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.
The Honey Island Swamp Monster
The lore of Louisiana has always included reference to the swamps. These humid, soggy environments are interspersed throughout much of the southeastern United States. They host many beasts—snakes, alligators, bugs, you name it—and, according to the lore, are home to mysterious monsters.
The Honey Island Swamp Monster is one such myth. Legend says a giant primate-like creature with gray hair and yellow eyes haunts this area of the bayou. The creature is supposedly the offspring of escaped circus chimpanzees that mated with the local alligators. Thankfully, its supposed victims have all been non-human, the primary casualty being a wild boar.
Cryptozoology aside, Honey Island Swamp does have an otherworldly ambiance. Somehow, the marshy surroundings feel both very earthy (you are, after all, surrounded by muddy water) and ethereal, especially when the light flickers through the trees while the silence swells and pulses over the water, interrupted only by the soft humming from bugs and the occasional splash of an oar.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out that many young people are concerned about having kids because climate change will make the planet increasingly uninhabitable.
Fox News hosts are now claiming she wants to “get rid of children.”
