Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin began working on economic development projects with indigenous Guatemalan communities in 1988. He served as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program’s Bureau for Latin America and as an advisor to the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. He was a founding member of the Fair-Trade Federation in 1994. From 1995 to 1998, and led the creation, strategic positioning, and launch of Peace Coffee, a Minnesota-based fair-trade coffee company. He went on to work with woodland owners in the Midwest and internationally supporting the organization of several Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certified operations.Regi was named one of the Twin Cities International Citizens of the Year in 1996. In 2008 he received both the Northfield area and the District's Service to Mankind Award. He has served community boards including the Resource Center of the Americas, North Country Development Fund (currently Shared Capital Cooperative), the Northfield Area Foundation and the Northfield Area YMCA. He is currently a member of the Rotary Club of Northfield, a board member with the Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa, owner-founder of Regeneration Farms LLC, and Founder and President of the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance. Regi was awarded a prestigious lifetime Ashoka Fellowship in 2018 for his work in Regenerative Poultry Systems.Regi’s has pioneered innovations in a Regenerative Poultry System that is at the center of a multitude of national and international initiatives. The system is uniquely aligned with the conditions of small farms and marginalized communities and is designed for large-scale and global impact. At the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance, Regi's current work covers communities in the US (Northfield, MN, Omaha, Mead and Winnebago NE, Pine Ridge SD), Hazelton British Columbia, Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. During the 2020 MOSES conference, Regi received one of the first "Changemaker" awards for innovation and lasting impact.A native Guatemalan, Regi received his agronomy degree from the Escuela Nacional Central de Agricultura studied at the Universidad de San Carlos in Guatemala then graduated from Augsburg University in Minneapolis with a major in international business administration and a minor in communications. Regi authored “In the Shadow of Green Man”, My Journey from Poverty and Hunger to Food Security and Hope. It can be ordered from acresusa.org, Amazon and numerous other booksellers.

Karen Washington has been a resident of The Bronx for over 26 years, although in 2015 she began living part time in Orange County, NY near the farm. Since 1985 Karen has been a community activist, striving to make New York City a better place to live. As a community gardener and board member of the New York Botanical Gardens, Karen worked with Bronx neighborhoods to turn empty lots into community gardens. As an advocate, she stood up and spoken out for garden protection and preservation. As a member of the La Familia Verde Community Garden Coalition, she helped launched a City Farms Market, bringing garden fresh vegetables to her neighbors. She also co-founded Black Urban Growers (BUGS), an organization of volunteers committed to building networks and community support for growers in both urban and rural settings. In 2012 Ebony magazine voted her one of their 100 most influential African Americans in the country, and in 2014 she was awarded with the James Beard Leadership Award. Karen was a Physical Therapist for over 30 years, and she "retired" in April 2014 to start Rise & Root Farm. Editor’s note: we recorded this episode in December, hence some of the current event references are outdated, but we chose not to edit it to retain the full impact of Karen’s words. Enjoy.

Rishi Kumar is a farmer, educator and consultant based in Los Angeles working in the field of regeneration. Rishi learned to farm at Dr. Vandana Shiva’s farm in India. He is an articulate and outspoken advocate for diversity and inclusion in the good food movement. Please follow Rishi on Instagram, and check out his awesome YouTube channel as well as his writings.

From https://www.foodandpower.net/our-team: Claire Kelloway is a senior reporter and researcher with the Open Markets Institute. She is the primary writer for Food & Power, a first-of-its-kind website, providing original reporting and resources on monopoly power and economic concentration in the food system. Her writing on food and agriculture has appeared in the American Prospect, ProPublica, Civil Eats, the Washington Monthly, and more.

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“The Line 3 Pipeline goes through the heart of our wild rice territory and wild rice is our most sacred food. This battle is about the wild rice. It is our responsibility to protect the wild rice.”

From http://www.honorearth.org/speaking_engagements : Winona LaDuke is an internationally renowned activist working on issues of sustainable development renewable energy and food systems. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and is a two time vice presidential candidate

Order her new book at https://www.winonaladuke.com .

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This episode covers different models of worker ownership and cooperative enterprises, with an eye towards creating a solidarity economy that meets the needs of all.

Dedicated to MF DOOM and Riley Gale, whose music continues to inspire.

Sources for all information are available upon request. Major sources:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/09/millennials-own-less-than-5percent-of-all-us-wealth.html

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2020/02/03/seeking-a-more-worker-friendly-economy-some-states-push-employee-ownership

https://project-equity.org/learn-about-employee-ownership-options/

https://www.nceo.org/what-is-employee-ownership

https://www.ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity

https://institute.coop/what-worker-cooperative

https://www.usworker.coop/what-is-a-worker-cooperative/

https://geo.coop/blog/door-door-interview-jessica-gordon-nembhard

https://www.ownershipeconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/employee_ownership_and_economic_wellbeing_2017.pdf

https://institute.app.box.com/s/28pe2jpxvowxjvqralw6e778k5npavx9

https://institute.coop/examples-worker-cooperatives

https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/role-worker-ownership-raising-incomes

https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/role-worker-ownership-raising-incomes

https://www.mutualinterest.coop/2020/12/how-socialists-created-a-co-operative-commonwealth-in-the-american-midwest

https://geo.coop/articles/esteban-kelly-usfwc

https://www.mutualinterest.coop/2021/01/the-future-of-tech-will-be-an-old-model-the-co-op

https://platform.coop

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0896920519870577?journalCode=crsb

https://geo.coop/articles/how-platform-co-ops-transform-gig-economy

https://www.fiftybyfifty.org/2019/12/melissa-hoover-employee-ownership-often-helps-to-shape-and-build-hot-new-markets-then-what/

https://www.fiftybyfifty.org/2020/01/hazel-corcoran-what-if-we-had-an-antidote-to-worker-co-ops-selling-out/

https://www.fiftybyfifty.org/2020/01/hazel-corcoran-what-if-we-had-an-antidote-to-worker-co-ops-selling-out/

https://www.fiftybyfifty.org/2020/01/christopher-mackin-new-belgium-brewing-and-the-future-of-american-esops/

https://www.fiftybyfifty.org/2019/12/christopher-michael-could-the-employee-ownership-trust-better-sustain-perpetual-employee-ownership/

https://www.fiftybyfifty.org/2019/12/erbin-crowell-and-sonja-novkovic-esops-or-co-ops-depends-on-the-long-term-goal/

https://www.fiftybyfifty.org/2019/12/camille-kerr-new-belgium-point-is-systems-change/

https://u.osu.edu/coopmastery/history/mondragon/

https://www.shareable.net/mondragon-corporation-a-manufacturer-of-equality/

https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/about-us/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/business/cooperatives-basque-spain-economy.html?referringSource=articleShare

https://medium.com/fifty-by-fifty/mondragon-through-a-critical-lens-b29de8c6049

https://icic.org/cooperatives/works-leveraging-union-support-business-growth-mondragon-usa-model/

https://coopcincy.org/history

http://unioncoops.org

https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/multi-stakeholder-cooperative

https://www.alternativeownershipadvisors.com/blog/legislation

https://neweconomy.net/solidarity-economy/

https://ussen.org

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2021 will be the year that we re-center working people in the food system. History shows that organized efforts and legally-binding contracts result in safer workplaces and better livelihoods for all supply chain workers, particularly women and people of color.

Andres Bernal, an advisor to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, joins us for a wide ranging discussion on worker cooperatives, Modern Monetary Theory, myth busting the Federal deficit, the need for a Jobs Guarantee and how to fund a Green New Deal.

From https://www.andres-bernal.com/about : Andrés Bernal is a Lecturer of Urban Studies at CUNY Queens College and Doctoral student at The New School For Public Engagement, Division of Policy Management and Environment. His research focuses on the Green New Deal as a site of political communication and policy analysis. Andrés is a leading voice and proponent associated with the heterodox school of economic thought known as Modern Monetary Theory. He is a Research Fellow at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperityand a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Missouri Kansas City Department of Economics. In the Summer of 2017, Andrés began supporting the Congressional campaign of former colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a policy advisor and organizer. His work facilitated the incorporation of the Federal Jobs Guarantee policy onto the official campaign platform.

This episode details the vast inequality in the USA and the inequities in our food industry, the levels of retail consolidation and profiteering, and the impacts on supply chain workers.

Sources for all information are available upon request.

Please let us know what you think of this episode’s information, format and areas of focus!

“If you have a lot of purchasing power, you can drive prices down. At the same time, if you have a lot of purchasing power, you can demand more humane conditions, you can demand compliance with fundamental human rights in your suppliers’ operations, you can improve the lives of millions of people… if you decide to wield that same volume purchasing power for good as opposed to evil.”

“The reasons all these mechanisms work are the market consequences in these agreements with the buyers. If a grower is found out of compliance, the buyer has to suspend purchases. All of this comes together to form an actual enforcement of the rights in the Fair Food Code of Conduct. That’s the power of the purchase order.”

“Whatever they call social responsibility in the food industry has been a joke, a fraud… it is absolutely empty and soulless and unreal. It is everything that has not worked and has been done for public relations purposes for the corporations, not the workers. That all became clear when Covid came down and all these outbreaks came to the press, did any of the Buyers of all that meat step up and say that we can’t allow this to keep happening? Not one.”