With a New Fund, Evergreen Cooperatives Looks to Spread the ‘Cleveland Model’
Since their inception ten years ago, the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio have served as a promising model of economic development in a post-industrial city. The three worker cooperatives—an industrial laundry company, a green energy services contractor, and a hydroponic greenhouse (pictured above)—collectively employ over 200 individuals, many of whom have become worker-owners. In a city where median household income hovers around $18,500, these companies pay their workers a living wage and share with them the profits they produce.
Now, the Evergreen Cooperatives network is taking matters into its own hands with a new fund that will acquire existing companies from retiring business owners and sell them back to the employees. The Fund for Employee Ownership, as the Evergreen fund is called, is the latest and perhaps most potent initiative aimed at expanding employee ownership and the principles of democratic governance.
ALERT: Neo-Nazi Organizing a “Salute to President Trump” Rally, September 14 in Dahlonega, Georgia
Chester Doles is organizing a rally for Saturday, September 14th at the town square of Dahlonega, Georgia. Despite downplaying the event and his ties to white supremacy there’s a clear timeline of this guy’s history. Here’s a newspaper article from 1992 on the planning of an event for the Klan that features Doles where he stylizes himself as a “fourth-generation Klansman”:
Chester J. Doles, a 32-year-old Cecil County roads worker who calls himself the state leader of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said the group wants to march as part of an effort to have the town declare April “White History Month.”
In 1993,Doles was sentenced to seven years in prison for attacking an interracial couple in Elkton, Maryland. Doles admitted to beating the black man because he was riding in a truck with a white woman. He was later arrested again in 1997 on burglary where he violently attacked the homeowner.
He eventually fled to Georgia where he was picked up on gun charges in the 2003. Doles formed another white supremacist group while living in Georgia and testified during this time that he had a support network of law enforcement within his organization. The FBI’s terrorism task force has even had this to say about Doles:
FBI Special agent Joseph Thompson, a member of the joint terrorism task force that investigated Doles since July, 2001, said “Mr. Doles is a very active member of a group the FBI considers a terrorist group. That group is known commonly in law enforcement as the most dangerous group in the United States.”
Thompson also testified that a confidential informant who met with Doles since 2001 told authorities about the law enforcement ties to the group. No names were mentioned in court.
“That shows that Mr. Doles has a support network including law enforcement” members, said Thompson. “You vastly increase the capacity of the network,” by having authorities as members. They “can look the other way.”
As recently as 2016, Doles has still be openly active in white supremacist gangs such as Crew 38 and Hammerskin Nations, who he gave a speech for at the Hammerskin Nations’ national gathering at a Atlanta Klan bar alongside fellow white supremacist Matthew Heimbach.
In order to distance himself from the upcoming rally, Doles recently withdrew his name from the permit application for Sept. 14th’s event. On August 1st he filed for the initial permit and by August 9th he withdrew it and added Dahlonega resident Dustin Penner’s name. However Doles clearly is still actively the organizer as shown by his social media posts both before and after he withdrew his name from the permit:
Now tell me - Why was a violent, decades-long active white supremacist, who was literally identified by the FBI as a terrorist, and imprisoned for viciously beating a black man in an admitted hate crime given a permit to march through town square? Maybe y’all wanna know too???
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“Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know. ” – Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
“Waste of time is the leading feature of our present education. Not only are we taught a mass of rubbish, but what is not rubbish is taught so as to make us waste over it as much time as possible…”
— Peter Kropotkin, Fields, Factories and Workshops (via philosophybits)
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