By Christina Clamp
Southern New Hampshire College (retired)
The Solidarity and Social Economy (SSE) is very active in the United States. The USSEN (About USSEN – U.S. Solidarity Economy Network) is the hub for the SSE in the United States and has strong ties to such US cooperative groups as the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, Wellspring Cooperative and Cooperation Jackson. The Massachusetts Solidarity Economy Network (MASEN) is affiliated with USSEN. USSEN has a good map with businesses they believe are committed to SE principles. The New Economy Coalition also looks at US SE work.
One well established group in the SSE in the US is the North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO) that organizes and educates affordable group equity co-ops and their members for the purpose of promoting a community-oriented cooperative movement. It got started as the developer of student housing cooperatives in the United States. At a recent NASCO conference, there was a strong focus amongst attendees on growing the SSE in the USA. This is a good illustration of how SSE is grounded in people building economic alternatives with the principles of social solidarity, cooperation, egalitarianism, sustainability, and economic democracy
The US SSE movement has benefitted from support for growing clean energy projects from the Biden administration with a particular focus on communities most impacted by the closure of coal mines and the loss of manufacturing due to global offshoring of jobs. Reimagine Appalachia is a broad based and inclusive coalition of leaders and organizations in the Ohio River Valley region of Appalachia that aligns well with the SSE principles. The coalitions’ blueprint has three priority areas for addressing past failures in the regional economy: create new opportunities for extractive industry workers and build career ladders for young people from all races and backgrounds; advocacy for national climate change legislation and federal economic stimulus packages to bring much-needed resources into the region; and, build on the existing social and solidarity economy to create new local entrepreneurship, unionized jobs with better wages and promotion of cooperatives to ensure a regional economy that is not controlled by outside capital investors (ReImagineAppalachia_Blueprint_042021).
Bipartisan legislation has also secured new support for state employee ownership centers modeled on the Vermont Employee Ownership Center and the Ohio Center for Employee Ownership. Grant awards are scheduled to start in 2025 and will increase as the federal appropriations for the program increase over the next five years. The funding is designed to promote employee ownership through education and training, fund research about state employee ownership centers and develop a clearinghouse on best practices in employee ownership to then be disseminated. This funding should help to raise awareness about the benefits of employee ownership, including worker cooperatives. Key to the ability of these federal initiatives to proceed will be a reliance on bipartisan support in the US Congress. Given the outcome of the US elections, it is unclear how much of these programs will be supported by the Trump administration and Republican Congress. US citizens voted for a change in Washington. Those of us in the SSE movement will need to make the case that these federal programs are there for the very people who voted for change!
My involvement with the Social Economy dates back to my undergraduate studies and a doctorate in Social Economy. This journey eventually took me to the Basque country of Spain in 1982 where I conducted doctoral research on the management of the Mondragon cooperatives and then an academic career teaching in the field of cooperatives and community economic development at Southern New Hampshire University.
The early years of the social economy in the US centered on the loss of manufacturing with efforts to preserve good jobs through the worker co-op/ESOP development efforts. We founded the ICA Group and the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF) as part of those efforts. Both organizations continue this important work. Throughout my career I have served on boards in support of the broader co-op communities, in capacity building of community development credit unions, community development corporations and food cooperatives. I have also maintained an active scholarship including publications about shared services cooperatives and the Mondragon cooperatives. In October 2024, I was honored with induction into the US Cooperative Hall of Fame in recognition of my contributions to the cooperatives movement.
Education has been at the heart of my activism over the years. I was delighted when asked to contribute a chapter on education to the Encyclopedia of the Social and Solidarity Economy (Encyclopedia of the Social and Solidarity Economy – A Collective Work of the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on SSE (UNTFSSE) | Elgar Online: The online content platform for Edward Elgar Publishing) in 2023. Education is key to our efforts to bring a new generation into support of SSE. With my colleague, Colleen Tapley, we documented the role of education in Korea, Europe, India and Tanzania. The Association of Sarva Seva Farms introduced weekend schools for children during the pandemic as a way to support parents who were faced with the dilemma of caring for their children while working. In higher education, we found universities are utilizing technology and collaborative relationships to support college students through incubators to become intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs.
What are the current SSE trends in higher education to promote cooperatives in the US? An important resource for legal incorporation of worker cooperatives is provided by City University of New York (CUNY) through its Law Clinic (CUNY). The CUNY Law Clinic also established a cooperative agreement in 2023 that brings Mondragon University students to New York each spring semester where they are taking classes at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Xavier University in Cincinnati has been working closely with Co-op Cincy as part of growing their cooperative ecosystem.
Still the United States has lagged in the development of curriculum for the study of cooperatives. There are two emerging initiatives that are going beyond a stand-alone course on cooperatives. Most of the U.S. co-op studies programs are focused on agricultural cooperatives at such schools as University of Wisconsin and Cornell University. Discussions are taking place with an Atlanta, Georgia business school to form a center for cooperatives. At Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), work has begun to integrate the study of cooperatives across the business school curriculum. We do not have an established American CIRIEC chapter yet, but I am hopeful that it will be possible in the near future.
