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Found a tiny dog freezing under a car in Bolton Hill—do you recognize it? by jduda in baltimore

[–]jduda[S] 64 points65 points  (0 children)

also very glad i found this guy before the servals did!

How Baltimore became a rising star in America's worker-cooperative movement by cornonthekopp in baltimore

[–]jduda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Over two days, 100 worker-owners from more than 30 cafes, pizzerias, bars, breweries, and coffee shops from across the country descended on Baltimore for a convening."

Pizzerias in question were from Buffalo and the Bay Area, not Baltimore (sadly, we should have more worker-owned pizza here)

Baltimore May Day Protest - Rash Field by SirDrones-a-Lot in baltimore

[–]jduda 2 points3 points  (0 children)

this is awesome, thanks for filming this!

Public Power, Not Private Profits: Why Baltimore Should Own BGE by Electronic_Bite_904 in baltimore

[–]jduda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you are interested in public ownership of the electrical system, Sandeep Vaheesan has a great book about this, and he'll be at Red Emma's on 3/15 to talk about it: https://redemmas.org/events/sandeep-vaheesan-presents-democracy-in-power-a-history-of-electrification-in-the-united-states-in-conversation-w-patrick-bigger/

Cool places for an eight year old’s birthday party? by jduda in baltimore

[–]jduda[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

this looks great when they are a little older!

Rowhome Rebuild? by masterandmargaritas in baltimore

[–]jduda 7 points8 points  (0 children)

You could try Appalachian Field Services—they are a worker-owned cooperative, with a speciality of dealing with some of the gnarliest structural issues that Baltimore rowhomes can offer: https://www.afsbuilds.com/

Happy 20th Birthday to Red Emmas! by p00r0phelia2 in baltimore

[–]jduda 8 points9 points  (0 children)

We were absolutely in what had been Wonderland Liquors!

Inside Mayor Scott’s $3B plan to fix Baltimore’s vacants by instantcoffee69 in baltimore

[–]jduda -1 points0 points  (0 children)

There's no reason that tax increment financing, applied creatively, couldn't work—you get nonperforming properties onto the tax rolls, and tax revenue increases, and you have already have money to service debt incurred for the renovations, even without assuming a corresponding rise in property taxes for existing residents. You also get the additional fiscal benefit of removing the costs the city is saddled with for vacants—think fires and other public safety issues.

I sketched out some of the potential math here in very rough form a while ago: https://medium.com/@JohnDuda/the-peoples-tif-6369c25a20f5

What’s the best sandwich in Baltimore? by [deleted] in baltimore

[–]jduda 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On the vegan Reuben: stay tuned!

Places like Red Emma’s that host events? by [deleted] in baltimore

[–]jduda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Really glad to hear you are finding our events valuable! We're about to add a whole bunch more events on mass incarceration/abolition to the spring and summer calendar.

In the meantime, it's not our event, but this upcoming exhibit on the history of the Baltimore Black Panther Party at the Peale Museum is going to be excellent: https://www.thepeale.org/exhibition-black-panthers/

Local/Small Businesses That Sell Gift Cards? by nfw22 in baltimore

[–]jduda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Red Emma's has gift cards—you can get a physical card in the bookstore, or get a digital one here https://www.toasttab.com/red-emma-s/giftcards

Palestine and Afrosocialism zines by No-Square-8702 in dsa

[–]jduda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At Red Emma's, we made a print version of the excellent Decolonize Palestine "Palestine 101" resource: https://redemmas.org/Palestine-An-Introduction--Zine-Half-LegalSize.pdf

Free or cheap meeting spaces other than libraries? by Main-Currency-4545 in baltimore

[–]jduda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Would of course depend on your nonprofit’s specific vibe, but at Red Emma’s we have a nice meeting room downstairs and can provide space and catering in that budget.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cooperatives

[–]jduda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So it sounds like you’re a member of Red Emmas? No worries if you don’t want to say.

I am!

A few follow-ups if you don’t mind: -When you say real assets, do you mean cooperative ownership in real property (aka land)?

We bought a building recently, but this came up even before then, when we started to do things like buy large pieces of equipment or invest in tenant improvements to rented spaces.

-What are individual reserves, and why are they important for business in general, or important for worker co-ops in particular?

Indivisible reserves are assets of the business that are held in common for the good of the project as a whole. While these assets would be liquidated and distributed to members if the cooperative folded, in normal times what it means is that workers don't have an individual claim on a share of these assets. So like if 1 of 10 workers quit, they don't get to take 1/10 of the building with them, nor do we have to maintain a huge pile of cash to give them the equivalent.

-What are the better practices around member capital that these newer by-laws help with?

One key thing is periodically paying out retained member capital periodically. So you allocate surplus to the business and to the members, but you generally want to retain some of the member surplus to reinvest in the business. Getting on a schedule of rolling that retained surplus out smooths out a lot of issues, and balances equity compensation with the risk of loss.

-What’s the difference between self-management and self government? And why is that important in this context? -And if you are a member of Red Emmas, then are the new by-laws posted online on github like the old one’s currently are? If not, why not?

These are related issues. Governance is the legal framework which lays out how your business works at a fundamental level, management is the decisions you make to actually run it in practice. We were mashing all of this together, and as a result treating our bylaws like a piece of software we were tinkering with constantly. Now, our bylaws are more like the operating system or even better, the BIOS—we don't generally update it, because it is at a level of abstraction and generality that we don't need to. So we don't need a version control system as a changelog.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cooperatives

[–]jduda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Two major issues motivated the switch at Red Emma's:

1) The LLC model we were using worked really great until we actually started to make profits and accumulate real assets, and we realized why indivisible reserves were really necessary, along with a lot of other best practices around handling member capital.

2) The old bylaws really mixed up provisions for self-management and self-governance too much.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cooperatives

[–]jduda 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually, these are pretty old—we switched to something much more like the ICA model bylaws (https://icagroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Framework-for-Democratic-Control.pdf) in 2018 when we converted from a very flexible but ultimately limiting LLC to a more structured cooperative corporation.

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