Grow Food Northampton is a proud co-sponsor of this panel conversation to celebrate the David Ruggles Center for History and Education, and highlight the 1840s worker-owned cooperative at the center of Florence’s progressive past. 

Organizing businesses as worker-owned cooperatives, either as start-ups or conversions, feels today like an idea whose time has come. New models are emerging that can be productive and profitable and work for everyone, not just a select few. In fact, these progressive structures are not brand new but have deep roots in Pioneer Valley history. Historian Christopher Clark, author of The Communitarian Moment: The Radical Challenge of the Northampton Association, and Steve Strimer, thirty-year member of Collective Copies, explore a bold experiment that created a democratic workplace in Florence in 1842.

The conversation is moderated by public historian Tom Goldscheider of the David Ruggles Center. Introducing the panel is Larisa Demos, a founding member of Flat Iron Coop in Bellows Falls, Vermont who worked several years at the 45-year-old Green Mountain Spinnery Co-op. She is the current Board president of the Valley Alliance of Worker Co-operatives.

Purchase your sliding scale tickets at bombyx.live/events/