How we organize ourselves is critically important.
If we organize ourselves around cooperative principles, we will mostly act cooperatively.
However, if we organize ourselves around competitive principles, competition will ensue.
Now, at a societal level, western society as a whole is organized based on competition, and particularly, war as the ultimate competition.
Our task is to reorganize our local communities along cooperative principles so as to become more resilient in a world gone mad facing unstoppable climate change. However, we must be clear in our minds about this: we cannot recreate more resilient local communities using the same competitive principles that created the mess we're in:

The corporation has no place in the human future: it is a sociopathic invention by pathologically greedy people to rob society blind.

Co-ops are the primary vehicle for weaning a local community off of corporations. The only legal forms of conducting in towns should be single-owner, partnership, and co-op. More below.

Climate change is drying out the planet's already dry areas. And agricorps have worked diligently to worsen the soil and destroy ecosystems for more profits. The climate news can be most depressing. April was another record-breaking month, the 7th in a row. Yikes. If you live in a drying area, you might be interested in permaculture's practical lessons for greening the desert. More below.

A few years back when Occupy was all the rage, the move your money campaign (https://ilsr.org/tag/move-your-money/) taught me to think about my personal values and how that interacted with my personal banking. I mean, banking sounds so neutral doesn't it? It seems like something we do outside of our daily living, where we make all of our moral decisions.
Then I realized that banking is a value-laden activity. Now it seems obvious, but before I was oblivious to this fact. I'd like to make the case for moving your money to a credit union, as our family has done. More below.

Here's a hopeful video for our morning coffee. Its the 2nd edition of In Transition, a Transition Network video about how Transition projects are changing local communities all over the world. It is a cheerful one-hour with happy people telling their stories of success. More below.

Are you tired of local communities who prostrate themselves before corporations: giving them tax breaks, handshake deals on by-law enforcement, and preferential treatment by politicians (often for cash contributions), only to see the same corporations outsource jobs overseas, pollute the environment, and send profits far away? Well, there is an alternative, one that has been growing together in Cleveland, Ohio since 2009. More below.

The cooperative is a form of organization for business or for consumers that works for the betterment of the local community - its people, environment, and its economy.
This is Part 3 in a three-part series on co-ops.
Part 1 is here http://caucus99percent.com/content/resilience-co-ops-101-introduction-co...
Part 2 http://caucus99percent.com/content/resilience-co-ops-101-introduction-co...

If you haven't noticed by now, allow me to point out that in the Resilience Group we're building a resource base for political revolution at the local community level. (And at the personal level.)

* We have a four-part series on Democratic Socialism herehttp://caucus99percent.com/content/local-resilience-democratic-socialism...
* We have this three-part series on the basics of Cooperatives, with many more specific posts planned.
* We have the concrete examples of towns that have transformed themselves into flourishing local resilience:
Totnes, England, the most resilient town in the world and founder of the global Transition Town movement. See here http://caucus99percent.com/content/local-resilience-transition-town-totn...
Wilpoldsried, Germany, which used renewable energy to transform itself into a resilient social-democratic rural town. See here http://caucus99percent.com/content/resilience-democratic-socialism-appro...

If we keep at it, we will collect tons of resources on c99 for folks willing and able to do the work of transforming their local communities. The Community Page will continue to raise consciousness of the iniquities of our corporate-ruled world. And the Resilience Group will continue to build resources for building resilient local communities and resilient individuals to thrive despite the corporatist rule.

As for Part 3 of Co-ops 101, see below.

Corporate capitalism has failed western societies. In the western world, inequality is at its highest on record, the environment is threatened, and local communities have become corporate dependencies. Presently, many businesses in a community are not local, but are franchises of a national or multinational corporation that pays its workers as little as possible, ruins the environment, and sends the profits to investors far away. Many consumers are left isolated individually with no bargaining power.
In order to grow resilient local economies, communities will have to develop co-operative local businesses and local organizations to break the stranglehold that multinational corporations have on them.
The cooperative is a form of organization for business or for consumers that works for the betterment of the local community - its people, environment, and its economy. This is Part 2 in a three-part series on co-ops. Part 1 is here http://caucus99percent.com/content/resilience-co-ops-101-introduction-co...
More below.

It is very satisfying to point out the inequities in life, to rail against the obnoxious ones among us, yet in doing so we become the obnoxious ones. We become the person cutting into line at the grocery, or cutting off another driver trying to get out of the parking lot, just to secure our 'proper' place in line, but in reality just sowing more inequity behind us. Such counter-productive behavior is almost human nature; I myself can be obnoxious and casually, even unconsciously and inadvertently, spew inequities and insults toward others who will then cut me off as I try to exit the grocery parking lot later on today.

Corporate capitalism has failed western societies. In the western world, inequality is at its highest on record, the environment is threatened, and local communities have become corporate dependencies. Presently, many businesses in a community are not local, but are franchises of a national or multinational corporation that pays its workers as little as possible, ruins the environment, and sends the profits to investors far away. Many consumers are left isolated individually with no bargaining power.
In order to grow resilient local economies, communities will have to develop local businesses and local organizations to break the stranglehold that multinational corporations have on them.
The cooperative is a form of organization for business or for consumers that works for the betterment of the local community - its people, environment, and its economy. This is the first in a three-part series on co-ops. More below.

Corporatist economics creates giant, global business organizations and concentrates property ownership into the hands of oligarchs. Corporatist economics creates massive obstacles to property accumulation for ordinary individuals.
"True dat, G, but how does that relate to local or personal sufficiency? Such topics seem to be more macro-economic in nature, rather than local or personal. What gives?"
Well, I have little hope of democratic-socialism ever being imposed from the top down. Nor should it. Democratic-socialism should be built from the bottom up. We need to work democratic-socialist principles into the social fabric of our local communities and spread the good news from there.
Very, very few progressives know anything about democratic-socialist principles; we've been immersed in corporatist culture all our lives. We know what we're against, but we struggle to imagine the alternative and how to implement it. This series presents the alternative; you can find it in the Resilience Group's essay queue. Part 4 starts below.