Democracy at Work is a project, begun in 2010, that aims to build a social movement. The movement’s goal is transition to a new society whose productive enterprises (offices, factories, and stores) will mostly be WSDE’s, a true economic democracy. The WSDEs would partner equally with similarly organized residential communities they interact with at the local, regional, and national levels (and hopefully international as well). That partnership would form the basis of genuine participatory democracy.

Utilizing media, from short video clips that go viral to our already well-established weekly and increasingly syndicated “Economic Update” radio program (WBAI, 99.5 FM, New York) and from podcasts to articles to blogs, this interactive website reaches and engages a fast growing audience.

Open to and interested in democracy at work, that audience also wants to move actively with beyond today’s dysfunctional economic and political systems while mindful of mistakes made by earlier efforts to go beyond capitalism. This interactive website will serve as the central location for these forms of media, a database of research and resources that support and strengthen the movement, and the open discussions shaping that movement as it grows. We begin with a definition of workers’ self-directed enterprises. In some ways, they are similar to co-ops, worker owned enterprises, and other organizations of production that reject the old, top-down, hierarchical capitalist model. Yet in crucial ways, workers’ self-directed enterprises are also unique.

Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDE’s): WSDE’s are enterprises in which all the workers who collaborate to produce its outputs also serve together, collectively as its board of directors. Each worker in any WSDE thus has two job descriptions: (1) a particular task in the enterprise’s division of labor, and (2) full participation in the directorial decisions governing what, how and where to produce and how to use the enterprise’s surplus or profits.

Simply put, in place of a hierarchical, undemocratic, capitalist production organization giving those decisions exclusively to a small minority – major shareholders and the board of directors – WSDE’s institutionalize democracy at work as the economy’s central principle and society’s new foundation.

We believe that now is the time for a comprehensive new strategy and new movement for social change. We invite you to join with Democracy at Work to work toward those goals.

Dr. Richard Wolff

Co-founder
Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the New School University in New York. Wolff is the author of many books, including Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism, Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, and Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It. He hosts the weekly hour-long radio program Economic Update on WBAI (Pacifica Radio) and writes regularly for The Guardian, Truthout.org, and the MRZine. His appearances include the Charlie Rose Show, Democracy Now!, Al Jazeera English, Thom Hartmann, RT-TV, and NPR. His personal work can be found at rdwolff.com. Wolff lives in New York with his wife and frequent collaborate, Dr. Harriet Fraad.

Marc Loresto

Social Media Manager
Marc was born and raised in Los Angeles where he majored in Asian American Studies at UCLA and became a student and community activist. He worked at the Little Tokyo Service Center, a social service and affordable housing development nonprofit, for four years. He served on the Barangay LA board and API-Equality LA steering committee where he was deeply involved in LGBT rights and Prop 8. He moved to Brooklyn in 2010 and completed a graphic design program at Parsons and then did a design internship with GMHC, a multi-service HIV/AIDS organization. Loresto is excited to be part of Democracy At Work as the social media manager.

Sueli Shaw

Director of Sales
Sueli graduated from Vassar College and has since lived in Brooklyn, where she is giving New York a try. So far it has delivered: she’s worked organizing farmer’s markets, for social justice and anti-hunger organizations, as a field researcher and interviewer, as a cheesemonger, and in corporate philanthropy. One time she even worked at a Persian rug expo. She enjoys the additional perspective her work with us lends to her ongoing search for a responsible and personally fulfilling way of life (and work).

Annie Bickerton

Development Intern
Annie is a Master’s candidate in nonprofit management at the Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy. In addition to interning at DAW she is also working on a start-up nonprofit, Drive Change, a food truck that will provide transitional employment for formerly incarcerated youth. Previously, she worked as the director of annual giving and parent relations for The Cambridge School of Weston, a progressive high school outside of Boston.