MCDC News

Goodman Community Center, 149 Waubesa Street, Madison, WI 53704 October 11, 2019, 6:00-8:30 pm, “You can’t have meaningful political democracy without functioning economic democracy.” – Noam Chomsky Sponsored by: Alliance for Economic Democracy, Economic Democracy Advocates Foundation, Lift Economy, Northside Planning Council, Prout USA Panelists: James Quilligan, international policy advisor and Managing Director of Economic… Read More »MCDC and MadWorC will participate in a panel on economic democracy

What is the Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy? Well, glad you asked. The ECWD, founded in 2002, is a conference that builds awareness of worker-owned businesses while strengthening existing worker co-ops. For 17 years, the ECWD has forged relationships between democratically-owned businesses, labor institutions, and cooperative resource organizations to expand workplace democracy. The ECWD has… Read More »The Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy is now taking registrations!

As some of you may recall, MCDC has grants available for local non-profits, which we like to call “community-based organizations,” or CBOs, for short. We’ve already given out two over the last year. As of now, the most recent version of the guidelines to apply for the grant is up on our website. By far,… Read More »We’ve updated our CBO grant application guidelines

Here’s something concrete you can do to help Soaring Independent Co-op. They are doing a market survey to better understand their potential clientele. It’ll only take you a few minutes, and it would mean a lot to them. Just click the link and answer a few brief questions. Thanks! https://bit.ly/2y9KBF0

We were very pleased to be invited on Madison’s own WORT twice in the same week! I (Steve) was on the 8:00 Buzz on Monday along with Martin Alvarado, being interviewed by Brian Standing, and again on Wednesday, interviewed by Jan Miyasaki. To listen, visit the archives and look for July 8 and 10.   A… Read More »MCDC is on the air!

Both this week’s co-op ideas are very local, but the similarity ends there. The first, as the picture above has probably already revealed, is hops. Hops are one of the primary ingredients in beer, and (as I happen to know from personal experience) are not particularly difficult to grow. There’s a bit more to growing… Read More »Two ideas — one quite specific, the other, not so much

Friday is the longest day of the year. Of course, if the rain continues, it might be hard to tell. It might also be hard to tell what’s happening at MCDC, because we don’t talk a lot about what’s happening behind the scenes. Without delving too far into the details, I can say that we’re… Read More »Solstice (almost)

Worker Cooperatives 101: Equitable Economic Development Join us at the Goodman South Madison Library – 2222 S Park St.Tuesday, June 18 at 12-1:30 pm Light lunch will be provided. RSVP helpful but not necessary. Worker Cooperatives 101 is a program of the Madison Cooperative Development Coalition and Madison Public Library to promote awareness for equitable economic… Read More »Co-ops 101 is now at the South Madison Library

ACE–IRECUS–CASC conference 2019 Longueuil, Quebec (a suburb of Montreal) I consider this conference a big success. Every session was good, and a number were outstanding. Two of them were so useful that I wrote them up in detail: converting businesses to worker co-ops and addressing power dynamics. Additionally, we made many new contacts and renewed… Read More »Montreal

If you noticed that you didn’t get a newsletter from MCDC last week, you’re very perceptive! And there’s a good reason for it. We were at the conference of the Association of Cooperative Educators in Montreal for the entire week. It was outstanding, and we plan to give you a report on it soon. It’s… Read More »Post-Montreal