Metropolitics

Cooperating in Democracies

Evan Casper-Futterman — 2023-01-13T06:00:00Z

Evan Casper-Futterman reviews Practicing Cooperation: Mutual Aid Beyond Capitalism by Andrew Zitcer, which reflects on the role of cooperation in democratic societies, and specifically the importance of practices of cooperation for a more just society.
Practicing Cooperation (2021) is a timely reflection on the necessity of cooperation in democratic societies. Andrew Zitcer asks us to consider the many spaces where cooperation already exists, at various scales from the body to society. The

- Reviews / social justice, democracy, cooperation, cooperative enterprises

The Just Transition, Economic Democracy, and the Green New Deal

Evan Casper-Futterman & Jason Spicer — 2019-11-05T06:00:00Z

Can participatory and economic democracy in the US support a Green New Deal? Evan Casper‑Futterman and Jason Spicer review two recent books that assess how radical social and institutional transformation could make a Green New Deal effective, and underscore the challenges that remain.
Earlier this year, US Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez introduced a Congressional resolution for a Green New Deal (GND), an idea since supported by a number of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. The

- Reviews / environmental justice, just transition, democracy, participatory democracy, economic democracy, Green New Deal, United States, participation

Overcoming the “Scalar Stalemate” in Community Development

Evan Casper-Futterman — 2016-10-14T12:05:22Z

When urban practitioners undertake local projects, they are often working not only to achieve material gains in economically distressed neighborhoods but also to promote democracy, cooperation, equity, justice, and mutualism. Yet the existence of this strong set of counterhegemonic principles uniting community land trusts, cooperative enterprises, and credit unions also creates tension around the question of how to scale them up and increase their impact. In this essay, Evan Casper-Futterman

- Essays / community land trusts, community development, scale, cooperative enterprises, credit unions