Introductions -- what do we bring? What do we hope to get?

For the past 5 years, I am part of the Northeast Womyn in Permaculture, and we use the 8 Shields Model for collaboration in our group. It was developed by Jon Young from the Art of Mentoring and models cycles of nature in group dynamics. I am a member worker at our local grocery coop in Vermont, and I have been a member of another grocery coop in Atlanta, Georgia. My graduate degrees are in city and regional planning, and I studied valuation and environmental health (community-level actions to reduce human exposures to pollutants). I am a stay-at-home mom in Vermont, USA, and I dabble in many interests.

ADDING: I am part of the Vermont Solidarity Investment Club, and we do collective impact investing into worker cooperatives. I am also a lifelong Unitarian Universalist (UU), and I am part of UU groups working on racial justice, economic justice, and climate justice.

The major goals of my 2018 reading list are to read books written by womyn, young authors (under 30), black and brown authors, Muslims, indigenous people, and on topics related to nonviolence, cooperation, feminism, mysticism, herbalism. I aim to have more than half of the authors be womyn and nonconforming genders, which is not so easy.

I tend to read novels and online articles. I am joining this reading group so that I will read nonfiction that might be about cooperation, collaboration, regenerative industry, solidarity economics, effective governance, pluralism, and group dynamics. My public policy professor husband researches regional and international governance of watersheds, disaster preparedness, climate policy issues. I am curious to learn more about stakeholder analysis, food hubs, network analysis, food justice efforts, cohousing, nonviolent action, decolonization. This reading group would get me reading nonfiction.

hi @caitlinwaddick what is 'eight shields' please? i know four shields of foster & little. links to this? thanks mike

http://8shields.org/ The 8 Shields Model of organizing is described here. I use this model, but I have little training in it. I am not convinced it is a better model than other organizing models, but I like the idea of it.

I've worked a bit in the 8 Shields Model as well, mostly with kids using the 'Coyote's Guide' approach. It proved useful to me trying to get my head around how to learn to be a mentor/teacher on-the-job, but I couldn't make a case for it being better than other models either.

Hello everyone. I am new to social.coop, and looking for ways to become more involved. I am a student at the Evergreen State College and I have been studying and interning with local Cooperative Development centers and businesses. I also study Restoration Ecology, and hope to someday found a restoration worker's coop.

I began learning about platform cooperatives this year. I wanted to know more, so joining one seemed like a good idea. Coops need to adapt to the modern economy, and connect to and support social movements for justice and liberation if they want to have a chance at changing the world. I want to help the cooperative movement find ways to aggressively compete against the emerging tech monopolies and their neo-feudal policies of wealth accumulation.

I have founded several grassroots political projects and continue to write and organize every day. For political-economic theory, I am a big fan of Kali Akuno, Michel Bauwens and Murray Bookchin.

Check out outgrowingcapitalism.wordpress.com and demandutopia.net to see some of my work.

Welcome!

Welcome Reed! You are in the right place at social.coop, good to have you on board. I'm also very inspired by the work of Kali Akuno, Michel Bauwens and Murray Bookchin.

You might like to also post your introduction in the main introductions thread: https://www.loomio.org/d/4gjvlwLu/welcome-please-introduce-yourself

Expanding my Loomio profile a little . . Am English, baby-boomer, 'retired' (as if!), live in Sussex.

70s Radical Science Journal, Workers Self-management in Science conference, Chemco News/ICI shop stewards' research coop. Follower of Lucas Aerospace Shop Stewards' Combine alternative plan. Rank-&-file organising.

80s Living Thinkwork: 'cultural materialist' politics of knowledge production, working life & emotional life. Science or society perspective of radical-science movement. Greater London Council: strategies for workers’ counter-knowledge, women and IT, participatory development of IT based work infrastructures, computers beginning to be everywhere - first word processor! Experimenting in 'the Partner State'.

90s: participatory configuring of workplace IT, work practice R&D, knowledge intensive services in national systems of innovation, ethnographic & ethnomethodological R&D strategies; globalising of radical practice. Business school self-management/R&D context.

Direct making of society in ordinary life is central, theorising essential ('organic intellectual' capability), technologies pervasive (digital, profoundly so), platforms helpful, commons fundamental (and 'hot' at this time for deep reasons), facilitative practice crucial, emotions and emotional skill pivotal, the State unavoidable but a pain in the arse and a problem. Publications on Lulu.com https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=1295273

Thanks Caitlin / Hard to tell from the website how well-founded the approach is - the site gives very little away regarding its foundations and, like many personal development organisations, seems to rest on the inspiration of its core teachers. Suck it and see?!

Hello folks,

My partner and I have been talking about our lifestyle and the structures of the community around us and social issues of the world. All a bit overwhelming, but we've been trying to find what actions we can take day to day to proactively make improvements. I read Humanizing the Economy and Owning our Future, both of which helped fill out thoughts and questions we were having.

I've been slowly moving my online activities to either self hosted or paid for and privacy conscious businesses. I haven't figured out Mastodon at all yet, but am probably more interested in how social.coop is being run than the service itself!

I work as an electronics engineer and am an officer for the GNU Radio project. One of my responsibilities there is to maintain and grow the community. We have a pretty good and positive community, but there's certainly lots of potential to be better. I'm hoping to apply the lessons learned through these reading discussions and just being a member.