Park Slope Food Coop, in Brooklyn (NY) is not just a coop, but a "member labor coop (html 
). It provides "good food at low prices for its more than 17.000 working members through cooperation since 1973". PSFC is a $50+ million-a-year business.
The Park Slope Food Coop is successful in large part because it consistently decommodifies work. Full member participation in labor is a rarely implemented model, but key for "scaling". (See below: Honor Care & Decommodify Work)
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# Aspirational Goals
They are best described by the cooperative principles adopted by PSFC. - First Principle: Voluntary and Open Membership - open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibility of membership, without any form of discrimination. - Second Principle: Democratic Member Control, active participation of members in setting their policies and making decisions. Elected representatives are accountable to the membership; voting based on the principle: one member, one vote - Third Principle: Member Economic Participation, equitably contribution to, and democratic control of the capital of the cooperative. - Fourth Principle: Autonomy and Independence, if a coop is in agreements with other organizations, including governments, or raise capital from external sources, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their cooperative autonomy. - Fifth Principle: Education, Training and Information for members and partly the general public. - Sixth Principle: Cooperation Among Cooperatives through local, national, regional and international structures. - Seventh Principle: Concern for the Community While focusing on member needs, cooperatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies accepted by their members.
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# Legal Status & Location
Brooklyn, New York, USA, bioregional
# When did they start?
1973
# How do they work?
In fact, the PSFC looks like a supermarket at first glance. "The Coop carries a wide variety of products including local, organic and conventionally grown produce; pasture-raised and grass-fed meat; free-range, organic and kosher poultry; fair-trade chocolate and coffee; wild and sustainably farmed fresh and frozen fish; supplements and vitamins; imported and artisanal cheese; freshly baked bread, muffins, scones and croissants; beer; bulk grains and spices;environmentally safe cleaning supplies; and much more. All of this, plus a large selection of standard supermarket items, makes the Coop a one-stop shopping destination.
# Funding and Finance Strategies
describe and add links to innovativ models or to partners, add important partnerships
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# Which Core Dimensions of Commoning are enacted?
- Cultivate Shared Purpose & Values
- Strengthen the Nested-I
- Contribute Freely
- Practice Gentle Reciprocity
- Ritualize Togetherness
- Trust Situated Knowing
- Deepen Communion with Nature There are two interesting concepts: 1. The 500 Miles to Local principle html and the Food Additive Guidelines html
- Preserve Relationships in Addressing Conflicts
- Reflect on Your Peer-Governance
# Peer-Governance in the Commons
How Park Slope Food Coop finances Commons Provisioning. source
Create Semi-Permeable Membranes: Only members may shop at the Coop, but membership is open to all. People don't have to live in Park Slope to join? Actually, they come from all over Brooklyn as well as the rest of New York – some even come from out of state!
The way coop members Relationalize Property is called 'member ownership'. Membership and ownership are inseparably connected in an ingenious way. Whomever joins the Coop, cannot only become a member, but will become a member-owner. Any participant cannot be only member or only owner, but only both together. By definition. And this has very practical consequences, as the membership manual explains: "Membership is defined by your participation in the workslot system, while ownership is defined by your financial contribution. This contribution is officially called a member-equity investment.
The term “member-owner” is legally defined in the coop's bylaws as “a holder of a membership in a cooperative” where “the terms‘ member’ and ‘owner’ and ‘member/owner ’... all mean the same thing.” And the membership manual continues: "You may feel your ownership more strongly at times, and your membership at others. However, the Coop functions best when we all hold both rolesin mind at once: Approach your membership (and workslot) like an owner, and approach your ownership with an eye to creating the best experience and the great est benefit for all the Coop’ (MM, p.1)
You are always making a deal with an “other.” The more that a coop membership is different from a video store membership or health club membership, the more members will realize that they actually own their coop. If you feel like you own it, then you care about it. If you care about it, then the coop has to improve.
This ownership-model cannot be properly understood, if the so called workslot system is not taken into account. (see Park Slope Food Coop Provisioning, and especially the way, the Food coop partly decommodifies labor.
An important tool to Finance Commons Provisioning is the Revolving Loan Fund Committee. The committee supports new member labor food coops. In January 2012, the General Membership voted to create and to annually donate $20,000 to the fund, contingent upon the fiscal well-being of the Coop.
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- Peer-Monitor & Apply Graduated Sanctions Excellent example for graduated sanctions: According to the manuals, this is what happens, when you miss a workshift: "When you miss a shift, you will be assigned make-ups for the absence and put on “alert” for work. You then have until your next scheduled shift (four weeks) to complete the owed make-ups. If you are unable to complete owed make-ups by your next shift, you will become “suspended” for work. However, you can intervene on your own behalf to delay/avoid the suspension and retain shopping privileges while owing make-ups." (manual, p. 15) But what happens, when people miss their shift? There is a "Double Make-up Policy", if members are absent from their shift, they will owe two make-ups instead of one. This policy is the result of the Coop’s shaky start in the early 1970s when attendance was often bad enough to cause those who did show up to quit because of the unfair burden placed on them. Back then, members only had to do one make-up for an absence. Our membership learned that by allowing members to do only one make-up for a missed shift, we were making it easier to miss a shift and work an unscheduled make-up than to show up for a scheduled shift. Scheduled work is invaluable to the Coop. We assign a certain number of workers to each squad because that is the number of people deemed necessary to get the work done. When members don’t show up for their scheduled shifts, the Coop is left short-staffed. The Double Make-up Policy, which was voted in by the membership at a General Meeting, is not intended as a punishment but as an incentive for members to show up for their regular shifts, when they are expected and needed, rather than do unscheduled make-ups.
ontological ground and political culture
# Inner Kernel
- Epistemology - Ubuntu-Rationality. - Relational categories: member-owner
- Beat the Bounds of Capitalocentrism - Emulate & Then Federate - Strengthen Commons Public Circuits
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# Realms of Commoning
Air&Atmosphere, Art&Culture, Communication, Democratic Innovation, Energy, Fisheries, Food, Forests, Health, Housing, Knowledge, Land, Learning, Spirit&Well Being, Spaces for Commoning
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# Sources
# See also