The Cleveland Model

Due to my health problems this entry is shorter than I had hoped. I apologize to my readers for its brevity.

There’s something exciting happening in the Buckeye State. While most of the corporate media is fixated on the crass politics going on in Congress there are some events taking place in the American heartland that are important in the movement towards creating an economic democracy. The few articles that are appearing in the media, while brief, are providing glimpses into these exciting developments.

The Evergreen Cooperative Initiative of Cleveland, Ohio is actively creating worker-owned cooperatives based on the Mondragon Cooperative. According to an article in Time Magazine this Initiative, which has been dubbed the Cleveland Model, the Evergreen Cooperative Development Fund provides to co-ops, “low-interest, long term financing. In the future, a financial institution more aligned with the Caja Laboral, which also handles consumer savings and lending, might be developed.”
(Source: Time Magazine)

Several of the cooperatives started by the Evergreen Cooperative Initiative are getting special attention in the press. The one that gets the most coverage is the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, which specializes in providing laundry service for the healthcare industry of Cleveland. Another co-op that’s received interest by the press is the Ohio Cooperative Solar (OCS) which specializes in installing large-scale solar panels. According to the Nation the Initiative isn’t stopping with just these two co-ops. It’s creating other co-ops in the Cleveland area such as the Green City Growers (which has a hydroponic garden that’s larger than a Wal-Mart superstore) and a community newspaper “Neighborhood Voice,” which will start printing later this year. (Source: The Nation)


The Cleveland Model is using the principles of Economic Democracy to solve one of the serious problems for starting co-ops, which has been access to investment. The Nation goes on the report that, “each of the Evergreen co-operatives is obligated to pay 10 percent of its pre-tax profits back into the fund to help seed the development of new jobs through additional co-ops. Thus, each business has a commitment to its workers (through living-wage jobs, affordable health benefits and asset accumulation) and to the general community (by creating businesses that can provide stability to neighborhoods).”

Another important feature of this is that it’s occurring from the grassroots level. Historically every change in any mode of production has originated from the bottom up rather than the top down. The potential for the Cleveland Model to be the start of a movement that could someday threaten capitalism is amazing.

Without a doubt the events in Cleveland are fantastic. Yet the Evergreen Cooperative Initiative is just one of several developments that are appearing not only in America but on the international scene. In the future I plan to draw attention to some of the other important developments.

For more information Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, Ohio Cooperative Solar and Green City Growers all share a web site: http://www.evergreencoop.com/