Dear Cooperative Mainers,
I'm very sorry but I will be out of town all day Sat. Apr. 27, it's the only
day my family can gather in Portland from three stastes for a multiple
celebration.
I am especially sad to miss CM's annual meeting. Those who attend will no
doubt find it as much fun and iinformative as I have always found it.
My heartfelt thanks to those of you who have prioritized Cooperative Maine
this year; I hope I will have more energy to join you in 2013.
Meanwhile I am doing some serious co-op development here at home, all of it
linked to the local food scene (as in, Maine Feeds Maine) and looking
forward to co-offering a Marketing the Co-op Difference workshop at the US
Fed of Worker Co-ops conference in Philly in July, with Rodney North,
longtime marketing guru at Equal Exchange. Ayone on this list planning to
attend? Perhaps we could carpool.
It was gratifying to hear that at the teach-in at UMO last weekend in the
session on alternative economies, a member of Greystone Co-op mobile home
park here in my town of Veazie stood up and gave an impassioned and very
articulate plea for cooperative economics, saying "If we can do it, anyone
can do it." (sidebar: This is the person I went to five or six years ago to
ask if she would help me organize a ROC and she said it was hopeless; once
again we learn Cesar Chavez' simple advice: Never Give Up. And also maybe we
are having a greater effect than we realize...)
In cooperation,
Jane Livingston