Elections, Annual Meetings, Co-op Month and Thirty-Five Years of Serving our Membership

by Elizabeth Archerd, Member Services Manager

This is another Big Year for The Wedge. In July we passed the thirty-fifth anniversary of the organizational meeting that started the co-op. This November will mark thirty-five years since the Wedge opened its storefront in an apartment basement on Franklin Avenue. (Photos from the original store are on our web site.)

Since then, natural foods co-ops have moved out of the counterculture to shape mainstream ideas about food. Our work is ongoing because the majority of Americans still do not have access to the quality of food that Wedge shoppers rely on us to provide.

Please vote in our co-op election. Democracy in business is more important than ever. We want people to see the connections between their money, neighbors, power, health and the food producers in their regions. Cooperative entrepreneurship, or "co-entrepreneurship," is a way of taking back power over our lives. The real work of improving lives is often achieved through economic partnerships. Please participate in this exercise in economic democracy.

We are again offering our members the electronic voting option. New this year, our board candidates will post short videos on our web site www.wedge.coop. Many members have mentioned that they don't vote because they cannot get to know enough about a candidate through a written statement. We hope this gives you more to go on.

The 2009 Annual Meeting is being held at our wholesale arm, Co-op Partners Warehouse. We are pleased to announce that Mark Kastel will be our guest speaker. Mark is co-founder of The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based progressive farm policy research group. He acts as Senior Farm Policy Analyst and directs its Organic Integrity Project.

Lastly, October is Co-op Month. During times of economic uncertainty, cooperatives are a spectacular way for people to take charge of their lives. During the Great Depression, working Americans across the country spontaneously organized cooperatives. For example, one out-of-work WWI vet walked to a farm near Los Angeles and offered to harvest produce in exchange for a sack of vegetables. Soon his neighbors accompanied him to the farm. Within two months, five hundred families were members of the Unemployed Cooperative Relief Organization (UCRO), a unit of an organization that served 150,000 people. Ultimately such self-help groups served more than 1.3 million people in more than thirty states.

Never underestimate what we can accomplish together. Go-Co-op!