Members of NASCO staff, board, and member co-ops attended the US Social Forum on June 22 - 26 in Detroit, MI.  NASCO's goals going into the Forum were to: 1. Raise Cooperative Movement profile; 2. Expand NASCO's Resource Base; 3. Engage in Dialogues; Build NASCO's Analysis.  Some of the highlights of the Social Forum include:

Workshops

Tom Pierson, Exeuctive Director, partnered with Mark Fick of the Chicago Community Loan Fund and Emily Ng of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, to present a workshop called The Role of Cooperatives in Creating Permanently Affordable Housing.

Mingwei Huang, Director of Education & Training, presented a workshop called Building Democratic Structures into Non-Profit and Collective Organizations with the help of Critical Resistance, a national non-profit organization working to abolish the Prison Industrial Complex, and Chris Dixon, a long-time anti-authoritarian activist. The workshop aimed to create a space for exchanging practices and ideas for democratizing non-profit and collective organizations through examining space & technology, interpersonal relations, governance, human resources, and fundraising & budgets.

During a workshop put on by the Responsible Endowments Coalition on The Democratization of Higher Education: The Crisis and Beyond, NASCO staff discussed how democratically owned housing and student-run businesses can serve as tools for transferring university wealth to the control of students.

People's Movement Assemblies

People's Movement Assemblies (PMA's) are gatherings of people representing regions or issues such as healthcare, education, climate justice, or housing.  These groups work to set the strategic direction for moving each issue forward.  Neily Jennings, Director of Education & Training, had the opportunity to represent NASCO as a co-sponsor of one of fifty People's Movement Assemblies held at the Social Forum, Imagining and Building a Peoples Based Solidarity Economy.

The solidarity economy centers on people and the environment instead of profit. It promotes solidarity, equity, participatory democracy, sustainability, and pluralism. Participants in this PMA discussed current economic conditions, identified solutions that are emerging to address economic injustice, and called on people to take action during a National Week of Action by moving money out of corporate financial institutions, mapping the solidarity economy, holding local People's Movement Assemblies on the solidarity economy, and promoting local awareness through public and free events.

NASCO staff and board members had the opportunity to attend several other People's Movement Assemblies and assist with documentation, which is posted at www.pma2010.org [1].

Dialogue and Networking

NASCO staff and board members built relationships with organizations working on popular education, housing issues, campus organizing, mapping, community media, youth issues, and various other topics. Several Social Forum presenters have been recruited to facilitate workshops at NASCO's 2010 Cooperative Education and Training Institute this November.

Spaces for arts, culture, and socializing outside of workshops were essential, and NASCO members bumped into each other at concerts at Hart Plaza, over lunch in local diners, and at the epic Leftist Lounge, held on the final night of the forum.  NASCO also promoted cooperatives by giving away "Twin Pines" temporary tattoos and postcards promoting the November Institute.