 PDC (Permaculture Designers
Certificate) in Stanley,Tasmania (Geoff Lawton attended) that are available
as DVD for sale and on the internet, Bill Mollison talks at length about the
Mondragon Cooperative (along with Commonworks etc) as an organisational
framework - a natural order of People Care and Fair Share for Earth Care
that permaculture projects ought use.

I actually found and listened to these Mp3’s just before we went to
Mondragon (such is life!). We really did Build The Road as We Travel (the
only book on Mondragon that we saw on tour). Also, re-reading the
Permaculture Designers Manual 1988 he has a couple of references again to
Mondragon in the Alternative Nation section towards the end of the book.

Source: Permaculture.coop - Notes on Mondragon & Permaculture,
GaiaPermaculture.com<http://gaiapermaculture.com/projects/permaculturecooperative/blog/2009/11/07/permaculturecoop-notes-on-mondragon-permaculture/>

<http://picasaweb.google.com/permaculturecoop/MondragonOrArrasateThePlaceInTheBasqueCountry?feat=embedwebsite>
Mondragon
or Arrasate, the place in the Basque
Country<http://picasaweb.google.com/permaculturecoop/MondragonOrArrasateThePlaceInTheBasqueCountry?feat=embedwebsite>
<http://picasaweb.google.com/permaculturecoop/MondragonCooperative?feat=embedwebsite>
Mondragon
Cooperative<http://picasaweb.google.com/permaculturecoop/MondragonCooperative?feat=embedwebsite>

UK Youth says COP15 worse than useless, but
fun!<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/permaculture/EHmn/~3/NHZy4BDq1Fo/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 12 Jan 2010 12:37 PM PST

Why can’t we hear from youth from the global grassroots South ? there where
very many articulate, informed and genuine young activists from other
countries that can speak English, other than the UK or USA ?

Global Scenarios Group - The Great
Transition<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/permaculture/EHmn/~3/DoWW011vZhs/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 12 Jan 2010 12:15 PM PST

*A Great Transition <http://www.gsg.org/gsgpub.html> to a future of enriched
lives, human solidarity, and environmental sustainability is possible. *A
lecture by Paul Raskin, President, Tellus Institute. Director, Great
Transition Initiative

[image: The Great Transition]

*Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead* (2002) is a
path-breaking book that presents a fresh vision for a sustainable world. It
describes the historic roots, current dynamics, future perils, and
alternative pathways for world development. It advances one of these paths,
Great Transition, as the preferred route, identifying strategies, agents of
change, and values for a new global agenda.

The planetary phase of history has begun, its ultimate shape profoundly
uncertain. Will global development veer toward a world of impoverished
people, cultures and nature? Or will there be a Great Transition toward a
future of enriched lives, human solidarity and environmental sustainability?
The book’s appraisal of the current global crossroads is disquieting.
Conventional development is perilous, while the reform path to a sustainable
future is problematic and uncertain.

Yet, this work shows that a fundamental change of direction is still
possible. Progressive elements of civil society, government, international
organizations, and business can forge a new sustainability paradigm, an
alternative vision of globalization centered on the quality of life, human
solidarity, environmental resilience, and an informed and engaged citizenry.

Visions of the new sustainability paradigm have been further elaborated in
the GTI Paper Series<http://www.gtinitiative.org/resources/paperseries.html>
.

Hungary Permaculture
Renaissance<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/permaculture/EHmn/~3/XUcAMuQUKnI/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 12 Jan 2010 12:07 PM PST

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