New York City’s history is rich with examples of winning people’s movements and progressive change — and we’ve shared many of those stories on Laura Flanders & Friends. With the election of Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s first democratic socialist mayor, initiatives like city-owned grocery stores and public banking will introduce even more people to the new economy models we champion on this show. But the question of the city’s economy is not new. Today we’re turning back the clock to 2019, the year we learned about worker cooperatives and public ownership experiments in New York at a conference held at the City University of New York College of Labor and Urban Studies, or CUNY SLU.
J. Phillip Thompson, the city’s deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives at the time, explained that the local government could build democratically-run companies, and anchor institutions like hospitals could commit to spending their dollars at these firms. “The idea that the private economy will take care of everyone’s prosperity and all you have to do is leave it alone is a myth,” he shared. “Local government has to step up, and we actually have to plan and ensure that our public dollars are being used in the best possible way for the residents of this city.”
One of those democratically-run companies in the city is Cooperative Home Care Associates in the Bronx — the largest worker-owned co-op in the country. Homecare workers fought to make $15 an hour, worker-owner Gladys Drew told me, but oftentimes those wages were not enough to make ends meet. What made the difference for the worker owners was that the profits from the co-op went right back to the employees — not a CEO. “I think everyone should be a worker owner because it’s a lot to go with the check. It’s a lot of perks.”
Worker co-ops come in all shapes and sizes, as you’ll learn in the episode. Worker-owners at a cooperative kitchen in Brooklyn told me their work was part of a larger movement against capitalism and imperialism, and Co-op Power President Lynn Benander and I discussed how a cooperative model could work in the energy sector. These are not pie in the sky ideas — catch the show on public television and radio, and see for yourself. Today there are more than 100 worker-owned cooperatives in New York City. The seeds of change were planted all those years ago; could they bloom under the Mamdani administration?
