reportback on today and other ideas

[Courtney Burke]

Hi everyone,

A few of us met before the NYC-NoWC meeting (new york network of worker cooperatives), to go over what we put together and talk about the business plan. 

I should have time to put what I found on the wiki sometime this weekend, sorry for the delay, I have a cold.

The meeting at Colors was cool, they started by basically naming every co-op resource in the city, there is a microcredit organization, and a network of green cooperatives, and a whole lot of other stuff.  The rest of the meeting was a presentation by a guy who is starting a landscaping cooperative, but he seems to be just a little farther along than we are, and also came out of Occupy.  The thing that stuck with me was that there is a recommended list of steps to forming cooperative businesses. It was something like this:

1. have regular meetings
2. establish the organizational structure
3. define group membership
4. write a business plan
5. raise money

More interestingly, perhaps, was a guy I spoke with before the GA, who has organized "underground" and tax-resistant worker cooperatives in Vermont. I got his email address, and he gave me his anarchist lawyer's phone number.  At first I felt really like doing stuff that was illegal is a recipe for disaster, but after speaking with him I felt like maybe it is a good place to start. For example, in Vermont, you can sell $10,000 worth of baked goods without it being considered a business enterprise, so no taxes, doesn't have to be above board,  you really can't get in trouble for it. Same with liquor.

We also talked today about visiting places that we might want to learn from and having our meetings there.  Would you guys be up for doing something like this on Monday?

best

Courtney