Other Avenues Are Possible offers a vivid account of the dramatic rise and fall of the San Francisco People’s Food System of the 1970s. Weaving new interviews, historical research, and the author’s personal story as a longstanding co-op member, the book captures the excitement of a growing radical social movement along with the struggles, heartbreaking defeats, and eventual resurgence of today’s thriving network of Bay Area cooperatives, the greatest concentration of co-ops anywhere in the country. Integral to the early natural foods movement, with a radical vision of “Food for People, Not for Profit,” the People’s Food System challenged agribusiness and supermarkets, and quickly grew into a powerful local network with nationwide influence before flaming out, often in dramatic fashion. Other Avenues Are Possible documents how food co-ops sprouted from grassroots organizations with a growing political awareness of global environmental dilapidation and unequal distribution of healthy foods to proactively serve their local communities. The book explores both the surviving businesses and a new network of support organizations that is currently expanding.

In the age of unemployment, downsizing, and outsourcing, where can a poor soul find a job? Well, maybe it's time we create our own. Self-employment is an option and can seem freeing, but it's hard to do everything yourself and find time for a non-work life. The worker coop is an alternative to the isolation of self-employment and the exploitation of traditional jobs. (Mira Luna) Coop-made-in-USA is a pamphlet that covers the cooperative movement in the United States with examples of co-op realities and explanation of organizational and governance methods used in various co-ops.

This energizing, entertaining, yet practical guide will launch you into an entrepreneurial career that will immediately make your life – as well as those around you better. Most people are not able to make the practical connection from observing their community and the world around them to what a great business idea looks like. They need a blueprint...not only an idea of what kind of business to start, but tips and techniques on how to make it work. The Biblenomics™ approach and philosophy with principles that are guaranteed to work will not only put great opportunities within your grasp, but you’ll see that making money is easy and there is no mystery or secret to achieving success. In fact, the only thing that can kill your dreams is you. With profiles in creativity, and the mission of empowering people with a dream and the drive to succeed, the author will inspire you with his knowledge of: Why be an entrepreneur Stories of entrepreneurs who pioneered a niche or a great idea 101 Business that require no money or education How to get started Marketing advice Tips and techniques for building your business Suggestions for horizontal growth Suggestions for vertical growth Variations How to write a mini-business plan The foundation stones upon which every good business is built How to differentiate yourself from similar businesses The opportunity to be an entrepreneur is for everyone, everywhere. We all long for the dignity of financial independence. Let this book empower, equip and teach you to build your own dream.

Seeking to reclaim a history that has remained largely ignored by most historians, this dramatic and stirring account examines each of the definitive American cooperative movements for social change—farmer, union, consumer, and communalist—that have been all but erased from collective memory. Focusing far beyond one particular era, organization, leader, or form of cooperation, For All the People documents the multigenerational struggle of the American working people for social justice. While the economic system was in its formative years, generation after generation of American working people challenged it by organizing visionary social movements aimed at liberating themselves from what they called wage slavery. Workers substituted a system based on cooperative work and constructed parallel institutions that would supersede the institutions of the wage system. With an expansive sweep and breathtaking detail, this scholarly yet eminently readable chronicle follows the American worker from the colonial workshop to the modern mass-assembly line, from the family farm to the corporate hierarchy, ultimately painting a vivid panorama of those who built the United States and those who will shape its future. John Curl, with over forty years of experience as both an active member and scholar of cooperatives, masterfully melds theory, practice, knowledge, and analysis, to present the definitive history from below of cooperative America. This second edition contains a new introduction by Ishmael Reed; a new author’s preface discussing cooperatives in the Great Recession of 2008 and their future in the 21st century; and a new chapter on the role co-ops played in the Food Revolution of the 1970s.