The first of a series about more sustainable and just economies, WEconomics: Italy is available now from Bullfrog Films.

WATCH A PREVIEW of WECONOMICS: ITALY

WEconomics – preview of a new film from the makers of SHIFT CHANGE from Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin on Vimeo.

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REVIEWS of WECONOMICS

“Fabulous! I can’t overstate the importance of this film right now! There’s a democratic form of enterprise that works because it’s aligned with the human need for connection, meaning and agency. The film beautifully captures the power of cooperatives in a world in desperate need of hope–not pie in the sky but evidence-based hope. May it be viewed worldwide, fueling the cooperative movement.”

Frances Moore Lappé, Co-Founder, Small Planet Institute, Author, Diet for a Small Planet and EcoMind

“Is this the occupy movement? No, it’s Northern Italy’s answer to corporate rapacity and state indifference-an ecologically conscious cooperative movement that provides elder and child care, manufacturing, retail sales and more and is sufficiently stable, flexible and resilient to bring prosperity and security to all. This is democracy in action. Bring it to your students with this film; practice it in your classroom. All will benefit.”

Paul Durrenberger, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, Author, The Anthropology of Labor Unions

“Advocates for a more community based economy here in the US have much to learn from Italy’s Emilia Romagna region, where decades of sophisticated cooperative development and policymaking have helped turn one of the poorest parts of the country into one of its most economically prosperous, and have produced innovative new models for aligning economic activity and social service delivery with human and communitarian values. WEconomics: Italy takes us into the democratic workplaces at the heart of this historical trajectory, illuminating the dense networks of solidarity and the deep processes of cultural change behind Emilia Romagna’s vibrant cooperative ecosystem.”

Gar Alperovitz, Co-founder, The Democracy Collaborative, Co-chair, The Next System Project

“A powerful film demonstrating that mainstream economists have gotten it wrong. WEconomics: Italy shows how Bologna’s cooperatives are producing an alternative economy that puts people, ecological issues, and the social fabric of society at the forefront, and still survive in the difficult economic times that we live in! The film is an absolute must-see for anyone, anywhere interested in alternatives that are both progressive and successful!”

Michelle Williams, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand

“WEconomics: Italy shows vividly how cooperatives can be woven into the fabric of an entire region–in this case Emilia-Romagna in Italy. The film offers living examples of how social entrepreneurship, cross-sector partnerships, and, above all, democratic workplaces can strengthen communities and transform how we do business. This short documentary gives us a glimpse into how we can move cooperatives from the relative margins of our economy here in the U.S. to the central place they deserve.”

George Cheney, Professor of Communication Studies, University of Colorado – Colorado Springs, Author, Values at Work

“WEconomics: Italy expands the discussion of cooperatives as a structure for producing and distributing goods to a model for providing needed, desperately needed, social services…This film is positive, upbeat, and offers ample opportunity to introduce cooperatives to students.”

Karen McCormack, Associate Professor and Chair, Dept. of Sociology, Wheaton College

Rufina Coop

Hello from Italy! Mark and I saved up our airline miles, and got free tickets to Italy, in part for a vacation, which we have not had in years, and in part to investigate whether it would make sense for us to make a film about the complex coop economy that is here, in some dimensions richer than what we saw in Mondragon, and with valuable lessons for people in North America.

Coops are so widespread as to be taken for granted here. We’d tell people we’re here to learn about the coops and their response would be, “so, what’s the big deal.” They have been well established since the mid 1800′s, and were long identified with political parties – socialist/communist ones, Christian Democratic ones, etc. Now the different threads are working closely together and dismissing past political quarrels. We have done some filming, visited some coops and our heads are full of information to assimilate once we get back home. I’m afraid we have also been eating way too much absolutely wonderful food.

Enjoying a plentiful lunch in Bologna

Speaking of food, the largest supermarket chain in Italy is COOP, a system of 115 consumers’ cooperatives of various sizes (9 large, 14 medium, and 92 small), with 1,444 shops, 56,682 employees, more than 7.429.847 members, and an annual revenue of €12.9 billion. COOP illustrates something distinctive about Italian cooperatives, which build networks of coops in a given industry – retailing, construction, etc. so that each coop can remain relatively small and responsive to its members while together they achieve certain economies of scale and a national brand identity. Seems to work very well.

Another type of coop here is the social coop, an Italian invention dating from the 1980′s. While we see efforts to cut and privatize social assistance programs in the U.S., which are in some measure in response to real problems of bureaucratization and decline in quality of service, in Italy the government is addressing the same sorts of problems by collaborating with social coops to deliver services. That way the services are still socially minded, rather than driven by profit, and the coop members protect their own professional and monetary interests.

With the help of Ian Richard from the U.S. we visited Ecosphera, a social coop that does recycling, maintenance of outdoor spaces and a recently founded ecologically focused small shopping center. Some of their members are people with learning or physical disabilities, or are re-entering society after prison or drug issues. Coops are privileged in the post-WWII Italian constitution and they get special tax advantages and priority on government contracts.

Ran into an old friend on the street in Bologna, visiting Italy on a Food First tour.

We interviewed an economist who specializes in cooperative history at the University of Bologna – oldest in Europe – and visited Aster, a high tech consortium, a large networking organization called Legacoop, and Voli, a coop of radio and film producers with whom we discussed how we might collaborate if we decide to return to make a new film. As of now we certainly hope we will be able to do that.