Cooperation – Page 4 – Rev. Scott Wells

August 28, 2007

Two cheers for credit union

The New York Times reports today (“Nonprofit Payday Loans? Yes, to Mixed Reviews” by John Leland) about a program between Goodwill and a credit union (a financial cooperative, thus the categorization) in Appleton, Wisconsin to help people jump out of a payday loan debt death spiral. The program — which does move those least able to repay into counseling and an interest-free loan — has some problems.

I wrote about the role credit unions could play in short-circuiting predatory lending before, and given the history of the cooperative movement, I would think it would have a strong role in this fight.

The Wisconsin program isn’t without criticism; despite the need, the interest rate is still shockingly high: the equivalent of 252% compared to 572% with the storefronts. I can’t help but think there should be an eighth-century prophet saying something about it, except that the sad thing is that (for some) 252% really is an improvement.

So two cheers for the credit union and Goodwill, and perhaps half a prayer to be shared for those drowning in debt.

May 9, 2007

Things to consider when you're shopping ethically

When I go shopping — whether its for lentils or a vacation — a string of self-reflective questions run through my mind. (Was I Quaker in a past life? I doubt my Puritan ancestors would have approved. The Baptist ones might have coped.)

Do I need this? can I put off buying this?
Do I even really want it? or could the same money provide something I want more?
Does this item or store appeal to my vanity?
Was someone harmed in making this item or service? A community? A valued institution? an animal? Is its manufacture toxic?
Can I choose something that was grown or made close to home? Took less energy to produce or transport?

I could go on, but these are probably the biggest concerns. From these questions, I try to buy US or Canadian made and union and cooperative made goods because our laws and location cover more of these than not; it isn’t about jingoism or nativism.
That’s not to say I start from scratch thinking every time. After a while, you know yourself well enough to shorthand the process. Most people I know would never (knowingly) buy dog fur clothing, so it’s not a question of thinking which dog fur clothing manufacturer treats its workers the best, improves the local economy or has the greenest factory: you just avoid it, and perhaps give the retailer an earful for good measure. And, in time, you find reliable vendors and products. (I want to share these, and I’ll ask you to share your favorites.)

But remember, the idea’s not to get paralyzed negotiating between options to find the one that’s infinitesimally better than another. We should begin to reshape our lives in all ways, understanding that what we buy and how we buy or don’t buy is a reflection of our character and grows out of our vocation as faithful people.

We’ve seen the alternative — I want it, I have to have it at all costs — corrupt individuals and societies. Indeed, societies have died under less strain.

April 23, 2007

I love my "clean" union-made, USA-made blue jeans

Did you see the recent episode of Independent Lens entitled “China Blue” on PBS? It is the undercover story of real Chinese garment workers who make blue jeans for the American and other markets. The workers make pennies to make our clothing while their bosses, the distributors and the marketers grow rich. Paid $100 for designer jeans? Chances are that all the line workers combined made less than a dollar. And the sorry state is that nearly all clothing bought in the US today has a similar backstory.

But there are alternatives: union-made clothing from the United States and other countries where workers have the right to organize. Better yet, workers can own their business and share in the decisions and profits. Some of these union goods are expensive — but cost is no guarantee that the workers are well-treated: some sweatshop goods are quite costly. And some union and worker-cooperative goods are quite reasonable.

Over the next few months I’ll feature these as I replace parts of my well-warn wardrobe.

Right now, I’m wearing my US-made Union Line jeans. I wrote about them about a year ago and I love them. The khakis which I gave grudging approval then are now my favorites in part because the cloth is so robust. They support a perma-crease that makes them look fresher longer, and thus need washing less often (which in turn makes them last longer.) A pair of old Dockers feel like a diaper by contrast.

Union House still has the jeans, but so does Union Jean Company, No Sweat, Justice Clothing, and The Union Shop, so you can comparison shop or buy from the store that has other things you want.

March 15, 2007

Beautiful

I’m waiting with baited breath for The Rev. Victoria Weinstein’s segment on Nightline. . . . (I knew her when, sniff)

Rejoice with her at her Beauty Tips for Ministers blog.

The other segments: about Colors, the worker-owned cooperative restaurant created by the surviving members of the Windows on the World restaurant and GodMan, the real-guy evangelical ministry that makes some good points about the institutional church but gives me a big case of the creeps. Muscular Christianity all over again. Culture trumping — grappling, conquering? — the Gospel, I’d guess.

June 23, 2006

Credit unions in place of payday lenders

A few General Assemblies ago, a theme speaker in the plenary hall — perhaps the Ware Lecturer; I really forget who — evoked images of how we know a neighborhood is in economic peril. Liquor stores but no grocery stores came up. But nothing evoke hard choices and poverty like check-cashing shops and payday lenders: the crystal meth of the financial world.

Since the interstate exportation of debt makes state ursury laws a dead letter, check cashing gives customers with few choices loans at rates that would make loan sharks blush. Since a legal remedy is unlikely, and since good ideas can overcome bad ones, I have to ask: what’s the role of cooperation here?

It isn’t like poor people have no economic power; quite the contrary. I’ve wondered where the credit unions are in the middle of this. Turns out at least one is paying attention.

May 6, 2006

Union-made candles for church, too

Two of the larger suppliers of candles and lamp oil for churches have unionized workforces.

Emkay Candles (Muench-Kreuzer Candle Co.)
Cathedral Candles

Since I also like sole proprietorships and cooperatives, add them in the comments if you know of some, particularly if they make candles in pure beeswax or soywax. Refurbishers of church furnishings, too.

Later. I guess there’s no more practical example of a cooperative enterprise than a monastic business, and all (or practically all) Orthodox monasteries earn their own keep. Many make pure beeswax candles, and most sell them by weight. $10 a pound seems to be a fair price for thin tapers and $7 or $8 a pound for thicker tapers and for table-top or altar candlesticks. (I’ve noted the Orthodox monks don’t get worked up about the “secular” use of “sacred” candles, and plainly sell them for household use, too.)

I would recommend to all who have Christmas Eve or Easter Vigil candlelight services to use thin pure beeswax candles. They aren’t really that expensive for what you get: clean, gently sweet, and virtually drip-free burns. That’s good if you’ve ever been to service in a darkened church and have had a paraffin-stearic acid candle drip down your wrist. Those little paper flanges (called bobaches) do little good. Get the quarter-inch or three-eighths inch tapers, nine or ten inches long.

Orthodox Church of America — formerly an ethnic Russian church — monks seem to have better prices than the Greek or Roman Catholic monks.

Two examples, one on each coast:

Saints Mary and Martha Orthodox Monastery — halfway between Columbia, S.C. and Augusta, Ga.!

Monastery of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco — in Point Reyes Station, California — is that Marin County?

March 14, 2006

Community credit union for DC

I like credit unions, the cooperative principle applied to financial institutions.

The District of Columbia is filled with credit unions, but none that were as plainly for city residents as the one I had left in Athens, Georgia. How could that be? It seemed to be a case where the “Federal City” moniker fit because nearly all the credit unions were meant for employees this department or branch of the government or another.

I could join a credit union through my employer’s human resources firm, but it is based in Texas, which is no better than the one I kept in Georgia.

I could join Hubby’s workplace credit union, but its office is behind the front security desk, so I could never see a clerk! (Plus, its corporate office is a two hours’ drive into Virginia, a commonwealth I try not to do business in.) And neither of these speak to a community basis of credit union membership
But there is an option. Turns out the HEW (for the former Health, Education and Welfare Department) and Treasury Department employee credit unions each let those who live, work, study or worship in the District of Columbia become members. I’m prone to join one — not sure which yet.

Treasury Deparment Federal Credit Union

HEW Federal Credit Union

December 24, 2005

O Cooperative tree

Among the most potent of Christmas images is the Christmas tree: a decorated evergreen. It is so iconic that it can be reduced to almost any cone shape, or even a green, white, or silver triangle. That’s graphic power. But there isn’t any theological reason to tie a conifer to Christ.

Here’s a nice thought for those abstaining from Christmas: the pine tree — in pairs — is also an emblem for cooperation.

Waterloo Cooperative Residence, Inc. symbol info page
MSU Student Housing Cooperative, Inc has the twin pine tree emblem on their site

Perhaps you can think of the Statement on the Co-operative Identity (linke to details from the International Co-operative Alliance) while you decorate your Cooperative trees.

1. Voluntary and open membership.
2. Democratic member control.
3. Member economic participation.
4. Autonomy and independence.
5. Education, training, and information.
6. Cooperation among cooperatives.
7. Concern for community.

July 12, 2005

Church cooperative?

Let’s think for a moment of how a church is organized; not the theological justification for its being, but the social models for its running. Business models are common; so are models from civil government. So too hints from organized labor and mass social movements. Sometimes these borrowings are conscious and obvious and others are hidden. Take a former mode of church finance — pew rents and the chapel proprietorship — that was clearly and undeniably a part of congregational polity churches at one time, but now is extinct and generally regarded as repugnant.

But one mode of organization that I don’t see as direct influence in congregational polity churches is that of the economic cooperative, which apart from the equity inherent in a co-op, is such a familiar model for so many Unitarian Universalists that I wonder why it doesn’t come any closer than the Memorial Society. (Then again, we don’t have a history of denominational mutual aid societies, either. Perhaps this was siphoned away by Freemasonry, the influence of which has never fully been accounted among Universalists or Unitarians.)

Co-op organization is more than a four-hour stint at the organic food place across town, and I’m discovering ways and places the cooperative movement has touched that I never knew existed, such as the “social cooperatives” in Italy which began as a way of providing employment for consumers of mental health services as a part of deinstitutionalization.

Right now, I’d like some comment on the mechanism of church goverance — congregational polity or not — or experience readers have had with cooperative governance. I’ll get to the theology later.