In this episode of Left Out, we sat down with Kali Akuno — the co-founder and co-directer of Cooperation Jackson. We discuss the emerging network of worker-owned cooperatives and the people behind it building an alternative, solidarity-based economy inside the majority-black and impoverished city of Jackson, Mississippi.

We then diver deeper into the different types of worker-owned cooperatives that makeup Cooperation Jackson; the importance of developing cooperatives with clear political aims; and the need for a nationwide network of cooperatives and solidarity economic institutions as a viable alternative to the exploitative nature of our current economic, social, and environmental relations.

After a decade of crisis and another decade of growth the cooperative sector is finally being given the attention it deserves. But its impact does not reside purely in the numbers that mainstream economic analysis provides.

The largest study comparing worker cooperatives to normal companies shows that cooperatives are more productive.

In this careful and robust examination of all of the evidence currently available, economist Virginie Pérotin compares the performance of worker cooperatives to that of conventional capitalist firms.

Cooperatives can emerge as an important part of a different economic order, an alternative to an establishment order of insecurity and poverty for the many and privilege and wealth for the few. 

In these Trump times of ours, the case for cooperatives is only likely to become more evident and gather steam. The cooperatives movement can emerge in the eyes of an increasing number of people as a way to stop depending on boss and elite classes and to start taking their security and prosperity into their own hands.

Economist Antonio Callari discusses the 'why now,' the 'how' and the 'so-what' of such a movement.