Well, it is 530 and we have quite a few people in the room. I'm sure some people will join us later, but I'm going to kick it off to respect people's time and since we have a lot to talk about. I want to welcome everybody to this panel charting a new path for economic recovery and racial justice through worker ownership. I am Allison powers, the manager of cooperative and community initiatives at capital impact partners, and I'm joined by Todd leverette from dowy and apis and heritage. And Camille Kerr and Adriana Bryant from Chai fresh. The flow today is that we're all going to introduce our organization or our project, and then we'll have a moderated discussion, followed by q amp a so if you all just have questions along the way and want to put them to the chat. I can elevate them towards the end of the session. So first, I'm just going to introduce myself and my organization. As I said before, I'm Allison powers from capital impact partners. This is the vision and mission of our organization. We are focused on engaging communities and increasing equity and opportunity. We are a CDFI community development financial institution dedicated to delivering responsible affordable lending to historically marginalized communities. We are our strategic pillars addressing systemic poverty, creating equity building healthy communities and promoting inclusive growth. This is the lens that we do our work through. And like most CDF is we do a lot more than financing. We also have programmatic work policy. We do have a impact note, which allows retail and institutional investors to get involved in our work. And on our website, you can find the prospectus pricing and more information. I can put the link to that in the chat. You can also paying Gessel, I mean, who's at our at so cap conference this week to find out more about that note. As you can see our, we have a lot of focuses including healthcare education affordable housing, healthy food and of course cooperative development, which we're going to talk about today. Capital impact has lent over 2.7 billion dollars since our inception 305 million of that has been in cooperative development coops have always been part of our focus or DNA since we started as part of the national cooperative bank. And we've really been looking at how the model can increase racial equity and be a catalyst to wealth creation, which is really what we're going to talk about tonight through the lens of worker cooperatives and employee owned businesses. I did want to mention before I turn it over to my colleagues, the co op innovation award, which is funding that we provide because we are larger national lenders, we can't always do some of the smaller projects that we did in the past. And so we like to put some funding towards ecosystem development and really want to encourage cooperative growth and development and communities of color. We really look at this as a way to amplify projects that are culturally relevant, led by community and look at ourselves as a partner and hopefully a validator for some of these projects that are in their earlier stages. As you can see here, we have given out out $400,000 over the past five years that's been leveraged to secure more than $3.5 million in additional funding, and we have our folks here tonight have received the award in the past. And so we have actually received it twice and has that's been some of the seed funding for some of the conversion work and shy fresh was one of our recipients in 2020 to help launch their startup. So without further ado, I'm going to head it, turn it over to my partner Todd leverette, who is going to chat about this heritage. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, can you see my, you know, my presentation. Yes. Okay. Excellent. Thank you so much for the wonderful intro. Everyone's out in the same I'm a program manager at the democracy at work Institute, which is a national one focus on using fully ownership of Democratic employee ownership as a racial equity tool or the social equity tool with the focus on using the worker co-op model. I'm also co-principal like it's a heritage capital partners, and we're an impact investing firm that is incubated that's been incubated by the market at work Institute, and we look to to leverage impact capital to help convert private retail businesses over two and four young businesses with a focus on those businesses that have workforces of color and immigrant workforces. So we're throwing efforts, you know, we'd like to help black and brown workers by their jobs. And so before I jump in, I'll start off by, you know, why have the soapbox saying that America for me today feels feels like the late is in a game of for those of you A few folks are all the houses and hotels in the railroads and everybody else is going around working our butts off trying to get past go and try to be the rising rent. Todd, you just got muted. Can you hear me? Okay, excellent.   So, so, you know, what employee ownership does and what we believe what we've seen employee ownership do is is shift that panic and turn it on its head and shift it away from 1% owning 50% of the board, or 10% owning 80% of the board, and it creates an environment, an entrepreneurial ownership environment that's actually fair, and that may actually even be be enjoyable, it will be fun. And it's this shift that we at the democracy at work Institute in the heritage and I was saying, you know, all these teams are working on every day. And as we often say, it's the heritage. This is our real matter of ownership and entrepreneurship in this country. So, I'll go ahead and clip up the, the briefly, the form of employee ownership that our team at eight percent heritage looks to lever through an impact fund is called is called the East operative model which is which is kind of a new term but essentially what it means. It's a it's a combination of the legal and tax benefits of an employee stock ownership plan and the cultural and all the benefits of a worker co op. I won't go into all the detail but briefly for those of you who are familiar with with ESOP, which is the most, you know, standard form of employee ownership in the United States. ESOPs have been federal legislation for almost 50 years. There are over 6000 ESOPs in the US and a lot of a lot of people don't know this but ESOPs 100 ESOPs pay zero. Most of the time, zero dollars in state corporate income tax, which is a huge benefit that can that can do a lot if directed in the right in the right places. But ESOPs aren't just just vantage. The research show also outperform their their peers. They grow faster. They increase profitability more and the increased productivity productivity of the firm is more than their peer firms. So, so, you know, going back and looking at what happened during our last recession, employee owned firms were significantly less likely to lay off workers and they were significantly less likely to shutter and shut down. And even if you look at time periods where there's not a recession going on, these ESOP employee owned firms default significantly less on their debt than do their peer. So, ESOPs are just a better way to just better ways to do business employee owned businesses we believe are just better ways to do business, whether it's a co-op or ESOP or another form. But for this as important as ESOPs being better businesses, they're better for the workers. As I stated before, 60% and 50% of Latinx workers have zero retirement assets. The average worker in ESOPs across the U.S. has over $120,000 in retirement assets in their ESOP account, just in their ESOP account, which doesn't include any non ESOP other retirement accounts that are 401k. And so our investment model, we look for, you know, firms that are doing, you know, sort of between one and $4 million in EBITDA, 30 or more workers. We look to invest in these firms for five to six years, and we look to accept wealth buildup by the workforces of color and provide each worker with between, you know, 30 to $70,000 of ESOP value by the time we leave the firm, which is significant. So again, in short, you know, essentially how we invest, we utilize senior debt, a seller's note, and our product, which is an A&A structured equity mezzanine product that allows us to recapitalize small and medium-sized firms to be 100% employee-owned without over leveraging the business, which is extremely important as we all know. You know, on this slide, we have a couple of example transactions that represent over 120 workers of color, immigrant workers, and, you know, over 140 workers generally, whose lives would be incredibly drastically different under our model. These are two, you know, real opportunities, names have been changed, but that is in our opportunity pipeline right now. You know, so the last thing I'll say is that, is that, you know, we don't just believe in the research doesn't support the idea that just sharing financial ownership of firms produces all the growth and productivity benefits of We believe in real ownership and real entrepreneurship for these workforces, and we're talking about aligning interests, the opportunities and the risk of the firm with the interest opportunities and risks of the workforce. So in our firms, we look for ways, how can we actually have work or voice in the governance of the firm? Where does it make sense to have work or voice in management operations of the firm? How can we really create ownership, open book management, human centered HR, all, you know, all these things that really change the culture of the firm. And the last thing I'll say, you know, COVID has really shed a light on the disproportionate amount of risk that workforces, especially workforces of color in this country take off without any corresponding reward. And all of us on this panel today are really looking to better align the risks that workers take to their personal lives, to their health with the rewards that they're able to reap as as employee on their show. You know, you have, here's a leadership team as my partner, you know, we have our execution partners, Democracy at Work, Institute, Rutgers, SES, ESOP Strategy Service Provider, which does great work and we're really looking to make a difference. So I'll end there and go ahead and pass it over to Camille. Sharon, can you see it? Alright, I'm Camille. I'm Edmarina and we represent Shy Fresh Kitchen. So you can see the team here. Shy Fresh Kitchen is a worker owned cooperative owned by five formerly incarcerated folks. And I know you can see six people. Oh yeah, so Cap can count well. So the six person that's Naya, she's our chef consultant in the front. And we are a food service contractor. We just got started in the midst of the pandemic here and we do prepared meals for institutions that provide like schools or nursing homes and others that provide daily meals and our initial, I'll tell you a little bit more about our initial contract in a minute. But yeah, we're collectively owned and governed by these these fine folks you see in the picture here. Let's see. So I just put this just so you can see our mission and who you who we are and what we're doing so we're we're centering the needs, the wisdom and the power of formerly incarcerated primarily black women and in the process. We're creating something beautiful and also investable and also like something that we can that we can build on. So I wanted to give you a little bit of background about our, what what we're trying to accomplish are our areas of impact. So first, first and foremost, we're providing economic security for our worker owners. So, right now that we can we can share what that looks like but we're also increasing healthy food access in low wage communities by serving food to folks who are who have food insecurity. We're raising the purpose part of our work in the, the wonderful support that we've gotten from capital impact partners we're able to raise the profile of cooperatives as an approach to racial and economic justice that's through conferences like this but also through social networks and other means. And then we are, we're working with partners here in Chicago, not just to, you know, provide individual meals or support our individual members but to set this stage for a completely new food system and economic system. And that's that's equitable racially just. And so that's, that's part of our larger mission so you want to. What do you want to talk about what we've gotten to today. So we've gotten. So, since May 11 chef fresh kitchen has provided living wages and benefits for five worker owners. We're served over 3035,000 nutrition meals. We partner with 22 clients, then featured in 10 news stories. We have. We're participating in two movement. Yeah, we're moving one of them is collaborative for to make a more just Chicago with partnering with BIP 100 and other movement actors and the other one, like I mentioned is about creating a more just food system here locally. And then the only thing I wanted to mention before we get to questions from Allison is that we are moving and we are growing so fast so we are, we just got started in the midst of the pandemic. And so we we registered in March. We did our first man meals. Yeah, I think we did our test meals in April our first real meals on May 11 of this year, but we're buying our own building this year. And we're in the process we just, we just took a step forward on that today. And one of the reasons that we're able to grow and specifically is we have a partner in Boston. Some of you all might know them their social enterprise called city fresh foods, and they have 100 plus employees, and they are, you know, over 10 million 15, close 50 million and they have been providing support on how we do their same business model, which is to provide food to to they do work with meals on wheels with CA with a bunch of charter schools, how to do that here in Chicago so they've been support. Since they want they've been helping us so that's a little bit about us and we'll get more into it with your questions Allison. There are questions while you guys were talking so I'll just throw those out fast and then we'll get into the discussion I want to say that chat's been really active and there's other people in the employee ownership space that are listening to the session on the chat so you know throw stuff out there if it comes if something pops into your head. This one was directed towards Todd. Could this fund be brought into worker ownership to include gig and contract workers. That's a great question Allison and the answer is short is and again they're different forms of employee ownership different strategies, the strategy that that eight percent heritage is doing as a project is specifically on closely held privately held companies and converting them over basically an employee buyout, but employee ownership is probably utilize even more when you're looking, you know, either small startup enterprises or looking for way for 1099 workforces gig work workforces workforce without a lot of different protection to actually aggregate their power and come together and actually provide their services. So, you know, speaking specifically at Dowey, you know, our project is one of several projects that there's a project that's that's a lot more connected to what you're talking about get workers called the RRT to be able to interact with co op, they're looking for who are in the 10 year world and don't have all the protections of, you know, typical W2 workforces which are getting smaller, you know, your W2 workforce is getting smaller and your gig workforce is getting a lot bigger so that's a great question. Yeah, really briefly. So one of the, another initiative not related to shy fresh that's going on in California is that there's a cooperative. We're working on a bill called the Cooperative Economy Act that would that would be a new way. The game economy, creating cooperatives of gig workers that would then contract with platform companies so you can check that out at Cooperative Economy Act. Is another another if you're interested in that specific model. And there was another clarifying question. Todd that the companies you mentioned are 100% and they owned. Well, the two examples we gave are currently privately held by a single individual, small family, but our investment model would use our structured equity mezzanine capital to convert them over to 100% employee. But there are many, many 100% employee owned companies in the US with the largest being public supermarket which is actually 80% employee owned but they have like 200,000 employees is definitely a scalable model. Great. So, I'm going to throw a question out to our panelists. How is your business model using co ops to meet the needs or address the problems in your community. I'll go and we kick us off and we touched on it. We touched on it in the presentation. You know, really the main trend that this model was developed to address was the was the racial wealth gap. Family seven to 10 times the wealth of the average black and Latinx family 65% 75% black Latinx workers, you know, I said before. And as we all know, you know, what this lack of assets means is really a lack of a lack of a lack of opportunity, educational opportunity, entrepreneurial opportunity, ability to take risks to kind of really better your life and your family life. But it also is a lack of resilience, the inability to to withstand a medical emergency or as you know stated before, a global global pandemic and it's, you know, it reads black, the communities that need this the most. It's the reason why situations like this really, really create so many issues with so many problems and just, you know, COVID is really helpful. This is our model for how you can move wealth into these communities in a way that sense and a way that scalable, but also how you can create quality. Because we have a whole new issue in this company country with working for with jobs that are providing protections and insurance and benefits to workforce. This is a way to address that problem again. Community color a lot harder than it gets. And for us to work. I mean, we were formed to deal with the fact that formerly incarcerated folks have a really hard time finding steady employment with good benefits and so we're like, well, let's create a workforce where we own it we know we're going to pay ourselves well we know we're going to treat ourselves well that type of Also, so that we can help other women who was informed, who I have been incarcerated, because I don't know what it feels like to come home and be turned down from so many jobs and it's there but it just happens in our community every day where you come to serve your time and your time and now you're trying to you know you're supposed to be really patient. And then we have a lot of jobs and we just told no no no. So we come up with a plan where we can women that we left behind and other women who to make sure that they do have to where where they won't be turned around and that they can build into it and own they own as well as We're also working to address the food insecurity in our communities because there's, you know, during the pandemic, there, there's always in many of our communities a lack of access to nutritious food and just access to food security in general, but the pandemic has made that so much work. And so the other aspect of how we're serving our community is by providing meals, most of our meals right now are specifically to address food insecurity. Thank you so much. And you've been touching this on this a bit but you know how is the current health crisis the pandemic, coupled with the economic crisis, change your strategy goals and or opportunities. Yes.  We haven't been a struggle less and more than a struggle for us because the pandemic like open so many doors what we thought was going to be closed and we was shocked like it opens the doors we want to making 50 meals in our communities and serving to making 100 meals a day now. And that was like we went from 50 to like 200 in a week. And we just keep moving up people when I'm self for us. And the pandemic has just been a blessing, where we didn't expect it to go as well as it do. But we do still have those models where that is, you know, to target schools like most of us have children, I have a ton of homes and never eat school food. So we want to put, you know, healthy food and fresh food in our communities where some kids at home only eat a meal at school right and we want to make sure that those kids with those meals at school where it's good, it's fresh, and it's still healthy, because you can have fun food for kids that they will eat that's healthy. So we still plan on going that route but in the pandemic we have we get so many comments and blessings like so many people pop up with our shirts just to say like we serve them that we didn't even know that we were serving, but they stopped from giving those meals. So the pandemic has been a blessing for us. Yeah, and I mean we know it's it's hurt so many and what we're, what we've been able to do is that there's a lot of funding out there to address the food insecurity that has been happening during the pandemic and so we've been able to leverage the funding that's coming in to address that and be the be one of the major contractors. That's, that's providing food to the south and west sides right now. And people are really commenting on your, your growth and project in the chat so just, just elevating that support. And there's actually also been several questions in the in the chat about what's the role of capital in your projects. And some of the barriers you've faced strategies you've adopted if you can talk a little bit more about investment in capital that's been a few people wondering about that. You, well, I guess I can, I can start this question so just a few questions that are going out in the chat, you know, from the outside, or you know, the way our firm is structured looks a lot like your typical private private equity, private debt mezzanine debt type of type of firm. So we did that and I talked about this in the chat, you want to create a model that was familiar. That was earlier to the, to the broader investment world, partly because we want to see this model scale up we want to see, you know, 123 funds down the line, you know, powered being able to invest in this model and creating or university endowment, or, you know, large institutional investors being able to invest in this we're we're structured like a typical, you know, essentially mezz mezz debt fund. And so, you know, that that being said, the investment that we look to that we look to do that we look to make is is a is a, you know, mezzanine product. Mezzanine slash structured equity product.  So that's not a role in capital. What's that back to kind of the COVID. You know, there was a, you know, pre COVID and post COVID life and as this relates to the finance and pre COVID, our plan was to go out and kind of do independent sponsor deal by deal for a model with COVID. A lot of the potential, you know, investors LP we were talking to said, hey, I, you know, I think there may be an appetite to go out and do in the larger, the larger investment deal for the larger time. And they had really good reception from the broader community about being able to invest in, you know, first time fund managers doing a model helps their community. Thanks so much. Do we want to talk, you want us to talk about investment a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So we're so all to two birds here because we got asked as well is how we set up our co. We are, we are registered as a limited worker cooperative association in Illinois which is a new form it's kind of like a combo between a co-op corporation and LLC, and we passed a law, we helped pass a law that created that and then we registered it. So the way that we take in. So we basically have two classes of shares where we have one class of shares, the membership shares 100% by the owners.  We make all decisions, they make me make all the decisions collectively. And so, in terms of investment so I personally invested a little bit upfront. And then we got some grants including the wonderful grant from capital impact partners our first grant the one that really let us get started and get up on our feet and then in terms of actual investment first first act investors besides me will come in as we build by our building so we are currently in the process of purchasing a building and we are using both debt and equity capital basically the way that it breaks down as we're using debt for the acquisition of the building and then we're using equity to build it out. And we are blessed to be to be working with folks in the cooperative community and folks in the in this kind of social impact community on some of that money so capital and sorry so shared capital cooperative. A cooperative that's, it's actually structured as a cooperative and it only funds cooperatives. If they're providing our loan capital, we're actually possibly looking at writing into their building a new equity product base. That's that's focused on bridging the racial gap that they might provide some equity with as well so they're providing our loan capital for this building purchase and then we're working with a couple of different folks in the impact investment community on a possible, on a possible equity investment around $250,000 and that one would be structured basically as a, as a dividend preferred dividend with a little bit of upside like a range of dividend rights between five and eight something range and our loan capital is posted. And can I ask what has been your when you've gone out to look for for debt or gone, you know, gotten meetings with investors, what has been the reaction, like how do people respond to the concept of employee or worker ownership and do you think that folks kind of understand or excited about the model went to friends. So our friends are very excited about the model. And Mark, with her good decade now. And so yes, they are very enthusiastic about the model and then, you know, working to Morgan Simon we're talking to Brendan Marlin and his team over at the working world so we kind of win inside our community. So we haven't had to sell co I guess what I'll say is we haven't had to sell the cooperative model to anyone everyone we're talking to. Yeah, I say we're on the opposite and we're talking to people who this is a new idea new concept to a lot of a lot of years but what I really love about it, it makes intuitive sense and a lot in a lot of the alignment of incentives of, you know, the company and workforce, and it makes it a lot of folks, most of the questions are around kind of mechanics of how, you know, really the ESOP model works. It's really heavy, heavily regulated model. But what we always say is that that actually works in in our favor like there's no way we're able to overpay for a company because you know, there are regulatory, you know, the companies sitting there making sure the workers are not going to overpay for them. So there's a lot of different checks and balances on the model that we have to explain that we have to explain to investors to kind of get them to understand that it makes sense. But we have a pretty good a pretty good reception to it. And I will say I'm surprised by how many people have had some kind of contact or spend a part of their life doing something co-op or later a lot of times working co-op or produced a co-op, but the model has hit a lot of people a lot of different ways of life. So it's always exciting with the majority of people. Yeah, so many people are members of co-ops or credit unions, even if they don't know it. And speaking of questions about the model, there was a question in the chat about if you could speak a little bit more about the difference between a ESOP or a worker co-operative. And, you know, I know you mentioned it before, but kind of why that model is easier. Yeah. So, and I think the person who asked the question also touched on the fact we've looked at we look at the ESOP from the perspective of, you know, you got this, this really long standing really solid like legal protections, regulatory protections around the model. And you get that really significant tax benefit. So part of what we talk about when we're investing, you know, investors who are looking for risk-adjusted returns. You know, this is a benefit that you can't get from any other type of investment in a company or a phone, which is the elimination of federal and state tax benefit. We really felt it was important to take advantage of that tax benefit of these firms for the benefit of the workforce and for the benefit of the folks investing the model. So really look at the ESOP as the legal structure, the tax structure of the business. And then the co-op model, which is based on these principles of worker participation, worker governance, you know, broader social responsibility and connection between other co-op worker firms is really about the culture, the personality and the values of firms. That, you know, that is also kind of a bread and butter, in the bread and butter of Dow. And that's where we look at that is like the organizational cultural change we're going to make in the firm. So we kind of see them in different ways they play together. And, and just one more question from the chat and I'll point this towards Chai Fresh. Someone asked about the kind of co-op government governance structure and what are some of the barriers to that and I'll also flip it on its head and say what are some of the opportunities in that governance structure. Yeah, so Chai Fresh is completely a collective, which means that every member is an owner, every member is a, is every member is a director, and there's no outside director so it's just, just the team. And it's the only people, just the worker owners are the only ones making decisions and let's see what are the challenges and opportunities. I mean, like, I feel like, you know, people like you need outside directors you need outside people. And, and, I mean, in my experience, we just, we asked them advice, we have outside people, they advise us, they give it like city fresh like we're saying they give us a lot of advice they're just not, they don't have governance rules, right. I don't know, do you want to talk to any of the challenges that you, us making all the decisions? The challenges is, I'll just say like some of the challenges be, you know, sometimes it's just, I guess it's just, it's probably normally like, I might disagree and then two or three more might agree with what the fourth and fifth one is saying, right. So we just usually come up, you know, we think about it, we sleep on it and what about the less and that's one of the, but yeah, that's mostly, I don't know, we've written a lot of challenges. Yeah. But, yeah. Yeah, I mean, she's a majority but we mostly do things by consensus like we don't railroad, nobody's gotten railroaded right like I mean I know. It's like, if, if, if more than three say, you know, sometimes some one person probably just don't see it that way. So if more than three say this, I agree, I agree. Until I feel they're not going to just be like, well, they, they outed you, because there was three more but they, you know, we just break it down and we talk about it we go back into the table we go and see it and then, you know, we all come up to with something that makes sense. Thanks so much. And just to say that there's some coops that can look like Chai fresh that's pretty, you know, collective decision making and, and, you know, has a smaller group and then there's some employee on businesses or coops that can have kind of a traditional management structure and, you know, I'm sure some of the businesses tide works with that might, you know, find a certain way doesn't necessarily have to look one way and also be as long as you have one member and vote it's democratically owned. There can be different models that the workers choose to work with so that's kind of one of the beauties. Just one one thing about that scale thing is we have a provision in our governance and our bylaws that says that once we hit. I don't know if it's 15 members that we, we consider moving to representative governance where we elect specific members and get even do outside ones at that point if we wanted to but there's like. There's a turning point that's that's built into our model where, if we get too big, then we switch over to at least consider, at least consider the representative model. All right, well, my next question and there's been a lot of comments in the chat about how you know, knowledge of coops and employee owned businesses have has really grown so much in the past five 1015 years and that a lot of these support organizations, technical assistance financing organizations weren't available just a short time ago so you have these, these resources for organizations like yours that are thinking about growth and scale. And so I want to ask you all, what are the current opportunities in terms of, you know, what's your vision for a new economy that's based on a restorative social justice hoping this movement, you know, will grow and and you can also include in that, you know, thinking about scale and replication and what this could look like five 1015 years down the road. Yeah, so I'll kick that one off I'll say briefly and talking to your point about how kind of there's been enlightenment on an employee ownership over the past several, several years. I've been thinking about, about, I've heard employee ownership world for five years and it's been amazing. But, you know, I went to a business school, never heard anything about employee ownership models, went to law school, never really, never really presented as, as kind of actual models that that should exist in a larger scale in our economy. So, so I imagine a people where these principles that we're talking about is almost niche or, or revolutionary ways are part of the standard business education part of the standard legal education that, you know, your wealth managers, your, your asset managers, your, your bankers this becomes part of the standard, you know, knowledge that's necessary for for them to kind of rest in their careers and for them to do their jobs. And I think once it, once it hits that, that point, you'll start to see employee ownership really become a sector of our economy the way it is and a lot of other places in the world like parts of Latin America and Europe, a more robust, robust field that our personal vision and it's kind of what we're doing we're hoping through our model to, to be risked as an investment model for investors.  Recently, about Pete Starros at KKR has actually been implementing aspects of, you know, shared for your ownership and I think push, you know, 500 million dollars or more out to employees in different options playing. It's starting to catch on, but I think we have a long way to go to where really help, help shift the ties well that generally, and, you know, from our folks is moving stuff to shift the ties of the racial up gap is going to see more people, definitely more people. And I think part of what we're trying to achieve is just, I mean, part of this work in the new economy work is to just open people's imaginations to what's possible. And I think that we're just trying to model and be a visible example of what can be in us alongside, you know, a business heritage alongside a lot of the incredible like Boston Ujima projects, and all of the, all the innovators that are that are building new things and like, hey, this can be different. And, and so I think part of the vision is just like, we know, at least for me it's not like oh, one by one we can, we can replace every existing type of business out there slowly, you know, I don't think that it will be that easy to slowly and surely replace our economy with But what we can do is we can let people know that something else is possible, so that it's time to change with your policies when it's time to change how our system is structured that they that we have a vision of what can be on the other side. And on a more like this role level, the vision that we have to folks, I don't know if you want to talk about what we want to how we want to folks that are members.  I mean, we talk about 30 years now we just talk about so much how big it can be, how many people in our neighborhood and in our community as that we came up, you know, the love on the job so I can provide help for our kids and their kids like you. The stuff we talk about it just be we be so excited we go with all these like vision of what we can become and we just proud that we are here. Yeah. I'll add one thing I mean that's, I'll add one thing Camille was kind of thrown out a list of some people just to give folks some more more with a Google. So, this is kind of on in the fun world side, you know, we're doing this work, look at the ICA group, the job work only look at the working world. Look at the evergreen fun model and Cleveland look at Main Street Phoenix project so we're out there and the numbers are growing every, every day against specifically talking on the fun side of model. But, but we're out there but we definitely need more. And then on, you know, on the earlier stage company model it's there are a lot of projects out there doing doing good amazing work. Yeah, so yeah, there's there's folks out there if you want to get connected to anybody else of the ecosystem contact Allison, you know, meal me will. I specifically mentioned Boston Eugene my project because it's a democratically community owned capital that is owned by working class people color in Boston and like to me like when we're like we're trying to model what they're trying to model like these, you know, I think that we're looking at what the future can be because it's it's more, it's with you center folks and their needs and their vision and their wisdom like we're coming up with like incredible. Like this, this, this company is so much more like when when I was just like we could do something, you know, with formally incarcerated to provide economic security, but what they created with just access to resources just removing those barriers what they created is so much that I could have envisioned like like so much more than like just thinking through like what what's hot so I feel like these models that really center folks center folks in in the governance in the ownership and you know just take a different way and what y'all create is incredible. Yeah, and I'll add that, you know, in this co op innovation award that we've been doing for five years and we got over 100 applications from all over the country with amazing projects and what one trend that we've seen is folks using this and all sorts of different ways in their community so the model is flexible enough that it can work around what your specific needs are whether that's a service whether that's, you know, kind of culturally relevant language I mean it's it can be meet such a myriad of needs and that people are using it in such different ways and in in really kind of grassroots capacity so it's great to see that grow because we had we had a comment in the chat of, you know, something about co op cooperatives in Spain and when you look at scale and I know that there's a lot of international people at co op at at socap you can really see how this model can be scaled with the appropriate policy lovers as it has in Spain and Italy and other countries around the world. And we have a couple of more questions from the chat box. One was, can you talk more about the legal changes local and national needed to enable the ESOP and cooperative model models. I'm not sure if it's legal or if it's policy I'm not, I'm not quite sure. So, so I'll talk. I'll talk briefly about some some good things that we have been saying so about two summers ago, federal government passed the first kind of employee ownership related legislation that had a long time called the main stream ownership app, which basically encourage that the SBA to figure out to do to work to figure out how to properly underwrite employee owned businesses ESOP co op so that you know, you know, these employee owned businesses to start utilizing, you know, SBA products seven a loan to convert businesses and grow businesses. So there's some movement at the federal level. I'm sure a lot. And again, this is very US US focus. I'm sure you've heard about some of the or some of you heard about some of the legislation going out right now saying companies who are taking aid for COVID relief. There's a suggestion that they should have to provide some level of ownership share with their workforce. I'm not necessarily co op not necessarily ESOP but these ideas of aligning risk and reward of workforces with with the wealth creating potential companies are really stand so we're seeing there's going to be more legislation coming out the federal level. I see a lot of municipalities and a lot of states who are able to move more quickly do some really good things out there. So there's, there's good movement there that work to be done. I would argue that it's almost the capital class investing class to really see the value first and the way once the investing class is there, you know, government will eventually will eventually catch up. I mean, I guess for me, like eventually, I just, I think it should not be okay to rent people's time to hire people that you should have everybody who is part of a business should own that business I mean eventually what are the policy things that that I want to see is that is that you know democracy is not a political institution but an economic is part of our is woven into who we are economically as a society as well so I mean, long term, short term, because that's a long ways away. That's not a this lifetime thing so short term, I mean, if you have procurement preferences, or either requirements for like if we could move into social co op model where like the types of services that we all need food production energy, like, meet like our preference to be co artists or require to be co artists. That would be a really important step. Funding these initiatives providing more funding to so that people can pilot and and and try new things and fail with risking their whole, their whole lives and I think stuff like that would be helpful as well. So there's, there's a lot of potential policies that eventually, you know, hopefully we can have a different product economy. And I'll add that there's just a lot of people getting together on a local level to advocate and and talk about these issues. I'm not I know there's someone here from the DC co op stakeholders group that I'm on and is just a group of people who live in DC and we all get together and we're trying to think about policy and we're trying to think about ways to, to push these lovers and, and, and take advantage of, of this time of economic crisis to think about what could be in 2021 and beyond, which leads to another question that somebody asked in the chat. Do you believe co officer becoming more popular because of coven and current social justice rate racial equity discussions and actions, if so, how can you see sustaining this long in the long term? So I'll start and say and say yes. Yes, I think that that your intuition is is right there into the question of how do you sustain it. I know in our mind that just, you know, I don't know what you call it there. We feel there's a window of time, you know, the memory of the public tends to be short sometimes so there's a window where people are still feeling, you know, specifically on some of the racial justice issue are really focused on means of color and power and communities of color, protecting communities of color, and you know, this happened in their trend. So we think there's a there's a period of time where the public is focused on on wealth and means of color and safety means of color. And we're just talking to while that I'm still here to take advantage of the moment and really get things moving. Over things like it's going to be with us and the impacts of COVID are going to be with us for a very long time. And again, the vulnerability of workers, especially workers with color, especially essential workers is going to be clear for a very, very long time. And so I think we're recognizing that on a larger scale people feeling that personally is definitely going to move this work forward. And I'll just add that inequality isn't it's not getting better. I mean, our work is to address social bills that are accelerating and they can't imagine that without major policy changes, you know, reparations and other major policy changes that these are going to get better so we are demonstrating where I mean not only are we like using this moment we're also preparing for hopefully what could be a seismic shift and what are what our system like eventually right I mean I think this inequality is so out of hand right now, where the top 1% has grown some absurd amount of our land and our wealth in this country. And so, I think that these solutions only become more and more pertinent as those accelerate. One thing briefly, one thing that we have found is that there is, you know, some of you heard the silver tsunami, baby boomers, business owners retiring, looking for ways to dispose of their assets and liquidate their assets and can't and not being able to find them. That whole trend is accelerating in a very real way, and you have a lot of valuable commercial assets out there that are looking for a home that can't find you have owners who are aging and looking to exit, and they can't exit. And so there is a very real opportunity, you know, once in a generation opportunity, where, where the assets are looking for a place to go. And if we can catalyze the people the workers the teams in the capital to make it happen, we can, we can do some really important work during this very Great. Thank you all so much. I'll throw in one more question from the chat which is, how does it work when you have these employee owned worker owned companies and people leave how does that impact the business and how do you kind of set up for sustainability. Well, so just one thing that you just pay people out when they leave. And you make sure that you have that make it financially viable for the company but so I don't know, you want to talk about how we work. So for us, when people. Well, yeah, we just came out but one of our problems is when you are right. Yeah. So, to become if somebody was to leave. So when we hire a day after a certain amount of time they offer the opportunity to come as well, where we collect the small amount out of like 2000, obviously I have to pay to become a member of worker member so that's how people in. Right. And then we just pay them out if someone decided they just wanted to leave the business. In the east side model when people leave by law you have a certain amount of a certain amount of time over which you're, you know, you have to buy back the chairs that represent their ownership in the business so, you know, as a, you know, you mentioned the cash from the business you, you away where you're able to, to make people are able to, to the business sometimes you refinance the fashion now, or sometimes you just have to cash on the about these but there are ways to manage that cash flow, so that people are able to really utilize the services that they have as a worker owner. Okay, great. I think everyone. Thanks everyone for joining I want to thank our panelists everyone that was so active in the chat. Answering each other's questions and and getting into a robust discussion I want to encourage you you know between the folks that are on this panel we know a lot of people in the co op and worker ownership ecosystem so we're happy to do with some of our friends and colleagues, feel free to ping us on, you know, through so cap or LinkedIn or any of the, you know, the different tools that are out there and we look forward to, you know, the growth in this model and all of the collective visions for the future. So thanks everyone.


Appalachian Wireless is Appalachian Advantage. Unlimited text talk and two gigs of data for as low as $45 a month. Or if you like, get five lines on eight gigs of data for just $145 a month. Sea store for details. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless and East Kentucky Network Company. The Levitt Amp Your Town Music Series is an effort to bring live music to underused venues across the country. Both Middlesboro and Berea won the right to host the series this year. Folks in Whitesburg are now asking, why not us? An organizational meeting was held Monday night to plan a campaign to help build support for bringing the Levitt Amp Series to Whitesburg. There will be 15 communities chosen over the United States that will have access to free live music for a 10 week series during the summer. So Whitesburg has made it through the first round. So we're excited to think that there would be 10 weeks in a row that we'll be able to drive in and have free live music here in our city. The city has already cleared one hurdle in attracting the series. In beginning in November, people will be asked to show support for Whitesburg to be awarded the series. Organizers say for Whitesburg to win the right to host, people will have to vote in support of the city. The top 25 communities will go on to a review committee. So online voting does not determine the winner, but you can't be the winner unless we have that community support, which is evidenced by the online voting. Voting begins November 1st. Organizers of Monday's meeting are planning a kickoff event that same day and votes can be cast for the following 20 days. If Whitesburg is selected as a winner, the Levitt Amp concerts will be held in 2018. In Whitesburg, Chris Anderson, EKB news.


Well, it's time for another patreon poll this week. I have a very interesting and possibly divisive question our most Americans stupid now I will tell you my feelings on this because I thought long and hard about this But first I want to go to what people are saying about this now keep in mind. This is obviously not a scientific poll It's a very small sample size But I still think that it's really interesting to hear from people and see what they have to say going into this poll I expected the results to be kind of mixed But to my surprise it was skewed heavily in one way with most of my patreon followers definitely saying Yeah, most Americans are indeed stupid So I asked to what extent do you agree slash disagree with the following statement most Americans are stupid So as you can see most people voted totally agree Seven people voted agree twelve people voted somewhat agree So that is most people saying that they agree at least somewhat one person saying I don't know and then we have five people saying totally disagree to Votes for disagree and zero votes for somewhat disagree now This is honestly surprising again very small sample size, but it's surprising because I didn't expect that much people to be That cynical but at the same time it's not surprising that people are cynical given the political climate So, um, yeah, I want to talk about this. I'll share my thoughts I do want to get to the comments first because I think that what people share here It really did influence the way that I would have voted here So Justin personally says if you have to ask dot dot dot Good point.  Holy shit Some of the craziest people are seriously smart on a constant quest for knowledge But come to the wrong conclusions Walid Dumuni says I'm an immigrant who has lived in three countries before coming to the United States Americans are no more or less stupid than other people around the world each nation has its own blind spots Which seems to another nation as being stupid, but in reality this kind of judgment is a blind spot in itself Kandee Sanada says I would say they are more uninformed than stupid the people know We are getting a raw deal but get distracted with culture war issues Yeah, so lots of really thoughtful comments here and there were more that I didn't share But people have a really nuanced take on this and I think that they ultimately came to the right conclusion In terms of how I would have voted I would have been the only person to vote somewhat disagree I don't feel strongly about this question either way instinctively. I would answer.   That's not to say.    I think that they should wear helmets when they leave the house I'm surprised that they haven't spontaneously died by forgetting to breathe So there are stupid people in America that being said, I don't think most people are Stupid I disagree somewhat But I'm a little bit I'm waving on this right I Go from somewhat agree to somewhat disagree So maybe I could be in the I don't know category as well, but for me.   You at least have some capacity to think critically seemingly So just because you have bad politics, it doesn't mean that you're stupid overall But I think it is important to know that people do easily get misinformed people get let astray Really really easily and that is a problem that does kind of lead me to air towards somewhat agree But ultimately I don't agree now one thing that initially got me thinking I agree that most Americans are stupid it's because we keep electing people who are not looking out for our best interests and It's frustrating even if most Americans have Somewhat good instincts they agree with progressives and leftists on policy when you look at the polls Well, they keep voting for either Republicans or neoliberal Democrats So there's a disconnect there, right and it's nuanced.  It's yeah, I support a $15 an hour minimum wage But this culture war issue is more important to me. It's you know, the $15 an hour minimum wage is less salient to me than CRT because I don't want my kids to be taught that White people are bad because that's what I think the CRT is so it's it's complicated, right? But ultimately I am in going to thwart my cynical instinct and move away from agree And I'm ultimately going to land in the camp of somewhat disagree Because again people are complicated You know, it's think of politics as one separate portion of our lives It's hard to disaggregate politics because it affects virtually every aspect of your life But you have to do that because people don't necessarily put two and two together like that people are Different some people will think well, you know what?   They're not just like doing things that they that are knowingly going to hurt them But over time, you know, when you cover the worst of the worst when you talk about Lauren Boeber It's in the Marjorie greens of the world and anti-vaxxers consistently you kind of warped your own worldview So I wonder how much of that has skewed my take on this and and made me more cynical But ultimately when I really think long and hard about this I always land on the place of disagree now, you know That could change who knows but for now, you know, I think that I Somewhat disagree but a lot of people don't agree with that They agree for the most part that most Americans are stupid So yeah, honestly, I'm curious to know what you think in the comment section.  Remember most Americans not all Americans. I don't think it's a specific American thing I think there are elements about our culture and society.