We will end this week's discussion of global banking 1% and it's use of far-right wing global corporate MARXISM these several decades to take civilized, peaceful communities and nations to civil unrest civil wars to sack and loot them corrupting the entire political and economic system as has been happening here in US these few decades of MOVING FORWARD CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.
The novel SALT HOUSES as we said does a great job at showing how a society is attacked largely through global banking 1% media but as well through civil structures like our religious institutions to undermine trust and create fear.
We spoke yesterday of MUSTAFA a character being that upper-middle/merely rich Palestinian family forced out during wars in near east. Later in the story we see MUHAMMAD the son of a third generation of same family being upper-middle/merely rich the family having migrated to KUWAIT. Both men were torn over the fate of first their Palestine 99% of citizens captured in refugee/occupation status-----then the IRAQI migration of refugees into KUWAIT. This one family tied to being WINNERS as middle/merely rich saw in only a few generations continuous wars undermine every opportunity and access to rebuilding their wealth.
IS CITIZENS' OVERSIGHT MARYLAND REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVES TRYING TO SCARE NEW IMMIGRANTS OR OUR US 99%? NO, EDUCATING WITH REAL INFORMATION EMPOWERS ---
Today's new to America immigrants need to understand the US has been taken to colonial status---it is no longer the strong real left social progressive capitalist society----it is MOVING FORWARD to being that brutal, third world global corporate industrial MARXIST colony.
Want Educated Immigrants?
Let In More Africans
Highly skilled? Check. Hardworking? Check. English-speaking? Check. Ready to integrate? Check.
By
Justin Fox
May 16, 2018, 9:00 AM EDT
The uproar over White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s comments about illegal immigration in an interview with National Public Radio last week still hasn’t entirely died down. I haven’t found the resulting discussion to be super-enlightening, so, as I did with an earlier Kelly comment about how nobody knows anybody in the military anymore, I decided to see if a few charts might clear things up.
To review, Kelly argued that most undocumented immigrants are “not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society.” He went on:
They're overwhelmingly rural people in the countries they come from — fourth, fifth, sixth grade educations are kind of the norm. They don't speak English, obviously that's a big thing. They don't speak English. They don't integrate well, they don't have skills. They're not bad people. They're coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws.
So … let’s dig into the data. More than 70 percent of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are from Mexico and Central America, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Mexico is by far the most common country of origin, but the population of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. (both documented and undocumented) actually fell 6 percent from 2007 to 2015, according to the Pew Research Center, while the numbers of Salvadorans, Hondurans and Guatemalans in the U.S. continued to grow. So when we talk about illegal immigration into the U.S., we’re mainly talking about immigration from those four countries, with El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala playing a growing role and Mexico a huge but shrinking one. And yes, most of those who have come to the U.S. from these countries are probably of rural origin, although (1) there’s not much good data on that and (2) there are indications that the rural share has been getting less “overwhelming” in recent years as Mexico and El Salvador, the two biggest sources of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., have urbanized.
Much better data is available on the characteristics of foreign-born people here in the U.S., most of it from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, an annual survey of about 2 million households first conducted in 2005. The ACS does not sort immigrants by whether they have permission to be in the U.S. or not. 1 (Estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., in fact, are arrived at by taking the totals from the ACS and subtracting out the numbers of temporary and permanent lawful residents provided by the Department of Homeland Security.) Still, it offers much insight into the characteristics of different immigrant groups. To get back to Kelly’s comment, here are the countries from which immigrants in the U.S. have the least formal education, according to the 2016 ACS:
So yes, the people who have come to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America tend not to have a lot of schooling. The European nations of Portugal, Italy and Greece are also on this list, although most immigrants from those countries arrived in the U.S. a long time ago so there’s understandably not much grumbling about them. Meanwhile, the countries from which the most-educated foreign-born U.S. residents hail make for quite a diverse bunch.
The list of countries from which immigrants in the U.S. are least likely to struggle with English are, unsurprisingly, all English-speaking countries, so I’m not going to bother with a chart. Extra credit, though, to the Netherlands and Germany for making the top 10 despite having their own languages, and to Trinidad & Tobago for beating out the U.K. for first place.
It’s important to remember, though, that immigrants from non-English-speaking countries have always struggled with the language. Many millions of immigrants from Germany, Italy and other European countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries never did become fluent in English. But their children did!
The kids of today’s immigrants are learning English, too: Of people born in the U.S. who speak Spanish at home, reports the Census Bureau, 83 percent also speak English very well. The percentage is slightly higher — 87 percent — among those who speak other Indo-European languages at home, and is again 83 percent for those who speak Asian and Pacific languages at home.
Finally, there’s Kelly’s assertion that undocumented immigrants don’t integrate well. Language ability is one measure of integration. Employment is surely another one. When I ran a list of the countries from which immigrants in the U.S. have the highest employment-to-population ratio, some familiar names popped up:
The employment-population ratio for Mexican-born U.S. residents, by the way, is 65.5 percent, which ranks it 28th out of the 80 countries for which there’s data. There are some caveats I should trot out here: The immigrant populations from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are younger and more male than the overall U.S. population, which skews employment ratios upward, and since this data covers everyone age 16 and up, college and even high school students count against the total — which brings the ratio down among groups likely to pursue higher education. Still, their strong employment performance isn't a fluke; the Cato Institute's David Bier offers up lots of other evidence that Central Americans are integrating pretty well.
The foreign-born residents with the lowest employment-population ratios hail mainly from countries (Hungary, Italy, Greece, Germany) from which most immigrants arrived decades ago and are now in their 60s or older. The very lowest employment-population ratio, though, is for those born in Saudi Arabia, most of whom are in the U.S. for college or graduate school. And while no other country of origin has a majority of its U.S. residents currently enrolled in higher education, Kenya, Nigeria, Nepal and Ghana have the highest percentages after Saudi Arabia. So immigrants from Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana are near the top in both employment-population ratio and higher-education enrollment, and those from Nigeria are also near the top in educational attainment.
With that, let me offer my two cents on Kelly’s statement: It appears to be factually accurate in most of its characterizations of today’s undocumented immigrants, and I think the people decrying it as “racist” are for the most part just devaluing the term “racist.” His “they don’t integrate well” comment grates, though, given that Kelly and most other Americans are descended at least in part from rural people with limited education who didn’t speak any English when they got here. And while there is a case to be made that education and English are far more important to success in the U.S. than they were a century ago, one certainly can’t depict Central Americans in particular as sitting around twiddling their thumbs wondering how they will ever integrate into U.S. society. They’re too busy working.
Also — and nothing Kelly said contradicted this, but some things his boss has reportedly said certainly have — what the charts above tell me is that if we want more high-skilled, hardworking, English-speaking, ready-to-integrate immigrants, it looks like the most obvious place to find them is in African countries where English is widely spoken.
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WITHOUT SURPRISE THIS NOVEL'S CENTRAL THEME IS -----LETTING GO------------AND THINKING THE GRASS WILL BE GREENER.
Why are our global 99% of immigrants coming to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES? Because global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS made FAILED STATES of their nations and the same global banking 1% are tied to refugee camps and sending these refugees and displaced middle-merely rich to be EX-PATS. SALT HOUSE paints last century's cool and favorite destinations PARIS/BOSTON USA as the place to be free when both US/Boston and PARIS are MOVING FORWARD to being the same FAILED STATES/CONTINUOUS WARS/CIVIL UNREST as those Asian,Arabic, African nations these new immigrants are trying to escape.
SALT HOUSES does a good job balancing the emotion around people having to live in a global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS sacking and looting continuous war zone. Sons and daughters rebel-------sons and daughters embrace the occupying culture. In both cases families were torn apart and both the rebels and conformist members of family suffered.
We understand that these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA those new to US highly-skilled and factory immigrants were SELECTED to come to US because they were 5% freemason/Greek players overseas no doubt being that FAKE CIVIL UNREST CIVIL WAR PLAYER----
The American people have not experienced these kinds of attacks by global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS since our US civil war---but then that war did not push our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE out of our sovereign nation-----as today's MOVING FORWARD goals intend.
Book review:
Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses is an epic tale of one Palestinian family’s displacement
What begins as a tightly focused tale of upheaval for one strand of a family soon begins charting the displacement of several generations in the course of six decades.
Malcolm ForbesMay 18, 2017
Updated: May 18, 2017 04:00 AM
Part of the book explores the refugee crisis of the 1991 Gulf War. Peter Turnley / Corbis / Getty Images
Early into Hala Alyan’s remarkable debut novel, Hussam Yacoub, the patriarch of a wealthy Palestinian family, asks his daughter’s suitor where he intends to settle. “In my homeland, sir,” comes the reply. “Nothing under this sky will budge me.” But that sky grows overcast, and in time Israeli tanks roll in and the whole family is budged out by war and buffeted into exile – “far from this blazing country split in two”. What begins as a tightly focused tale of condensed upheaval and relocation for one strand of a family soon expands into a sprawling and engrossing epic charting the turbulent displacement and dispersal of several generations in the course of six decades.
Salt Houses opens in Nablus in 1963 with Salma, Hussam’s wife. On the eve of her daughter Alia’s wedding, she casts back 15 years to the days of terror that forced the family to flee their Jaffa villa. But Salma also looks forward, noting with alarm the ominous grounds in Alia’s coffee cup, which portend “an exterior life, an unsettled life”.
From here, Alyan proceeds in sharp shifts, devoting each chapter to a different family member at a further point in time. Before we properly meet Alia and discover just how unsettled a life she is leading, we fast forward to 1965 and a segment about her brother, Mustafa. With his father dead and his mother starting anew in Amman, he has inherited the family house in Nablus and lives lazily there. A sense of purpose arrives via “boys-only meetings” at a mosque after dark led by an impassioned imam who lectures young men about war, patriotism and lost land. “We are pawns in a sick and depraved game,” he tells Mustafa. “We can either play or overturn the chessboard.”
Once again, Alyan makes her reader wait to learn of a character’s fate. She switches next to Alia, who, while visiting her sister Widad in Kuwait City in 1967, is hot, homesick and pregnant. When the Arab-Israeli War of that year breaks out, she is also fearful and confused (“That almost-week jumbled everything”). Then, at one point during her stay, she is assailed by a sudden wave of grief. Mustafa, we are finally told, disappeared and “died somewhere in an Israeli prison”.
Thus the novel unfolds kaleidoscopically and elliptically, and to supremely good effect. Some segments are more absorbing than others. Atef, Alia’s husband, emerges as a flawed and fascinating individual, a proud and happy family man routinely plagued by nightmares of past torture and haunted by his best friend Mustafa’s absence. His two daughters, Riham and Souad, are extreme personalities, “one godless and unruly, the other veiled and earnest and married.” The family is once again uprooted when Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, and various descendants are scattered as far afield as Beirut, Paris and the United States. Each place reshapes them – to the extent that for some of the younger generations, unvisited Palestine remains foreign, distant and abstract. That is until Alyan’s terrific final chapter, which follows Souad’s American-based daughter, Manar, making a pilgrimage to the land of her grandparents to trace her heritage. She gets off to a bad start: at Ben Gurion International Airport she is singled out and interrogated; in Nablus she feels claustrophobic and “like an interloper, trespassing on memories that had nothing to do with her”. Only when she arrives in Jaffa and reads through old family letters does she experience a faint yet vital twinge of kinship.
Alyan is a Palestinian-American poet and much of her novel taps into her own mixed make-up and showcases her lyrical facility. Her language can be supple and gentle (“the contradictory weight of eggs”) and necessarily fierce and harsh, particularly when examining the problems of identity. “You’re fair-weather Arabs,” scoffs one character to his westernised counterparts. “No wonder you’re messed up,” says another. “You’ve been emotionally code-switching all your life.”
Only occasionally does Alyan’s phrasings feel overblown, her metaphors forced. “Their marriage had a glove compartment, a hollow, cluttered space where emotional debris went.” Later, and in a similar vein: Palestine “was a hat rack for all her discontent”. Otherwise, Alyan maintains perfect poise, recounting births, deaths and marriages and rendering the twin trials of displacement and assimilation in captivating prose that manages to be both tender and powerful.
A family tree on the first pages may actually end up a disincentive, as recent fictional sagas have been thick with tangled branches, resulting in readers losing their way or their patience. In contrast, Salt Houses contains just the right amount of offshoots – that is, well-drawn, fully formed characters who affect us and who we come to know intimately.
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As we say this novel is written by a global banking 1% freemason LITERARY STAR so it has a message and it creates fear and a feeling of INEVITABILITY.....WE CAN'T STOP IT.
AYLAN the novelist makes a strong point in this novel of those able to accept and adjust as advancing to be WINNERS. Those family members from PALESTINE having moved to a PARIS or a BOSTON were described as the HIGH-SKILLED family members. We see those EX-PATS as second and third generation simply living on old money knowing it is running out. We see the family member as EX-PAT moving to BOSTON being that CLINTON SUPPORTER.
The family members trying to stay true to ARABIC/PALESTINIAN culture were those in continuous struggles emotionally, spiritually, culturally. For our US 99% of WE THE WHITE citizens that displacement trying to stay in our own culture WESTERN EUROPE is being killed in MOVING FORWARD as well. The level of instability created by these several decades of continuous wars by far-right wing global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEEN KNIGHTS OF MALTA ---TRIBE OF JUDAH has deliberately left the entire geo-political economic structure in turmoil.
WHERE DOES GLOBAL BANKING 5% FREEMASON/GREEK WALDO GO NEXT?
NPR being that raging global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS media outlet of selling that FAD of how US 99% WE THE PEOPLE will handle our displacement.
'I Belonged Nowhere': A Story Of Displacement, From A Novelist Who Knows
May 4, 20175:05 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Steve Inskeep
Twitter Hala Alyan is the author of three poetry collections. Salt Houses is her first novel.
At the very start of Hala Alyan's novel Salt Houses, a woman buys a coffee set — a dozen cups, a coffee pot, a tray. It's a simple act that unexpectedly becomes painful. The woman is Palestinian — part of a family displaced after the founding of Israel — and the tray reminds her of an old one she lost in one of the family's many moves.
Alyan builds her story on little moments like that — a peek into the lives of several generations, forced to relocate and resettle. Her characters are lost and looking for a home.
The Palestinian-American author writes from experience. She says she imagined her fictional characters with her own displaced family members in mind.
"I definitely think there was an intergenerational trauma that went along with losing a homeland that you see trickle down through the different generations," she says.
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One thing we hope our new to US 99% of immigrants from nations in Asia, Arabia, Africa having a century of these LAISSEZ FAIRE MARXIST repression and war societies is this-----the US was the strongest in world history in freedom, liberty, justice, pursuit of happiness, and a REAL free market economy opened to all 99% BECAUSE it was LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE CAPITALIST -----please do not allow what global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS are pretending is LEFT ------when it is FAR-RIGHT intending to create in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES those very conditions our immigrants are trying to escape.
BRUENIG below is not trying to create an economic structure that is populist. 3P =======is the same global banking 1% 3P------public private partnerships that placed global corporations in control of all US government agencies ---national, state, and local.
What global banking 1% are trying to do as they install global corporate campus MARXISM----is find a way to FINANCIALIZE those 'worker-owned' FAKE BUSINESSES. We have discussed in detail how international labor unions are corrupting what is a real attempt by our US 99% to start local worker co-opts by inserting that global labor corporation as 'worker-co-op' and then financializing it.
THERE IS NO INTENTION OF HAVING LOCAL SMALL BUSINESS WORKER CO-OPS ----GLOBAL BANKING 5% POLS AND PLAYERS HAVE ALREADY PASSED LAWS TO MAKE SURE THOSE WORKER CO-OP STRUCTURES ARE TIED TO GLOBAL BANKING.
'Bruenig said he would be happy if 3P is able to “prod” large center-left think tanks to use their superior resources to further research and to advocate the kind of policies 3P is taking on'.
Sadly, it will be our global labor pool 99% black, white, and brown told this is real AMERICAN 20TH CENTURY LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE WORKER CO-OPS when they are far-right wing global corporate MARXIST ---STALIN/MAO tied to WORLD BANK'S INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION----ILO.
We notice how BRUENIG pretending to be a LEFT MARXIST------calls Clinton neo-liberal think tanks---LEFT CENTER........when of course they are FAR-RIGHT WING. This is how we know BRUENIG-----and his 3P----People’s Policy Project---is FAKE.
It must be 99% POPULIST----look, it has PEOPLE'S PROJECT as a title! OMG---LOL.
Policy
People’s Policy Project Wants to Change the Think Tank World, $5 at a Time
Matt Bruenig takes new approach to policy research through small, monthly donations
The People’s Policy Project is the only think tank funded by tiny monthly donations.
“I thought I could get $1,000 a month,” Matt Bruenig said about his initial plans for the organization, also known as 3P.
He posted an appeal on May 1 on Patreon, a platform known for letting people support podcasters, musicians, and artists with small monthly donations. He wrote that he would use the money to form a think tank to “publish ideas and analysis that assist in the development of an economic system that serves the many, not the few.”
It quickly attracted thousands of dollars, reaching $7,678 per month at the time of this writing, with 1,434 patrons, for an average monthly donation of $5.23. Bruenig initially hoped to just make enough to pay himself to write for the site, but now has plans to pay others on a freelance basis to work on papers and explanatory videos as well.
If funding continues to grow, Bruenig said he might hire people full-time to produce content or do legislative and media work.
The 3P model, Bruenig said, includes having the site function as a sort of hybrid between a news and a traditional think tank website. Bruenig plans to write regular posts that are tied to the daily news cycle to keep people interested, and “long papers that take two to three months to produce, in depth on policy issues.” That way, “interest can be maintained, while allowing us to do deeper, more useful work,” he said.
The paper currently in the works is planned to be the first in a series on different aspects of single-payer health care. It will look at how it can deal with the issue of long-term care, when individuals such as the elderly or disabled need nursing care indefinitely.
“If you read single-payer papers and proposals, if it’s included at all, it’s kind of overlooked, or not covered in great depth,” Bruenig said. “We’ll get the ball rolling on single-payer with a digestible small piece about something that’s often neglected.” He hopes to release the paper in September or October.
Bruenig is a lawyer who has built up an online following writing about welfare systems, inequality, and poverty. He previously wrote for the blog of the left-leaning think tank Demos, and also keeps a blog under his own name.
Hmmmm, DEMOS is a far-right wing global banking 1% ONE WORLD think tank-----not left leaning.
He received his first payout from Patreon on June 1, and launched the 3P website on Monday, intending for it to fill what he sees as a major gap in the policy space.
“The existing think tank world is politically constrained,” Bruenig said. “There’s this milieu of center-left think tanks, running all the way to the far right, but there’s nothing to the left of that. So we have ideas like single-payer [health care], which is supported by the vast majority of Democratic voters, that have no policy support whatsoever among these institutions.”
He blames that state of affairs on the ideology of think tank leaders, but “especially the donors.” That’s part of the motivation behind the crowdfunding model.
Bruenig said he would be happy if 3P is able to “prod” large center-left think tanks to use their superior resources to further research and to advocate the kind of policies 3P is taking on.
While Bruenig said he might be open to other funding sources in the future, for now 3P will depend on small donations.
“At some point, if that reaches a wall, I might have to think about other sources,” he said, “but I’d be very careful about who we take money from.”
“Some sources aren’t as problematic as others,” he said. “Labor unions provide quite a lot of money to causes like this. That might be a next step if we get to that place, if we feel like if we got extra money, we could add a lot more value.”
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As global banking 1% work hard to develop policy on how to FINANCIALIZE these FAKE worker co-ops while PRETENDING they are worker owned------we see what this PEOPLE'S PROJECT ---3P is really all about. This same far-right GAME was played in FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES overseas pretending to be MARXIST---COMMUNIST/SOCIALIST. People are told a business is WORKER-OWNED when it was always tied to being a SUBSIDIARY of a global corporation often sold as being PRO-WORKER by INTERNATIONAL LABOR UNION working for WORLD BANK ---ILO.
These economic policies tied to ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE/STANFORD are all MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES operating just as they do in third world nations. These WORKER CO-OPS will no doubt offer health care----education-----charity -----with absolutely no ties to our US SOVEREIGNTY----US CONSTITUTION---US FEDERAL COURT HISTORY ----TIES TO COMMON LAW-----ergo, they will not be tied to being AMERICAN.
WORKERS TO OWNERS-----we notice all the videos are tied to our 99% black and brown citizens-----don't worry our 99% white citizens going down the same road albeit as EX-PATS living our own SALT HOUSE blues.
We already see those global banking 5% freemason/Greeks selling this next FAKE economic road to nothing to each population group. Remember, those global banking 5% going under the bus---they will not be there when global banking claims that business you build.
'A True Alternative to Capitalism'
coming from the same global banking 5% freemason/Greeks having LIED, CHEATED, AND STOLEN in sack and loot CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.
With new tools and political policies now in place to support them, there could be a boom in employee-owned business ahead as baby boomers retire and sell their companies to their workers.
By Eillie Anzilotti
In 1982, Linda and Gregory Coles were struggling to find a sitter for their 18-month-old daughter. After a year of searching, they just decided to open their own daycare, and founded A Child’s Place in Queens, New York, in 1983. Thirty-four years later, they were ready to retire. “We were going to sell the business,” Linda says. But their broker suggested that instead of selling to new owners, they offer the business to their employees, who could then buy it and organize as a worker cooperative.
The Coles’ hadn’t heard of worker cooperatives before, but once the broker explained how it would work, Linda knew it was the right decision for them. “The idea that we could turn our business over to our employees was one of the best things we thought we could ever do,” she says.
A Child’s Place is now in the process of reorganizing as a cooperative–one of just 300 worker-owned small businesses in the U.S. While employee-owned cooperatives are still a very underrepresented model of workplace organization, they deliver well-documented benefits to the businesses and employees they govern. According to the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI), a nonprofit that supports the development of worker co-ops, employee-owned small businesses see an average of 4% to 5% higher productivity levels and more stability and potential for growth. In contrast to traditional businesses, worker co-ops see much lower rates of employee turnover and business closure. They’re also known to boost both profits and worker wages.
Because the people doing the work for the company are also the ones who own the company, they feel a greater sense of responsibility for and personal stake in helping the business succeed. While there’s still a lot of knowledge-sharing that needs to happen before co-ops go mainstream, recently, policymakers are taking notice of the benefits of worker cooperatives, and new legislation is on the way support their growth. And with millions of baby boomer-owned businesses set to change hands in the upcoming decades, this transition could be an opportunity to create more democratic workplaces across the country–if business owners, workers, and advocates can work together to convert these enterprises into employee-owned cooperatives.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
Time For Transition
Many businesses in the U.S. were founded as worker cooperatives. But a growing portion–as many as 40%–of co-ops in the U.S. are born out of traditional workplaces like A Child’s Place, whose owners decide to sell the business to their employees. As baby boomers, who own around 12 million businesses across the U.S., prepare to retire, around 70% of their companies are expected to change hands. Increasingly, children are not taking over businesses from their parents, so small business owners must look to sell or risk closing down and losing all their assets from years of investment.
But instead of selling to a private owner, there’s a real opportunity amid this “silver tsunami” to radically scale the presence of worker-owned cooperatives in the U.S. “Historically, co-ops do best when there’s a market failure,” says Melissa Hoover, founding executive director of DAWI. During the Great Depression, for instance, farmers struggling to access energy resources, set up electrical cooperatives that they collectively owned, and cooperative housing models took off in some cities. Nearly a century later, we’re living through our own version of market failure. As banks have consolidated, capital for small businesses has grown scarce. More small businesses are now closing than opening in the U.S., and jobs are consistently failing to provide livable wages to employees.
Yet, small businesses act as crucial anchors in their communities. “Rural areas, communities of color, rapidly gentrifying urban area, and small cities rely on small business as their economic base,” Hoover says. She’s seeing owners sell their businesses to large conglomerates or to private equity firms, who then liquidate the assets or fold crucial parts, like their customer list, into their operations. “This meets the needs of capitalism, but not the needs of people in the community,” Hoover says. This mode of sale also often requires the business owner to sell at a discount, and does not guarantee job security for the employees.
Employee-owned cooperatives, on the other hand, create a stronger base from which a business can continue to exist, and even grow. The workers already have demonstrated their commitment to the company and the community in which it operates, and granting them ownership allows the business to continue to operate and the community to continue to reap the benefits. And because the sales are done in a way that’s transparent and mutually beneficial, the selling business owners also get a fairer shake.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
Models For Success
DAWI wants to ensure that businesses changing hands are aware of the option to sell to their employees. During the month of May (labor history month), the nonprofit is profiling three businesses, including A Child’s Place, that successfully converted to employee-owned cooperatives. The short videos on the daycare center, a Massachusetts-based landscaping company called A Yard & a Half, and Metis Construction in Seattle, are meant to inspire business owners and employees to consider reorganizing as a cooperative. In them, workers talk about how collective ownership has renewed their responsibility to the business and enthusiasm for the work they do, and how it’s helped them understand how to run a business equitably.
The organization is sharing its videos and accompanying toolkit with other local and national equitable labor organizations, like Project Equity in Oakland, that have roots in the business communities. “The aim is to see local outlets and local service providers use these resources to demonstrate that this can be done,” Hoover says. DAWI is already seeing an uptick in queries about organizing worker coops as a result of the videos.
“This is not a hard sell,” Hoover says. “What we’ve found is it makes intuitive sense to people that you would sell your business to your employees–you can tell the stories and share the successes, and people get it.” But inspiration without instruction won’t actually create change. DAWI, in addition to telling the stories of the businesses that converted to co-ops, also released a new toolkit to spell out exactly how they did it. And slowly, they’re working to change both the financing and political landscapes around worker cooperatives to build out a path for them to the mainstream.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
How To Cooperatize
The first step, Hoover says, is to educate business owners themselves about the idea. Generally, when the owners begin the process of selling, they either decide to research conversion to cooperatives independently, or are tipped off to the idea like the Coles’ were. DAWI’s social campaign, Hoover hopes, will get more businesses interested in the process.
Because worker coops are still so rare, it’s often difficult to find a concrete story or example to point to when advising retiring business owners like the Coles’. But this media collection will help owners and business advisors educate themselves, and, once they do, they can then can take the models to their employees to show that this is what they’re aiming to do. The employees’ response to the idea of organizing as worker-owners is, after all, the most important deciding factor.
From there, it gets a bit more particular. Once the owners of a business decide to sell it to their employees, they have to bring in assistance to assess how best to do it. DAWI works with a network of local affiliate organizations that help establish worker cooperatives. A Child’s Place consulted with The Working World, a New York-based nonprofit, to carry out its transition–the nonprofit helped Linda and Gregory Coles determine that this strategy for selling their business was the route they wanted to take.
The factors that determine if a business is eligible for transition to a cooperative vary by circumstance, but there are some rough criteria. Generally, coops tend to form from businesses with a minimum of 20 employees, and no more than a few hundred (though there are exceptions–Cooperative Home Care Associates in New York is the country’s largest worker-owned cooperative and employs nearly 2,000 workers). The relatively manageable size ensures that each employee can purchase a share of the company that’s large enough to be meaningful, but not so expensive as to be prohibitive. Longevity in the community is also a benefit. Businesses like A Child’s Place that have a long tenure in a specific neighborhood and meet a social and emotional need often make the most sense to organize as a cooperative, as employee ownership guarantees that company culture holds steady even in times of transition.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
The Capital Hurdle
Because the capital structure and incentives for investing in worker coops differ from that of traditional capitalist businesses, coops have a proportionally more difficult time accessing capital, Hoover says. “We don’t have the kind of values-aligned capital that understands how to finance conversions, understands the risks, or understands the upsides of cooperatives,” she says. It’s not that capital is entirely inaccessible to cooperatives starting up, she says–it’s just very rare and piecemeal. But it’s access to capital that ensures that workers will be able to buy the business from their owners for a price that’s both affordable and reasonable for the selling owner.
A Child’s Place, for instance, took out a loan from The Working World, a New York City-based Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that manages a $5 million loan fund specifically for worker-owned businesses. That loan allowed the daycare’s staff members to collectively buy the business (the transition is still in progress). Taking loans from CDFIs, which provide smaller loans to local businesses that big banks won’t reach, is also an option, but Hoover has also seen some businesses launch Direct Public Offerings, which allow community members to buy shares in the business, and some co-ops manage conversions by having individual employees take out personal loans to collectively finance the transition. “One of the issues is that there hasn’t been a standard model or tool that people looking to convert can look to,” Hoover says.
DAWI sees the greatest potential for codifying co-op conversions in loan funds like The Working World. These small CDFIs, Hoover says, understand the risks and rewards of investing in co-op transitions, and can work with local businesses to come up with a capital stack that makes sense for them. For businesses looking to transition to co-ops, organizations like DAWI can act as connectors between owners and resources like loan funds.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
Building Capacity
Securing capital, Hoover says, is probably the biggest hurdle potential new co-ops will face, but learning how to effectively structure and govern a collectively owned business is another. DAWI recently developed the School for Democratic Management, an in-person and online course that educates new cooperative managers and worker-owners in how to effectively run a co-op.
Businesses looking to transition can also take a cue from A Yard & a Half landscaping, one of the featured co-ops. There, the owner long knew she intended to sell the business to her workers, and convened a group of employees five years before she retired to educate them on how the company was run. That also gave future worker-owners enough time to strategize with the rest of their fellow employees. In Seattle, Metis Construction‘s cofounder decided to stay on as a worker-owner after the business converted, and while that model conversion is rare, it’s instructive for businesses to know that they don’t have to wait for an owner to retire before cooperativizing.
What’s important to emphasize, Hoover says, is that while co-ops are facing a number of hurdles in starting up, the benefits are long-lasting and pronounced. A study from Rutgers found that converting to employee ownership boosts profits by as much as 14%, and doing so does not come at a detriment to wages. Rather, it’s the reverse.
After A Yard & a Half converted to a coop in 2014, average wages have increased from $17.02 per hour to $19.29 per hour despite adding more employees, and revenue has grown to $3.2 million from $2 million. Worker co-ops are still a business, so the employee-owners have to learn the same management and strategy skills that enable companies to grow. The main difference: It’s the workers themselves that reap the benefits of that growth.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
A True Alternative to Capitalism
While the businesses that DAWI is highlighting this month–and working with on the whole–are indeed small, they create stability and pathways to opportunity for their worker-owners, and benefit their communities by remaining in place.
And we’re beginning to see a response to the utility of worker co-ops in the political landscape. The U.S. Department of Agriculture runs a Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan Program meant to support the development of rural businesses, and in August 2016, the department added new capabilities that specifically support the transition to worker-owned businesses, like financing models staged over five years to support a more distributed sale. And a bill that New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand developed to enable the Small Business Administration to make loans to intermediaries that help finance worker co-op transitions recently passed the House with bipartisan support.
“Co-ops are not whiz-bang businesses that are going to get anybody rich,” Hoover says. “They’re bread and butter types–necessary and profitable, but not sexy.” Still, communities and policymakers alike are recognizing that their shared ownership structure can provide the kind of stability that the market cannot. “We’ve seen growing interest in rapidly changing cities and in rural areas where they’re really trying to make capital investments that anchor community wealth,” Hoover says. “Business retention makes more sense than trying to attract Amazon HQ2,” she adds. “Why don’t we invest in our local ecosystem and retain what’s already here?”
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Here in US MOVING FORWARD to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES filled with GLOBAL FACTORIES has a problem global banking 1% did not have in third world nations overseas. We have a US 99% of highly educated people knowing what a developed nation quality of life is-----having several centuries of FREEDOM, LIBERTY, JUSTICE, and SELF-DETERMINATION AND CHOICE------being taken down to 1000BC where all that is gone.
MOVING FORWARD will build GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES that will indeed operate for several decades as far-right wing global corporate campus MARXISM----you live, eat, work, are schooled never leaving that campus. But what to do with all those US 99% of citizens black, white, and brown not being INSTITUTIONALIZED on these campuses?
These policies are TEMPORARY----they are a GO-BETWEEN keeping tens of millions of people busy while these global corporate campuses are being built. They are already rigged so no wealth can be accumulated---and global banking 1% will shut these worker co-ops down once US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE construction is complete.
REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVES CALL THESE THE 'STOP GAP TO SERFDOM'
There is a reason these are starting in raging global banking 1% Bush neo-conservative TEXAS folks-------nothing 'left' in TEXAS.
Getting Rid of Bosses
Can a company succeed if no one is in charge?
Alana Semuels
Jul 8, 2015
“Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: Our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength.” —George Orwell, Animal Farm
AUSTIN, Tex.—The pastry chefs were unhappy. They had to follow the whims of the head baker, they weren’t allowed to take bathroom breaks, and the hairnets they had to wear were truly unflattering.
Inspired by an anti-capitalist documentary, they came up with a solution: no more bosses. The pastry chefs quit their jobs and joined together to form a vegan-donut co-op, where they could bake sweets free from the strict confines of the top-down corporate world.
But life without bosses was not all they had hoped. Instead of one boss to bother them, they each had four colleagues doing so. Baking sessions devolved into shouting matches as personalities clashed. Meetings had no order, and conversation would hop from farmer’s markets to glazes without any decisions or plans being made. No one would take charge. No one could. There were no bosses.
* * *
Worker cooperatives are not new, but they’re seeing new life as progressive-minded employees seek out remedies for the nation’s growing economic inequality. Worker cooperatives are equally owned and governed by employees, who also earn money from the profits of their labor. There are no CEOs here making multi-million dollar salaries while workers receive minimum wage. Nor are there CEOs with decades of experience and education to successfully guide the company through the up and downs of the dog-eat-dog business world.
In worker cooperatives, decision-making is democratic, so each worker has one vote, and policies can’t be determined by an investor whose only priority is profit. (Most profit-minded investors probably wouldn’t touch a worker cooperative with a ten-foot pole anyway.)
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WOW-----this DEMOCRACY AT WORK INSTITUTE sounds much like global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS in continuous wars shouting DEMOCRACY NOW!
We see this NGO is tied to the same SILICON VALLEY STANFORD area and is indeed a FAKE DEMOCRACY AT WORK. What global banking 1% is MOVING FORWARD in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES will look like 1000BC-----where only the global 1% participate in government. All of the policies being written from this THINK TANK may as well be written by BROOKINGS INSTITUTE/CATO INSTITUTE-----it is the same far-right wing global banking NEO-LIBERALS taking the US to a colonial representative government. That is when global corporations send in a family member to represent their business interests.
We are sure those global banking 5% freemason/Greek players tied to FAKE LABOR AND JUSTICE organizations are told they will be part of these FINANCIALIZATION profits ----but that is not the goal of MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1%.
Worker Cooperative FAQ
Frequently asked questions:What is a cooperative?
What is a worker cooperative?
What is a multi-stakeholder cooperative?
How many worker cooperatives are there in the US?
How big is the typical worker cooperative?
What industries are worker cooperatives in?
Where are worker cooperatives geographically in the United States?
Is there a standard legal form that worker cooperatives take?
What is the difference between a worker cooperative and an employee-owned (ESOP) company?
What is the difference between a collective and a cooperative?
Why are cooperatives more common in other countries than in the U.S.?
How do worker cooperatives fit into other social or economic movements?
How can I start or join a worker cooperative?
What is a cooperative?
A cooperative is an entity that is owned and controlled by its members, which operates for their benefit. The cooperative landscape includes (among other types)
What is a worker cooperative?
A worker cooperative is a business that is owned and controlled by its workers, who constitute the members of the cooperative.
The two central characteristics of worker cooperatives are:
In addition to their economic and governance participation, worker-owners often manage the day-to-day operations through various management structures. The worker cooperative sector in the United States is represented by the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives (http://usworker.coop) and an international apex organization, CICOPA (http://cicopa.coop), represents the global worker cooperative community.
What is a multi-stakeholder cooperative?
A multi-stakeholder cooperative is a cooperative that has more than one class of members. For example, a grocery store might have consumer members and worker members. The different classes of members might have different rights to participate in the surplus (or profits) of the company, and different roles in decision-making. Multi-stakeholder cooperatives can come in many different forms and structure the business in a variety of ways. A recent trend is the development of multi-stakeholder food coops in local food systems.
How many worker cooperatives are there in the US?
Though we don’t yet have comprehensive data on the nature and scope of worker cooperatives in the U.S., researchers and practitioners conservatively estimate that there are over 300 democratic workplaces in the United States, employing approximately 7,000 people and generating over $400 million in annual revenues. The number of workers cooperatives has grown steadily over the past 20 years, and is made up of both well-established businesses and new, growing ones, including some businesses that have been sold to their employees by their owners. A comprehensive census of worker cooperatives is currently underway.
How big is the typical worker cooperative?
The majority of worker cooperatives in the United States are small businesses, with between 5 and 50 workers, but there are a few notable larger enterprises with between 150 and 500 workers. The largest worker cooperative in the United States is Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), a home care agency with over 2,000 workers based in the Bronx, New York.
What industries are worker cooperatives in?
Any business can be a worker-owned and -controlled business. Worker co-ops have been successful in many different sectors and industries. Some examples are:
Worker cooperatives exist across the country, with the greatest concentrations in the Northeast, the West Coast and the Upper Midwest.
Is there a standard legal form that worker cooperatives take?
There is no uniform cooperative code in the United States, and definitions and incorporation guidelines vary from state to state. As a result, worker cooperatives can incorporate in a number of different ways. In states where there are cooperative incorporation codes, such as Massachusetts and California, businesses can incorporate as worker cooperatives. In states where there are no such laws, a worker cooperative can incorporate as a C corporation, S corporation, LLC, flexible purpose corporation, or any other corporate form, as long as the company meets the minimum requirements of operating as a worker cooperative.
What is the difference between a worker cooperative and an employee-owned (ESOP) company?
Although the term employee-owned can be used to describe many different business structures (including worker cooperatives), it is most commonly used to describe companies with an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). An ESOP is a federally governed benefit plan (like a 401(k) or profit sharing plan) that can be used to share an ownership stake with employees. While an ESOP company can be 100% owned by its employees and operate according to worker cooperative principles, very few ESOP companies currently qualify as worker cooperatives. The National Center for Employee Ownership has extensive resources on ESOPs available on their website, http://www.nceo.org.
What is the difference between a collective and a cooperative?
A collective is a general term for groups where management decisions are made democratically, usually by some form of consensus. The term can apply to businesses, nonprofits, or volunteer groups, including worker cooperatives. Collectives are often organizations that do not have ownership buy-in or profit-sharing. Cooperative is a more formal term signifying that the entity is a member-benefit organization designed to meet community needs, with economic participation and democratic governance by members. In addition to worker cooperatives, which are found in many industries and sectors across the economy, there are also sector-specific cooperative forms, such as housing cooperatives, agricultural producer cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, and credit unions.
Why are cooperatives more common in other countries than in the U.S.?
It is true that the cooperative economy is strong and in some cases better developed in other parts of the world, and that worker cooperatives have grown to be influential actors in the economies of Spain and Italy, in particular. However, cooperatives also have a long history here in the United States, from farmers coming together in agricultural cooperatives to the rural electrics wiring the countryside to the earliest worker cooperatives that emerged from artisans’ guilds and labor unions. Cooperatives happen anywhere people come together to meet their needs – the cooperative form is international, flexible, and adapts to the conditions in which it emerges. We see concentrations of worker cooperatives in parts of the world where there is governmental and policy support for the cooperative form. There is great potential for cooperative development in general and worker cooperative development in particular to make cooperatives a larger part of the U.S. economy in the coming decades.
How do worker cooperatives fit into other social or economic movements?
With their emphasis on people before profit, creating community, and equitable compensation and participation, worker cooperatives are a concrete example of using business as a force for social good. Additionally, a large percentage of existing cooperatives in the U.S. were specifically developed to meet the needs of people who lack access to business ownership or even sustainable work options. As a result, worker cooperatives can be defined as social enterprises and are often associated with larger movements, including the new economy movement (which is also referred to as the alternative economy, the fourth sector, or the social sector economy), the solidarity economy, as well as various causes from immigration rights to labor rights.
How can I start or join a worker cooperative?
To find out more about existing co-ops, or to get resources on how to start a worker cooperative or convert an existing conventional business to a worker-owned or democratic workplace, contact the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, a national grassroots membership group of and for democratic workplaces, at info@usworker.coop.
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We are watching on one of the worst of global banking media propaganda and myth-making CNN----where a commercial comes on with this global human resources corporation-----SHRM------SHRM has nothing to do with being AMERICAN----it is 100% ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES as colonial entities. In this commercial we see the smiling faces of what we know are a global banking 5% freemason/Greek player as owner of a SHRM-----no doubt a subsidiary of UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION global labor pool distribution system. Those smiling faces telling the world WE ARE LOOKING FOR THE BEST FOR THESE EMPLOYMENT POSITIONS.
What we see is a TRICK----to bring our global 99% new immigrants into a work environment MOVING FORWARD to being as EXPLOITATIVE, BRUTAL as anything in overseas FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. We see as well where SHRM is selling this idea of WORKER CO-OPS we already know are FINANCIALIZED TO THE MAX-----to global banking 1%. You work for years to build a business then lose it.
'SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China, India and United Arab Emirates'.
This is the same structure used these several decades in global slave trade distribution built by CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----now being installed in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES to bring new immigrants into what will end in being FAILED BUSINESS----LOST WEALTH-----BEING PUSHED TO LEAVING AND STARTING OVER-----you know, the novel SALT HOUSE
We see the most global banking 1% ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE states MOVING FORWARD this structure that captures our 99% of new immigrants into employment structures geared to SACK AND LOOT them
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Nothing LEFT happening in WISCONSIN, TEXAS, OR MARYLAND.
Welcome to the Maryland SHRM State Council
Maryland SHRM State Council, Inc. is recognized by SHRM to offer Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for the SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP
We are an affiliate of the Society for Human Resource Management. Whether you are new to the HR field or have many years of experience, we are a local starting point for networking, information, professional development and continued support of excellence in Human Resources.
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the world’s largest HR professional society, representing 285,000 members in more than 165 countries. For nearly seven decades, the Society has been the leading provider of resources serving the needs of HR professionals and advancing the practice of human resource management. SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China, India and United Arab Emirates.
We welcome your use of this site as a resource, and encourage you to check back frequently for updated information. We also encourage your involvement and suggestions about all of our activities, on the web and off.
We look forward to seeing you at an upcoming meeting or event!
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We want to emphasize that the ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FAKE 'LEFT' MARXIST structures like 3P ----PEOPLE'S PROJECT or WORKER CO-OP ownership often sold and being recruited by or SHRM is global labor pool 99% trafficing that goes BOTH WAYS. No doubt China, India, and UAE has these same FAKE LEFT MARXIST STRUCTURES recruiting US 99% of citizens to those nations to be SELF-EMPLOYED-----so, our US 99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens will have a SHRM-----selling the idea of going overseas to own your business----join a co-op.
'SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China, India and United Arab Emirates'.
We shared the NOVEL SALT HOUSE to educate as to how these emigration for employment have operated for several decades overseas all tied to building FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. KUWAIT if we remember was built at the same time UAE was made GLOBAL BANKING OF ARABIA-----SALT HOUSE having family members moving from PALESTINE to NABLUS to KUWAIT CITY-----
Hmmm, 1986 a global development corporation building a city in the desert which happened to set the stage for Saddam Hussein feeling forced to attack KUWAIT first-----he knew KUWAIT was going to be a launching ground for global banking 1%.
The miracle in the desert - how Kuwait is bringing the sea SIX MILES inland with the help of British engineers to create a brand new city near the border with Saudi Arabia
IRIN | Jordan looks to turn refugee crisis into economic boon
www.irinnews.org/feature/2017/03/21/jordan-looks-turn-refugee-crisis-economic-boon
Mar 21, 2017 ... Jordan's economic slowdown has not been helped by the fact that Syrians ... located in 18 special economic zones (SEZs) throughout Jordan can unlock .... Bank's efforts to develop economic opportunities for Jordanians and ...
SALT HOUSES also features AMMAN JORDAN as a source of PALESTINIAN refugee flow------just so happened JORDAN built its earliest FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES at that same time. Remember, when we say global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS ----that is the silk and spice trade routes of 1000BC ---China, Arabia, Europe......no AMERICA and its freedom MOVING FORWARD. TEAM GLOBAL BANKING 1% ----working together in continuous wars killing 99% of citizens black, white, and brown for FLIPPING THE EARTH'S ECONOMIC AXIS from Western Hemisphere to Eastern Hemisphere.
ALJAZEERA would make the connection to the building of FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES in Arabia at the same time continuous wars started if it was not a global banking 1% FAKE news media.
Salt Houses: A story of Palestinians without Palestine
Hala Alyan's novel spans generations of a Palestinian family as they search for home and identity in diaspora.
by Zahra Hankir
4 Aug 2017
'This is a book my grandmother wrote without realising and my great-grandparents wrote without realising'
Hala Alyan's debut novel Salt Houses has shaken up the literary world. The Palestinian-American poet and psychologist's book is a family drama about displacement that traverses conflicts, countries and continents.
Born of a short story, the novel explores the inter-generational trauma accompanying exile
The novel explores the experiences of eight members of a Palestinian family spanning six generations. Readers meet them in 1967 Nablus, Palestine, at the start of the Six-Day War and travel with them through the Israel-Lebanon War in 2006 and beyond.
Salt Houses is punctuated by a never-ending search for home, from Nablus to Kuwait City, Amman, Paris and Boston. At times, the family members are uprooted by war, and at other times by choice or chance.
Born of a short story, the novel delves into the inter-generational trauma accompanying exile. It is a particularly personal book for Alyan, whose own family has experienced displacement.
Al Jazeera spoke with Alyan about the novel's timeliness, her transition from poetry to prose and the role novelists can play in shaping narratives on the Arab world.
Al Jazeera: How did the idea of Salt Houses come to you?
Hala Alyan: I've always been interested in the period between 1948 and 1967 when something terrible had already happened, but people didn't know what else was to come. How there was this lost generation, particularly of young men, that felt powerless.
I was going to write a short story about one young man, on his way to the mosque, reflecting on an illicit affair he was having. Then I had him run into his sister. Then I realised how much I loved the sister. And then I reflected on the mother.
I found myself captivated by this family. I felt it would be cruel to abandon them when I knew the Six-Day War was coming, and they'd probably lose their home. I know that might sound ridiculous as they're characters I created, but I felt this obligation to see the story through.
'I think of Salt Houses as a book that's been generations in the making, and that's taken a tribe to write'
Al Jazeera: Did you have the global political situation in mind when writing?
Alyan: When I first started writing, I was steeped in the past, preoccupied with the idea of doing justice to an era I never existed in. That felt like a huge responsibility. When I switched over to the 2006 Lebanon war and the final chapters, I was very much thinking about the present context.
The Trump era has amplified issues that always existed. Black bodies were being harassed by police; Muslims were being vetted and discriminated against. These things were already happening, they just became more shameless, exaggerated and blown up. In that sense, I'm happy this book has come out in an era of literal and psychological borders; I hope it will contribute to the literary genre that tries to transcend and challenge those ideas.
Seems like the Clinton/Bush/Obama era amplied issues surrounding violence against black and brown citizens globally----why mention TRUMP ONLY?
There's something tragic about having to find ways to keep your culture alive in displacement.
Al Jazeera: One of your characters, Mustafa, is attracted to the mosque for political rather than religious reasons. What message were you trying to send?
Alyan: What I've taken is the archetype of the lost young person looking for tribe and community. You see that in disenfranchised communities everywhere and in people being radicalised. At the heart of that are people at a loss for purpose and meaning. Mustafa serves as a representation of the young man in a rudderless moment, looking for anything that will point him north. The means and instruments most accessible to him are those of the mosque and the community he finds there.
Al Jazeera: The family in this book is cushioned by a comfortable economic situation, yet still damaged by war. Why did you go with that angle?
Alyan: I wanted to write a story of displacement and diasporic memory, and to do that, people had to be able to "leave". This book doesn't purport to represent the entire Palestinian experience. It's a slice of that experience: This is what happens if you have certain socioeconomic means and opportunities. I wanted this to be a story about being Palestinian without being in Palestine.
It's worse to be living in a camp, of course. But it was important for me to write about how there's still suffering and a sense of loss in exile. There's a luxury and privilege in being able to become someone in exile, but that doesn't mitigate the fact that you're always going to be landless. There's something tragic about having to find ways to keep your culture alive in displacement.
Al Jazeera: What role should Arab novelists play in shaping the narrative on the region?
Alyan: From my perspective, it's to tell the truth, as ugly as it might be. No one behaves well during war. There are real class and social issues. I'm not going to paint my people or parts of the world I love with a rose-coloured brush because that's not fair to my audience or the people I'm trying to represent. If I'm going to tell the truth about certain things, I want to tell the truth about all of it.
It's important to remember that any critique, if we're going to write about Palestine or Syria, is part of the tax we pay. Being able to talk about it is a luxury - we get to have voices whereas many people who came before us and many today don't.
Al Jazeera: In writing this book, did you feel you were able to connect more with your Palestinian identity?
Alyan: As a Palestinian, one of the things I contend with is guilt. Can I claim this identity, even if I'm not suffering the way people in Palestine are? Can I claim this identity even though I'm not living under occupation? My biggest fear is that I'll be accused of slipping that identity on and off.
I'm very conscious that I say I'm Palestinian-American - I don't shy away from it. In terms of writing Salt Houses, though, I do think it was in part a subconscious testament that I'm unapologetically Palestinian. And that identity belongs to me in a different way, but I would say just as much as anybody who claims ownership of it.
Jazeera: Who did you write this book for?
Alyan: This was a book inspired by a family that was also written for them. I don't mean to sound ungrateful for all the praise I've received, but when my brother read it and texted saying: "You did it, you did the thing you were supposed to do", that was it. Nothing will top that.
This is not my story. And when you look at it that way, the most gratifying responses are from the people I had in mind when writing.
Al Jazeera: Will you be focusing more on novels now, versus poetry?
Alyan: Hopefully this is the beginning of more of both. I can't imagine not writing poetry. It feeds something essential in me that fiction doesn't. It also taught me a lot about patience and about taking what seems like a daunting task and breaking it into pieces.
I'm well into a new novel, which is about an expatriate family that returns to sell its ancestral home in Beirut. The book is written simultaneously in the 1950s and 1960s in Damascus and Beirut, and then in the present day over one summer, as the adult children try to dissuade the patriarch from selling the home.
I like the idea of not being in one perspective forever, as that would be a little restless for me.
Al Jazeera: How do you feel about the reception for Salt Houses?
Alyan: For a while, I felt like it was happening to somebody else. Praise in publishing is such an individualistic thing. Granted, I sat down and created the product, but it felt like a collectivist process.
Writing this book for me took generations. I think of Salt Houses as a book that's been generations in the making, and that's taken a tribe to write.
This is a book my grandmother wrote without realising and my great-grandparents wrote without realising. This is a book that existed through so many people and so many iterations and so many cities.
The novel SALT HOUSES as we said does a great job at showing how a society is attacked largely through global banking 1% media but as well through civil structures like our religious institutions to undermine trust and create fear.
We spoke yesterday of MUSTAFA a character being that upper-middle/merely rich Palestinian family forced out during wars in near east. Later in the story we see MUHAMMAD the son of a third generation of same family being upper-middle/merely rich the family having migrated to KUWAIT. Both men were torn over the fate of first their Palestine 99% of citizens captured in refugee/occupation status-----then the IRAQI migration of refugees into KUWAIT. This one family tied to being WINNERS as middle/merely rich saw in only a few generations continuous wars undermine every opportunity and access to rebuilding their wealth.
IS CITIZENS' OVERSIGHT MARYLAND REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVES TRYING TO SCARE NEW IMMIGRANTS OR OUR US 99%? NO, EDUCATING WITH REAL INFORMATION EMPOWERS ---
Today's new to America immigrants need to understand the US has been taken to colonial status---it is no longer the strong real left social progressive capitalist society----it is MOVING FORWARD to being that brutal, third world global corporate industrial MARXIST colony.
Want Educated Immigrants?
Let In More Africans
Highly skilled? Check. Hardworking? Check. English-speaking? Check. Ready to integrate? Check.
By
Justin Fox
May 16, 2018, 9:00 AM EDT
The uproar over White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s comments about illegal immigration in an interview with National Public Radio last week still hasn’t entirely died down. I haven’t found the resulting discussion to be super-enlightening, so, as I did with an earlier Kelly comment about how nobody knows anybody in the military anymore, I decided to see if a few charts might clear things up.
To review, Kelly argued that most undocumented immigrants are “not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society.” He went on:
They're overwhelmingly rural people in the countries they come from — fourth, fifth, sixth grade educations are kind of the norm. They don't speak English, obviously that's a big thing. They don't speak English. They don't integrate well, they don't have skills. They're not bad people. They're coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws.
So … let’s dig into the data. More than 70 percent of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are from Mexico and Central America, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Mexico is by far the most common country of origin, but the population of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. (both documented and undocumented) actually fell 6 percent from 2007 to 2015, according to the Pew Research Center, while the numbers of Salvadorans, Hondurans and Guatemalans in the U.S. continued to grow. So when we talk about illegal immigration into the U.S., we’re mainly talking about immigration from those four countries, with El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala playing a growing role and Mexico a huge but shrinking one. And yes, most of those who have come to the U.S. from these countries are probably of rural origin, although (1) there’s not much good data on that and (2) there are indications that the rural share has been getting less “overwhelming” in recent years as Mexico and El Salvador, the two biggest sources of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., have urbanized.
Much better data is available on the characteristics of foreign-born people here in the U.S., most of it from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, an annual survey of about 2 million households first conducted in 2005. The ACS does not sort immigrants by whether they have permission to be in the U.S. or not. 1 (Estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., in fact, are arrived at by taking the totals from the ACS and subtracting out the numbers of temporary and permanent lawful residents provided by the Department of Homeland Security.) Still, it offers much insight into the characteristics of different immigrant groups. To get back to Kelly’s comment, here are the countries from which immigrants in the U.S. have the least formal education, according to the 2016 ACS:
So yes, the people who have come to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America tend not to have a lot of schooling. The European nations of Portugal, Italy and Greece are also on this list, although most immigrants from those countries arrived in the U.S. a long time ago so there’s understandably not much grumbling about them. Meanwhile, the countries from which the most-educated foreign-born U.S. residents hail make for quite a diverse bunch.
The list of countries from which immigrants in the U.S. are least likely to struggle with English are, unsurprisingly, all English-speaking countries, so I’m not going to bother with a chart. Extra credit, though, to the Netherlands and Germany for making the top 10 despite having their own languages, and to Trinidad & Tobago for beating out the U.K. for first place.
It’s important to remember, though, that immigrants from non-English-speaking countries have always struggled with the language. Many millions of immigrants from Germany, Italy and other European countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries never did become fluent in English. But their children did!
The kids of today’s immigrants are learning English, too: Of people born in the U.S. who speak Spanish at home, reports the Census Bureau, 83 percent also speak English very well. The percentage is slightly higher — 87 percent — among those who speak other Indo-European languages at home, and is again 83 percent for those who speak Asian and Pacific languages at home.
Finally, there’s Kelly’s assertion that undocumented immigrants don’t integrate well. Language ability is one measure of integration. Employment is surely another one. When I ran a list of the countries from which immigrants in the U.S. have the highest employment-to-population ratio, some familiar names popped up:
The employment-population ratio for Mexican-born U.S. residents, by the way, is 65.5 percent, which ranks it 28th out of the 80 countries for which there’s data. There are some caveats I should trot out here: The immigrant populations from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are younger and more male than the overall U.S. population, which skews employment ratios upward, and since this data covers everyone age 16 and up, college and even high school students count against the total — which brings the ratio down among groups likely to pursue higher education. Still, their strong employment performance isn't a fluke; the Cato Institute's David Bier offers up lots of other evidence that Central Americans are integrating pretty well.
The foreign-born residents with the lowest employment-population ratios hail mainly from countries (Hungary, Italy, Greece, Germany) from which most immigrants arrived decades ago and are now in their 60s or older. The very lowest employment-population ratio, though, is for those born in Saudi Arabia, most of whom are in the U.S. for college or graduate school. And while no other country of origin has a majority of its U.S. residents currently enrolled in higher education, Kenya, Nigeria, Nepal and Ghana have the highest percentages after Saudi Arabia. So immigrants from Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana are near the top in both employment-population ratio and higher-education enrollment, and those from Nigeria are also near the top in educational attainment.
With that, let me offer my two cents on Kelly’s statement: It appears to be factually accurate in most of its characterizations of today’s undocumented immigrants, and I think the people decrying it as “racist” are for the most part just devaluing the term “racist.” His “they don’t integrate well” comment grates, though, given that Kelly and most other Americans are descended at least in part from rural people with limited education who didn’t speak any English when they got here. And while there is a case to be made that education and English are far more important to success in the U.S. than they were a century ago, one certainly can’t depict Central Americans in particular as sitting around twiddling their thumbs wondering how they will ever integrate into U.S. society. They’re too busy working.
Also — and nothing Kelly said contradicted this, but some things his boss has reportedly said certainly have — what the charts above tell me is that if we want more high-skilled, hardworking, English-speaking, ready-to-integrate immigrants, it looks like the most obvious place to find them is in African countries where English is widely spoken.
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WITHOUT SURPRISE THIS NOVEL'S CENTRAL THEME IS -----LETTING GO------------AND THINKING THE GRASS WILL BE GREENER.
Why are our global 99% of immigrants coming to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES? Because global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS made FAILED STATES of their nations and the same global banking 1% are tied to refugee camps and sending these refugees and displaced middle-merely rich to be EX-PATS. SALT HOUSE paints last century's cool and favorite destinations PARIS/BOSTON USA as the place to be free when both US/Boston and PARIS are MOVING FORWARD to being the same FAILED STATES/CONTINUOUS WARS/CIVIL UNREST as those Asian,Arabic, African nations these new immigrants are trying to escape.
SALT HOUSES does a good job balancing the emotion around people having to live in a global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS sacking and looting continuous war zone. Sons and daughters rebel-------sons and daughters embrace the occupying culture. In both cases families were torn apart and both the rebels and conformist members of family suffered.
We understand that these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA those new to US highly-skilled and factory immigrants were SELECTED to come to US because they were 5% freemason/Greek players overseas no doubt being that FAKE CIVIL UNREST CIVIL WAR PLAYER----
The American people have not experienced these kinds of attacks by global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS since our US civil war---but then that war did not push our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE out of our sovereign nation-----as today's MOVING FORWARD goals intend.
Book review:
Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses is an epic tale of one Palestinian family’s displacement
What begins as a tightly focused tale of upheaval for one strand of a family soon begins charting the displacement of several generations in the course of six decades.
Malcolm ForbesMay 18, 2017
Updated: May 18, 2017 04:00 AM
Part of the book explores the refugee crisis of the 1991 Gulf War. Peter Turnley / Corbis / Getty Images
Early into Hala Alyan’s remarkable debut novel, Hussam Yacoub, the patriarch of a wealthy Palestinian family, asks his daughter’s suitor where he intends to settle. “In my homeland, sir,” comes the reply. “Nothing under this sky will budge me.” But that sky grows overcast, and in time Israeli tanks roll in and the whole family is budged out by war and buffeted into exile – “far from this blazing country split in two”. What begins as a tightly focused tale of condensed upheaval and relocation for one strand of a family soon expands into a sprawling and engrossing epic charting the turbulent displacement and dispersal of several generations in the course of six decades.
Salt Houses opens in Nablus in 1963 with Salma, Hussam’s wife. On the eve of her daughter Alia’s wedding, she casts back 15 years to the days of terror that forced the family to flee their Jaffa villa. But Salma also looks forward, noting with alarm the ominous grounds in Alia’s coffee cup, which portend “an exterior life, an unsettled life”.
From here, Alyan proceeds in sharp shifts, devoting each chapter to a different family member at a further point in time. Before we properly meet Alia and discover just how unsettled a life she is leading, we fast forward to 1965 and a segment about her brother, Mustafa. With his father dead and his mother starting anew in Amman, he has inherited the family house in Nablus and lives lazily there. A sense of purpose arrives via “boys-only meetings” at a mosque after dark led by an impassioned imam who lectures young men about war, patriotism and lost land. “We are pawns in a sick and depraved game,” he tells Mustafa. “We can either play or overturn the chessboard.”
Once again, Alyan makes her reader wait to learn of a character’s fate. She switches next to Alia, who, while visiting her sister Widad in Kuwait City in 1967, is hot, homesick and pregnant. When the Arab-Israeli War of that year breaks out, she is also fearful and confused (“That almost-week jumbled everything”). Then, at one point during her stay, she is assailed by a sudden wave of grief. Mustafa, we are finally told, disappeared and “died somewhere in an Israeli prison”.
Thus the novel unfolds kaleidoscopically and elliptically, and to supremely good effect. Some segments are more absorbing than others. Atef, Alia’s husband, emerges as a flawed and fascinating individual, a proud and happy family man routinely plagued by nightmares of past torture and haunted by his best friend Mustafa’s absence. His two daughters, Riham and Souad, are extreme personalities, “one godless and unruly, the other veiled and earnest and married.” The family is once again uprooted when Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, and various descendants are scattered as far afield as Beirut, Paris and the United States. Each place reshapes them – to the extent that for some of the younger generations, unvisited Palestine remains foreign, distant and abstract. That is until Alyan’s terrific final chapter, which follows Souad’s American-based daughter, Manar, making a pilgrimage to the land of her grandparents to trace her heritage. She gets off to a bad start: at Ben Gurion International Airport she is singled out and interrogated; in Nablus she feels claustrophobic and “like an interloper, trespassing on memories that had nothing to do with her”. Only when she arrives in Jaffa and reads through old family letters does she experience a faint yet vital twinge of kinship.
Alyan is a Palestinian-American poet and much of her novel taps into her own mixed make-up and showcases her lyrical facility. Her language can be supple and gentle (“the contradictory weight of eggs”) and necessarily fierce and harsh, particularly when examining the problems of identity. “You’re fair-weather Arabs,” scoffs one character to his westernised counterparts. “No wonder you’re messed up,” says another. “You’ve been emotionally code-switching all your life.”
Only occasionally does Alyan’s phrasings feel overblown, her metaphors forced. “Their marriage had a glove compartment, a hollow, cluttered space where emotional debris went.” Later, and in a similar vein: Palestine “was a hat rack for all her discontent”. Otherwise, Alyan maintains perfect poise, recounting births, deaths and marriages and rendering the twin trials of displacement and assimilation in captivating prose that manages to be both tender and powerful.
A family tree on the first pages may actually end up a disincentive, as recent fictional sagas have been thick with tangled branches, resulting in readers losing their way or their patience. In contrast, Salt Houses contains just the right amount of offshoots – that is, well-drawn, fully formed characters who affect us and who we come to know intimately.
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As we say this novel is written by a global banking 1% freemason LITERARY STAR so it has a message and it creates fear and a feeling of INEVITABILITY.....WE CAN'T STOP IT.
AYLAN the novelist makes a strong point in this novel of those able to accept and adjust as advancing to be WINNERS. Those family members from PALESTINE having moved to a PARIS or a BOSTON were described as the HIGH-SKILLED family members. We see those EX-PATS as second and third generation simply living on old money knowing it is running out. We see the family member as EX-PAT moving to BOSTON being that CLINTON SUPPORTER.
The family members trying to stay true to ARABIC/PALESTINIAN culture were those in continuous struggles emotionally, spiritually, culturally. For our US 99% of WE THE WHITE citizens that displacement trying to stay in our own culture WESTERN EUROPE is being killed in MOVING FORWARD as well. The level of instability created by these several decades of continuous wars by far-right wing global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEEN KNIGHTS OF MALTA ---TRIBE OF JUDAH has deliberately left the entire geo-political economic structure in turmoil.
WHERE DOES GLOBAL BANKING 5% FREEMASON/GREEK WALDO GO NEXT?
NPR being that raging global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS media outlet of selling that FAD of how US 99% WE THE PEOPLE will handle our displacement.
'I Belonged Nowhere': A Story Of Displacement, From A Novelist Who Knows
May 4, 20175:05 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Steve Inskeep
Twitter Hala Alyan is the author of three poetry collections. Salt Houses is her first novel.
At the very start of Hala Alyan's novel Salt Houses, a woman buys a coffee set — a dozen cups, a coffee pot, a tray. It's a simple act that unexpectedly becomes painful. The woman is Palestinian — part of a family displaced after the founding of Israel — and the tray reminds her of an old one she lost in one of the family's many moves.
Alyan builds her story on little moments like that — a peek into the lives of several generations, forced to relocate and resettle. Her characters are lost and looking for a home.
The Palestinian-American author writes from experience. She says she imagined her fictional characters with her own displaced family members in mind.
"I definitely think there was an intergenerational trauma that went along with losing a homeland that you see trickle down through the different generations," she says.
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One thing we hope our new to US 99% of immigrants from nations in Asia, Arabia, Africa having a century of these LAISSEZ FAIRE MARXIST repression and war societies is this-----the US was the strongest in world history in freedom, liberty, justice, pursuit of happiness, and a REAL free market economy opened to all 99% BECAUSE it was LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE CAPITALIST -----please do not allow what global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS are pretending is LEFT ------when it is FAR-RIGHT intending to create in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES those very conditions our immigrants are trying to escape.
BRUENIG below is not trying to create an economic structure that is populist. 3P =======is the same global banking 1% 3P------public private partnerships that placed global corporations in control of all US government agencies ---national, state, and local.
What global banking 1% are trying to do as they install global corporate campus MARXISM----is find a way to FINANCIALIZE those 'worker-owned' FAKE BUSINESSES. We have discussed in detail how international labor unions are corrupting what is a real attempt by our US 99% to start local worker co-opts by inserting that global labor corporation as 'worker-co-op' and then financializing it.
THERE IS NO INTENTION OF HAVING LOCAL SMALL BUSINESS WORKER CO-OPS ----GLOBAL BANKING 5% POLS AND PLAYERS HAVE ALREADY PASSED LAWS TO MAKE SURE THOSE WORKER CO-OP STRUCTURES ARE TIED TO GLOBAL BANKING.
'Bruenig said he would be happy if 3P is able to “prod” large center-left think tanks to use their superior resources to further research and to advocate the kind of policies 3P is taking on'.
Sadly, it will be our global labor pool 99% black, white, and brown told this is real AMERICAN 20TH CENTURY LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE WORKER CO-OPS when they are far-right wing global corporate MARXIST ---STALIN/MAO tied to WORLD BANK'S INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION----ILO.
We notice how BRUENIG pretending to be a LEFT MARXIST------calls Clinton neo-liberal think tanks---LEFT CENTER........when of course they are FAR-RIGHT WING. This is how we know BRUENIG-----and his 3P----People’s Policy Project---is FAKE.
It must be 99% POPULIST----look, it has PEOPLE'S PROJECT as a title! OMG---LOL.
Policy
People’s Policy Project Wants to Change the Think Tank World, $5 at a Time
Matt Bruenig takes new approach to policy research through small, monthly donations
The People’s Policy Project is the only think tank funded by tiny monthly donations.
“I thought I could get $1,000 a month,” Matt Bruenig said about his initial plans for the organization, also known as 3P.
He posted an appeal on May 1 on Patreon, a platform known for letting people support podcasters, musicians, and artists with small monthly donations. He wrote that he would use the money to form a think tank to “publish ideas and analysis that assist in the development of an economic system that serves the many, not the few.”
It quickly attracted thousands of dollars, reaching $7,678 per month at the time of this writing, with 1,434 patrons, for an average monthly donation of $5.23. Bruenig initially hoped to just make enough to pay himself to write for the site, but now has plans to pay others on a freelance basis to work on papers and explanatory videos as well.
If funding continues to grow, Bruenig said he might hire people full-time to produce content or do legislative and media work.
The 3P model, Bruenig said, includes having the site function as a sort of hybrid between a news and a traditional think tank website. Bruenig plans to write regular posts that are tied to the daily news cycle to keep people interested, and “long papers that take two to three months to produce, in depth on policy issues.” That way, “interest can be maintained, while allowing us to do deeper, more useful work,” he said.
The paper currently in the works is planned to be the first in a series on different aspects of single-payer health care. It will look at how it can deal with the issue of long-term care, when individuals such as the elderly or disabled need nursing care indefinitely.
“If you read single-payer papers and proposals, if it’s included at all, it’s kind of overlooked, or not covered in great depth,” Bruenig said. “We’ll get the ball rolling on single-payer with a digestible small piece about something that’s often neglected.” He hopes to release the paper in September or October.
Bruenig is a lawyer who has built up an online following writing about welfare systems, inequality, and poverty. He previously wrote for the blog of the left-leaning think tank Demos, and also keeps a blog under his own name.
Hmmmm, DEMOS is a far-right wing global banking 1% ONE WORLD think tank-----not left leaning.
He received his first payout from Patreon on June 1, and launched the 3P website on Monday, intending for it to fill what he sees as a major gap in the policy space.
“The existing think tank world is politically constrained,” Bruenig said. “There’s this milieu of center-left think tanks, running all the way to the far right, but there’s nothing to the left of that. So we have ideas like single-payer [health care], which is supported by the vast majority of Democratic voters, that have no policy support whatsoever among these institutions.”
He blames that state of affairs on the ideology of think tank leaders, but “especially the donors.” That’s part of the motivation behind the crowdfunding model.
Bruenig said he would be happy if 3P is able to “prod” large center-left think tanks to use their superior resources to further research and to advocate the kind of policies 3P is taking on.
While Bruenig said he might be open to other funding sources in the future, for now 3P will depend on small donations.
“At some point, if that reaches a wall, I might have to think about other sources,” he said, “but I’d be very careful about who we take money from.”
“Some sources aren’t as problematic as others,” he said. “Labor unions provide quite a lot of money to causes like this. That might be a next step if we get to that place, if we feel like if we got extra money, we could add a lot more value.”
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As global banking 1% work hard to develop policy on how to FINANCIALIZE these FAKE worker co-ops while PRETENDING they are worker owned------we see what this PEOPLE'S PROJECT ---3P is really all about. This same far-right GAME was played in FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES overseas pretending to be MARXIST---COMMUNIST/SOCIALIST. People are told a business is WORKER-OWNED when it was always tied to being a SUBSIDIARY of a global corporation often sold as being PRO-WORKER by INTERNATIONAL LABOR UNION working for WORLD BANK ---ILO.
These economic policies tied to ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE/STANFORD are all MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES operating just as they do in third world nations. These WORKER CO-OPS will no doubt offer health care----education-----charity -----with absolutely no ties to our US SOVEREIGNTY----US CONSTITUTION---US FEDERAL COURT HISTORY ----TIES TO COMMON LAW-----ergo, they will not be tied to being AMERICAN.
WORKERS TO OWNERS-----we notice all the videos are tied to our 99% black and brown citizens-----don't worry our 99% white citizens going down the same road albeit as EX-PATS living our own SALT HOUSE blues.
We already see those global banking 5% freemason/Greeks selling this next FAKE economic road to nothing to each population group. Remember, those global banking 5% going under the bus---they will not be there when global banking claims that business you build.
'A True Alternative to Capitalism'
coming from the same global banking 5% freemason/Greeks having LIED, CHEATED, AND STOLEN in sack and loot CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.
- 05.21.18
- world changing ideas
With new tools and political policies now in place to support them, there could be a boom in employee-owned business ahead as baby boomers retire and sell their companies to their workers.
By Eillie Anzilotti
In 1982, Linda and Gregory Coles were struggling to find a sitter for their 18-month-old daughter. After a year of searching, they just decided to open their own daycare, and founded A Child’s Place in Queens, New York, in 1983. Thirty-four years later, they were ready to retire. “We were going to sell the business,” Linda says. But their broker suggested that instead of selling to new owners, they offer the business to their employees, who could then buy it and organize as a worker cooperative.
The Coles’ hadn’t heard of worker cooperatives before, but once the broker explained how it would work, Linda knew it was the right decision for them. “The idea that we could turn our business over to our employees was one of the best things we thought we could ever do,” she says.
A Child’s Place is now in the process of reorganizing as a cooperative–one of just 300 worker-owned small businesses in the U.S. While employee-owned cooperatives are still a very underrepresented model of workplace organization, they deliver well-documented benefits to the businesses and employees they govern. According to the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI), a nonprofit that supports the development of worker co-ops, employee-owned small businesses see an average of 4% to 5% higher productivity levels and more stability and potential for growth. In contrast to traditional businesses, worker co-ops see much lower rates of employee turnover and business closure. They’re also known to boost both profits and worker wages.
Because the people doing the work for the company are also the ones who own the company, they feel a greater sense of responsibility for and personal stake in helping the business succeed. While there’s still a lot of knowledge-sharing that needs to happen before co-ops go mainstream, recently, policymakers are taking notice of the benefits of worker cooperatives, and new legislation is on the way support their growth. And with millions of baby boomer-owned businesses set to change hands in the upcoming decades, this transition could be an opportunity to create more democratic workplaces across the country–if business owners, workers, and advocates can work together to convert these enterprises into employee-owned cooperatives.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
Time For Transition
Many businesses in the U.S. were founded as worker cooperatives. But a growing portion–as many as 40%–of co-ops in the U.S. are born out of traditional workplaces like A Child’s Place, whose owners decide to sell the business to their employees. As baby boomers, who own around 12 million businesses across the U.S., prepare to retire, around 70% of their companies are expected to change hands. Increasingly, children are not taking over businesses from their parents, so small business owners must look to sell or risk closing down and losing all their assets from years of investment.
But instead of selling to a private owner, there’s a real opportunity amid this “silver tsunami” to radically scale the presence of worker-owned cooperatives in the U.S. “Historically, co-ops do best when there’s a market failure,” says Melissa Hoover, founding executive director of DAWI. During the Great Depression, for instance, farmers struggling to access energy resources, set up electrical cooperatives that they collectively owned, and cooperative housing models took off in some cities. Nearly a century later, we’re living through our own version of market failure. As banks have consolidated, capital for small businesses has grown scarce. More small businesses are now closing than opening in the U.S., and jobs are consistently failing to provide livable wages to employees.
Yet, small businesses act as crucial anchors in their communities. “Rural areas, communities of color, rapidly gentrifying urban area, and small cities rely on small business as their economic base,” Hoover says. She’s seeing owners sell their businesses to large conglomerates or to private equity firms, who then liquidate the assets or fold crucial parts, like their customer list, into their operations. “This meets the needs of capitalism, but not the needs of people in the community,” Hoover says. This mode of sale also often requires the business owner to sell at a discount, and does not guarantee job security for the employees.
Employee-owned cooperatives, on the other hand, create a stronger base from which a business can continue to exist, and even grow. The workers already have demonstrated their commitment to the company and the community in which it operates, and granting them ownership allows the business to continue to operate and the community to continue to reap the benefits. And because the sales are done in a way that’s transparent and mutually beneficial, the selling business owners also get a fairer shake.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
Models For Success
DAWI wants to ensure that businesses changing hands are aware of the option to sell to their employees. During the month of May (labor history month), the nonprofit is profiling three businesses, including A Child’s Place, that successfully converted to employee-owned cooperatives. The short videos on the daycare center, a Massachusetts-based landscaping company called A Yard & a Half, and Metis Construction in Seattle, are meant to inspire business owners and employees to consider reorganizing as a cooperative. In them, workers talk about how collective ownership has renewed their responsibility to the business and enthusiasm for the work they do, and how it’s helped them understand how to run a business equitably.
The organization is sharing its videos and accompanying toolkit with other local and national equitable labor organizations, like Project Equity in Oakland, that have roots in the business communities. “The aim is to see local outlets and local service providers use these resources to demonstrate that this can be done,” Hoover says. DAWI is already seeing an uptick in queries about organizing worker coops as a result of the videos.
“This is not a hard sell,” Hoover says. “What we’ve found is it makes intuitive sense to people that you would sell your business to your employees–you can tell the stories and share the successes, and people get it.” But inspiration without instruction won’t actually create change. DAWI, in addition to telling the stories of the businesses that converted to co-ops, also released a new toolkit to spell out exactly how they did it. And slowly, they’re working to change both the financing and political landscapes around worker cooperatives to build out a path for them to the mainstream.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
How To Cooperatize
The first step, Hoover says, is to educate business owners themselves about the idea. Generally, when the owners begin the process of selling, they either decide to research conversion to cooperatives independently, or are tipped off to the idea like the Coles’ were. DAWI’s social campaign, Hoover hopes, will get more businesses interested in the process.
Because worker coops are still so rare, it’s often difficult to find a concrete story or example to point to when advising retiring business owners like the Coles’. But this media collection will help owners and business advisors educate themselves, and, once they do, they can then can take the models to their employees to show that this is what they’re aiming to do. The employees’ response to the idea of organizing as worker-owners is, after all, the most important deciding factor.
From there, it gets a bit more particular. Once the owners of a business decide to sell it to their employees, they have to bring in assistance to assess how best to do it. DAWI works with a network of local affiliate organizations that help establish worker cooperatives. A Child’s Place consulted with The Working World, a New York-based nonprofit, to carry out its transition–the nonprofit helped Linda and Gregory Coles determine that this strategy for selling their business was the route they wanted to take.
The factors that determine if a business is eligible for transition to a cooperative vary by circumstance, but there are some rough criteria. Generally, coops tend to form from businesses with a minimum of 20 employees, and no more than a few hundred (though there are exceptions–Cooperative Home Care Associates in New York is the country’s largest worker-owned cooperative and employs nearly 2,000 workers). The relatively manageable size ensures that each employee can purchase a share of the company that’s large enough to be meaningful, but not so expensive as to be prohibitive. Longevity in the community is also a benefit. Businesses like A Child’s Place that have a long tenure in a specific neighborhood and meet a social and emotional need often make the most sense to organize as a cooperative, as employee ownership guarantees that company culture holds steady even in times of transition.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
The Capital Hurdle
Because the capital structure and incentives for investing in worker coops differ from that of traditional capitalist businesses, coops have a proportionally more difficult time accessing capital, Hoover says. “We don’t have the kind of values-aligned capital that understands how to finance conversions, understands the risks, or understands the upsides of cooperatives,” she says. It’s not that capital is entirely inaccessible to cooperatives starting up, she says–it’s just very rare and piecemeal. But it’s access to capital that ensures that workers will be able to buy the business from their owners for a price that’s both affordable and reasonable for the selling owner.
A Child’s Place, for instance, took out a loan from The Working World, a New York City-based Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that manages a $5 million loan fund specifically for worker-owned businesses. That loan allowed the daycare’s staff members to collectively buy the business (the transition is still in progress). Taking loans from CDFIs, which provide smaller loans to local businesses that big banks won’t reach, is also an option, but Hoover has also seen some businesses launch Direct Public Offerings, which allow community members to buy shares in the business, and some co-ops manage conversions by having individual employees take out personal loans to collectively finance the transition. “One of the issues is that there hasn’t been a standard model or tool that people looking to convert can look to,” Hoover says.
DAWI sees the greatest potential for codifying co-op conversions in loan funds like The Working World. These small CDFIs, Hoover says, understand the risks and rewards of investing in co-op transitions, and can work with local businesses to come up with a capital stack that makes sense for them. For businesses looking to transition to co-ops, organizations like DAWI can act as connectors between owners and resources like loan funds.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
Building Capacity
Securing capital, Hoover says, is probably the biggest hurdle potential new co-ops will face, but learning how to effectively structure and govern a collectively owned business is another. DAWI recently developed the School for Democratic Management, an in-person and online course that educates new cooperative managers and worker-owners in how to effectively run a co-op.
Businesses looking to transition can also take a cue from A Yard & a Half landscaping, one of the featured co-ops. There, the owner long knew she intended to sell the business to her workers, and convened a group of employees five years before she retired to educate them on how the company was run. That also gave future worker-owners enough time to strategize with the rest of their fellow employees. In Seattle, Metis Construction‘s cofounder decided to stay on as a worker-owner after the business converted, and while that model conversion is rare, it’s instructive for businesses to know that they don’t have to wait for an owner to retire before cooperativizing.
What’s important to emphasize, Hoover says, is that while co-ops are facing a number of hurdles in starting up, the benefits are long-lasting and pronounced. A study from Rutgers found that converting to employee ownership boosts profits by as much as 14%, and doing so does not come at a detriment to wages. Rather, it’s the reverse.
After A Yard & a Half converted to a coop in 2014, average wages have increased from $17.02 per hour to $19.29 per hour despite adding more employees, and revenue has grown to $3.2 million from $2 million. Worker co-ops are still a business, so the employee-owners have to learn the same management and strategy skills that enable companies to grow. The main difference: It’s the workers themselves that reap the benefits of that growth.
[Image: Aleksei_Derin/iStock]
A True Alternative to Capitalism
While the businesses that DAWI is highlighting this month–and working with on the whole–are indeed small, they create stability and pathways to opportunity for their worker-owners, and benefit their communities by remaining in place.
And we’re beginning to see a response to the utility of worker co-ops in the political landscape. The U.S. Department of Agriculture runs a Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan Program meant to support the development of rural businesses, and in August 2016, the department added new capabilities that specifically support the transition to worker-owned businesses, like financing models staged over five years to support a more distributed sale. And a bill that New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand developed to enable the Small Business Administration to make loans to intermediaries that help finance worker co-op transitions recently passed the House with bipartisan support.
“Co-ops are not whiz-bang businesses that are going to get anybody rich,” Hoover says. “They’re bread and butter types–necessary and profitable, but not sexy.” Still, communities and policymakers alike are recognizing that their shared ownership structure can provide the kind of stability that the market cannot. “We’ve seen growing interest in rapidly changing cities and in rural areas where they’re really trying to make capital investments that anchor community wealth,” Hoover says. “Business retention makes more sense than trying to attract Amazon HQ2,” she adds. “Why don’t we invest in our local ecosystem and retain what’s already here?”
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Here in US MOVING FORWARD to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES filled with GLOBAL FACTORIES has a problem global banking 1% did not have in third world nations overseas. We have a US 99% of highly educated people knowing what a developed nation quality of life is-----having several centuries of FREEDOM, LIBERTY, JUSTICE, and SELF-DETERMINATION AND CHOICE------being taken down to 1000BC where all that is gone.
MOVING FORWARD will build GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES that will indeed operate for several decades as far-right wing global corporate campus MARXISM----you live, eat, work, are schooled never leaving that campus. But what to do with all those US 99% of citizens black, white, and brown not being INSTITUTIONALIZED on these campuses?
These policies are TEMPORARY----they are a GO-BETWEEN keeping tens of millions of people busy while these global corporate campuses are being built. They are already rigged so no wealth can be accumulated---and global banking 1% will shut these worker co-ops down once US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE construction is complete.
REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVES CALL THESE THE 'STOP GAP TO SERFDOM'
There is a reason these are starting in raging global banking 1% Bush neo-conservative TEXAS folks-------nothing 'left' in TEXAS.
Getting Rid of Bosses
Can a company succeed if no one is in charge?
Alana Semuels
Jul 8, 2015
“Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: Our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength.” —George Orwell, Animal Farm
AUSTIN, Tex.—The pastry chefs were unhappy. They had to follow the whims of the head baker, they weren’t allowed to take bathroom breaks, and the hairnets they had to wear were truly unflattering.
Inspired by an anti-capitalist documentary, they came up with a solution: no more bosses. The pastry chefs quit their jobs and joined together to form a vegan-donut co-op, where they could bake sweets free from the strict confines of the top-down corporate world.
But life without bosses was not all they had hoped. Instead of one boss to bother them, they each had four colleagues doing so. Baking sessions devolved into shouting matches as personalities clashed. Meetings had no order, and conversation would hop from farmer’s markets to glazes without any decisions or plans being made. No one would take charge. No one could. There were no bosses.
* * *
Worker cooperatives are not new, but they’re seeing new life as progressive-minded employees seek out remedies for the nation’s growing economic inequality. Worker cooperatives are equally owned and governed by employees, who also earn money from the profits of their labor. There are no CEOs here making multi-million dollar salaries while workers receive minimum wage. Nor are there CEOs with decades of experience and education to successfully guide the company through the up and downs of the dog-eat-dog business world.
In worker cooperatives, decision-making is democratic, so each worker has one vote, and policies can’t be determined by an investor whose only priority is profit. (Most profit-minded investors probably wouldn’t touch a worker cooperative with a ten-foot pole anyway.)
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WOW-----this DEMOCRACY AT WORK INSTITUTE sounds much like global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS in continuous wars shouting DEMOCRACY NOW!
We see this NGO is tied to the same SILICON VALLEY STANFORD area and is indeed a FAKE DEMOCRACY AT WORK. What global banking 1% is MOVING FORWARD in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES will look like 1000BC-----where only the global 1% participate in government. All of the policies being written from this THINK TANK may as well be written by BROOKINGS INSTITUTE/CATO INSTITUTE-----it is the same far-right wing global banking NEO-LIBERALS taking the US to a colonial representative government. That is when global corporations send in a family member to represent their business interests.
We are sure those global banking 5% freemason/Greek players tied to FAKE LABOR AND JUSTICE organizations are told they will be part of these FINANCIALIZATION profits ----but that is not the goal of MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1%.
Worker Cooperative FAQ
Frequently asked questions:What is a cooperative?
What is a worker cooperative?
What is a multi-stakeholder cooperative?
How many worker cooperatives are there in the US?
How big is the typical worker cooperative?
What industries are worker cooperatives in?
Where are worker cooperatives geographically in the United States?
Is there a standard legal form that worker cooperatives take?
What is the difference between a worker cooperative and an employee-owned (ESOP) company?
What is the difference between a collective and a cooperative?
Why are cooperatives more common in other countries than in the U.S.?
How do worker cooperatives fit into other social or economic movements?
How can I start or join a worker cooperative?
What is a cooperative?
A cooperative is an entity that is owned and controlled by its members, which operates for their benefit. The cooperative landscape includes (among other types)
- agricultural and producer cooperatives,
- consumer cooperatives,
- housing cooperatives,
- rural electric cooperatives, and
- worker cooperatives
What is a worker cooperative?
A worker cooperative is a business that is owned and controlled by its workers, who constitute the members of the cooperative.
The two central characteristics of worker cooperatives are:
- workers own the business and they participate in its financial success on the basis of their labor contribution to the cooperative
- workers have representation on and vote for the board of directors, adhering to the principle of one worker, one vote
In addition to their economic and governance participation, worker-owners often manage the day-to-day operations through various management structures. The worker cooperative sector in the United States is represented by the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives (http://usworker.coop) and an international apex organization, CICOPA (http://cicopa.coop), represents the global worker cooperative community.
What is a multi-stakeholder cooperative?
A multi-stakeholder cooperative is a cooperative that has more than one class of members. For example, a grocery store might have consumer members and worker members. The different classes of members might have different rights to participate in the surplus (or profits) of the company, and different roles in decision-making. Multi-stakeholder cooperatives can come in many different forms and structure the business in a variety of ways. A recent trend is the development of multi-stakeholder food coops in local food systems.
How many worker cooperatives are there in the US?
Though we don’t yet have comprehensive data on the nature and scope of worker cooperatives in the U.S., researchers and practitioners conservatively estimate that there are over 300 democratic workplaces in the United States, employing approximately 7,000 people and generating over $400 million in annual revenues. The number of workers cooperatives has grown steadily over the past 20 years, and is made up of both well-established businesses and new, growing ones, including some businesses that have been sold to their employees by their owners. A comprehensive census of worker cooperatives is currently underway.
How big is the typical worker cooperative?
The majority of worker cooperatives in the United States are small businesses, with between 5 and 50 workers, but there are a few notable larger enterprises with between 150 and 500 workers. The largest worker cooperative in the United States is Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), a home care agency with over 2,000 workers based in the Bronx, New York.
What industries are worker cooperatives in?
Any business can be a worker-owned and -controlled business. Worker co-ops have been successful in many different sectors and industries. Some examples are:
- Service - housecleaning, day labor, restaurants, taxis, childcare
- Retail - grocery stores, bakeries, bookstores, bike shops
- Health care - nursing, home health care, clinics, bodywork
- Skilled trades - printing, plumbing, woodworking, contracting
- Manufacturing and engineering - machine parts, fabricating
- Technology - web hosting, networking, voice and data systems
- Education - charter schools, teacher/student/parent-run schools
- Media and the arts - designers, galleries, performers, publishers
Worker cooperatives exist across the country, with the greatest concentrations in the Northeast, the West Coast and the Upper Midwest.
Is there a standard legal form that worker cooperatives take?
There is no uniform cooperative code in the United States, and definitions and incorporation guidelines vary from state to state. As a result, worker cooperatives can incorporate in a number of different ways. In states where there are cooperative incorporation codes, such as Massachusetts and California, businesses can incorporate as worker cooperatives. In states where there are no such laws, a worker cooperative can incorporate as a C corporation, S corporation, LLC, flexible purpose corporation, or any other corporate form, as long as the company meets the minimum requirements of operating as a worker cooperative.
What is the difference between a worker cooperative and an employee-owned (ESOP) company?
Although the term employee-owned can be used to describe many different business structures (including worker cooperatives), it is most commonly used to describe companies with an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). An ESOP is a federally governed benefit plan (like a 401(k) or profit sharing plan) that can be used to share an ownership stake with employees. While an ESOP company can be 100% owned by its employees and operate according to worker cooperative principles, very few ESOP companies currently qualify as worker cooperatives. The National Center for Employee Ownership has extensive resources on ESOPs available on their website, http://www.nceo.org.
What is the difference between a collective and a cooperative?
A collective is a general term for groups where management decisions are made democratically, usually by some form of consensus. The term can apply to businesses, nonprofits, or volunteer groups, including worker cooperatives. Collectives are often organizations that do not have ownership buy-in or profit-sharing. Cooperative is a more formal term signifying that the entity is a member-benefit organization designed to meet community needs, with economic participation and democratic governance by members. In addition to worker cooperatives, which are found in many industries and sectors across the economy, there are also sector-specific cooperative forms, such as housing cooperatives, agricultural producer cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, and credit unions.
Why are cooperatives more common in other countries than in the U.S.?
It is true that the cooperative economy is strong and in some cases better developed in other parts of the world, and that worker cooperatives have grown to be influential actors in the economies of Spain and Italy, in particular. However, cooperatives also have a long history here in the United States, from farmers coming together in agricultural cooperatives to the rural electrics wiring the countryside to the earliest worker cooperatives that emerged from artisans’ guilds and labor unions. Cooperatives happen anywhere people come together to meet their needs – the cooperative form is international, flexible, and adapts to the conditions in which it emerges. We see concentrations of worker cooperatives in parts of the world where there is governmental and policy support for the cooperative form. There is great potential for cooperative development in general and worker cooperative development in particular to make cooperatives a larger part of the U.S. economy in the coming decades.
How do worker cooperatives fit into other social or economic movements?
With their emphasis on people before profit, creating community, and equitable compensation and participation, worker cooperatives are a concrete example of using business as a force for social good. Additionally, a large percentage of existing cooperatives in the U.S. were specifically developed to meet the needs of people who lack access to business ownership or even sustainable work options. As a result, worker cooperatives can be defined as social enterprises and are often associated with larger movements, including the new economy movement (which is also referred to as the alternative economy, the fourth sector, or the social sector economy), the solidarity economy, as well as various causes from immigration rights to labor rights.
How can I start or join a worker cooperative?
To find out more about existing co-ops, or to get resources on how to start a worker cooperative or convert an existing conventional business to a worker-owned or democratic workplace, contact the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, a national grassroots membership group of and for democratic workplaces, at info@usworker.coop.
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We are watching on one of the worst of global banking media propaganda and myth-making CNN----where a commercial comes on with this global human resources corporation-----SHRM------SHRM has nothing to do with being AMERICAN----it is 100% ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES as colonial entities. In this commercial we see the smiling faces of what we know are a global banking 5% freemason/Greek player as owner of a SHRM-----no doubt a subsidiary of UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION global labor pool distribution system. Those smiling faces telling the world WE ARE LOOKING FOR THE BEST FOR THESE EMPLOYMENT POSITIONS.
What we see is a TRICK----to bring our global 99% new immigrants into a work environment MOVING FORWARD to being as EXPLOITATIVE, BRUTAL as anything in overseas FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. We see as well where SHRM is selling this idea of WORKER CO-OPS we already know are FINANCIALIZED TO THE MAX-----to global banking 1%. You work for years to build a business then lose it.
'SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China, India and United Arab Emirates'.
This is the same structure used these several decades in global slave trade distribution built by CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----now being installed in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES to bring new immigrants into what will end in being FAILED BUSINESS----LOST WEALTH-----BEING PUSHED TO LEAVING AND STARTING OVER-----you know, the novel SALT HOUSE
We see the most global banking 1% ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE states MOVING FORWARD this structure that captures our 99% of new immigrants into employment structures geared to SACK AND LOOT them
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Nothing LEFT happening in WISCONSIN, TEXAS, OR MARYLAND.
Welcome to the Maryland SHRM State Council
Maryland SHRM State Council, Inc. is recognized by SHRM to offer Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for the SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP
We are an affiliate of the Society for Human Resource Management. Whether you are new to the HR field or have many years of experience, we are a local starting point for networking, information, professional development and continued support of excellence in Human Resources.
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the world’s largest HR professional society, representing 285,000 members in more than 165 countries. For nearly seven decades, the Society has been the leading provider of resources serving the needs of HR professionals and advancing the practice of human resource management. SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China, India and United Arab Emirates.
We welcome your use of this site as a resource, and encourage you to check back frequently for updated information. We also encourage your involvement and suggestions about all of our activities, on the web and off.
We look forward to seeing you at an upcoming meeting or event!
MD SHRM is proud to be recognized as a Platinum State Council for 2016! The award is part of the SHRM Affiliate Program for Excellence, which aligns individual chapters and councils’ activities with SHRM’s aspirations for the HR profession. The award recognizes accomplishments and strategic activities and initiatives that enhance the human resources profession. The EXCEL award can be earned at four levels: bronze, silver, gold and platinum, and each level has a prescribed set of requirements and accomplishments that have to be met.
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§ Be an Employer of Choice! Application opens on 8/17 for the When Work Works Award! § Smart employers aren’t sitting back and letting burnout, work-life conflict, the skills gap or a host of other workplace challenges impact their bottom lines. If this is your...
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We want to emphasize that the ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FAKE 'LEFT' MARXIST structures like 3P ----PEOPLE'S PROJECT or WORKER CO-OP ownership often sold and being recruited by or SHRM is global labor pool 99% trafficing that goes BOTH WAYS. No doubt China, India, and UAE has these same FAKE LEFT MARXIST STRUCTURES recruiting US 99% of citizens to those nations to be SELF-EMPLOYED-----so, our US 99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens will have a SHRM-----selling the idea of going overseas to own your business----join a co-op.
'SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China, India and United Arab Emirates'.
We shared the NOVEL SALT HOUSE to educate as to how these emigration for employment have operated for several decades overseas all tied to building FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. KUWAIT if we remember was built at the same time UAE was made GLOBAL BANKING OF ARABIA-----SALT HOUSE having family members moving from PALESTINE to NABLUS to KUWAIT CITY-----
Hmmm, 1986 a global development corporation building a city in the desert which happened to set the stage for Saddam Hussein feeling forced to attack KUWAIT first-----he knew KUWAIT was going to be a launching ground for global banking 1%.
The miracle in the desert - how Kuwait is bringing the sea SIX MILES inland with the help of British engineers to create a brand new city near the border with Saudi Arabia
- In 1986 property developer Khalid Yousef Al Marzouq had the idea of building a city in the desert
IRIN | Jordan looks to turn refugee crisis into economic boon
www.irinnews.org/feature/2017/03/21/jordan-looks-turn-refugee-crisis-economic-boon
Mar 21, 2017 ... Jordan's economic slowdown has not been helped by the fact that Syrians ... located in 18 special economic zones (SEZs) throughout Jordan can unlock .... Bank's efforts to develop economic opportunities for Jordanians and ...
SALT HOUSES also features AMMAN JORDAN as a source of PALESTINIAN refugee flow------just so happened JORDAN built its earliest FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES at that same time. Remember, when we say global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS ----that is the silk and spice trade routes of 1000BC ---China, Arabia, Europe......no AMERICA and its freedom MOVING FORWARD. TEAM GLOBAL BANKING 1% ----working together in continuous wars killing 99% of citizens black, white, and brown for FLIPPING THE EARTH'S ECONOMIC AXIS from Western Hemisphere to Eastern Hemisphere.
ALJAZEERA would make the connection to the building of FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES in Arabia at the same time continuous wars started if it was not a global banking 1% FAKE news media.
Salt Houses: A story of Palestinians without Palestine
Hala Alyan's novel spans generations of a Palestinian family as they search for home and identity in diaspora.
by Zahra Hankir
4 Aug 2017
'This is a book my grandmother wrote without realising and my great-grandparents wrote without realising'
Hala Alyan's debut novel Salt Houses has shaken up the literary world. The Palestinian-American poet and psychologist's book is a family drama about displacement that traverses conflicts, countries and continents.
Born of a short story, the novel explores the inter-generational trauma accompanying exile
The novel explores the experiences of eight members of a Palestinian family spanning six generations. Readers meet them in 1967 Nablus, Palestine, at the start of the Six-Day War and travel with them through the Israel-Lebanon War in 2006 and beyond.
Salt Houses is punctuated by a never-ending search for home, from Nablus to Kuwait City, Amman, Paris and Boston. At times, the family members are uprooted by war, and at other times by choice or chance.
Born of a short story, the novel delves into the inter-generational trauma accompanying exile. It is a particularly personal book for Alyan, whose own family has experienced displacement.
Al Jazeera spoke with Alyan about the novel's timeliness, her transition from poetry to prose and the role novelists can play in shaping narratives on the Arab world.
Al Jazeera: How did the idea of Salt Houses come to you?
Hala Alyan: I've always been interested in the period between 1948 and 1967 when something terrible had already happened, but people didn't know what else was to come. How there was this lost generation, particularly of young men, that felt powerless.
I was going to write a short story about one young man, on his way to the mosque, reflecting on an illicit affair he was having. Then I had him run into his sister. Then I realised how much I loved the sister. And then I reflected on the mother.
I found myself captivated by this family. I felt it would be cruel to abandon them when I knew the Six-Day War was coming, and they'd probably lose their home. I know that might sound ridiculous as they're characters I created, but I felt this obligation to see the story through.
'I think of Salt Houses as a book that's been generations in the making, and that's taken a tribe to write'
Al Jazeera: Did you have the global political situation in mind when writing?
Alyan: When I first started writing, I was steeped in the past, preoccupied with the idea of doing justice to an era I never existed in. That felt like a huge responsibility. When I switched over to the 2006 Lebanon war and the final chapters, I was very much thinking about the present context.
The Trump era has amplified issues that always existed. Black bodies were being harassed by police; Muslims were being vetted and discriminated against. These things were already happening, they just became more shameless, exaggerated and blown up. In that sense, I'm happy this book has come out in an era of literal and psychological borders; I hope it will contribute to the literary genre that tries to transcend and challenge those ideas.
Seems like the Clinton/Bush/Obama era amplied issues surrounding violence against black and brown citizens globally----why mention TRUMP ONLY?
There's something tragic about having to find ways to keep your culture alive in displacement.
Al Jazeera: One of your characters, Mustafa, is attracted to the mosque for political rather than religious reasons. What message were you trying to send?
Alyan: What I've taken is the archetype of the lost young person looking for tribe and community. You see that in disenfranchised communities everywhere and in people being radicalised. At the heart of that are people at a loss for purpose and meaning. Mustafa serves as a representation of the young man in a rudderless moment, looking for anything that will point him north. The means and instruments most accessible to him are those of the mosque and the community he finds there.
Al Jazeera: The family in this book is cushioned by a comfortable economic situation, yet still damaged by war. Why did you go with that angle?
Alyan: I wanted to write a story of displacement and diasporic memory, and to do that, people had to be able to "leave". This book doesn't purport to represent the entire Palestinian experience. It's a slice of that experience: This is what happens if you have certain socioeconomic means and opportunities. I wanted this to be a story about being Palestinian without being in Palestine.
It's worse to be living in a camp, of course. But it was important for me to write about how there's still suffering and a sense of loss in exile. There's a luxury and privilege in being able to become someone in exile, but that doesn't mitigate the fact that you're always going to be landless. There's something tragic about having to find ways to keep your culture alive in displacement.
Al Jazeera: What role should Arab novelists play in shaping the narrative on the region?
Alyan: From my perspective, it's to tell the truth, as ugly as it might be. No one behaves well during war. There are real class and social issues. I'm not going to paint my people or parts of the world I love with a rose-coloured brush because that's not fair to my audience or the people I'm trying to represent. If I'm going to tell the truth about certain things, I want to tell the truth about all of it.
It's important to remember that any critique, if we're going to write about Palestine or Syria, is part of the tax we pay. Being able to talk about it is a luxury - we get to have voices whereas many people who came before us and many today don't.
Al Jazeera: In writing this book, did you feel you were able to connect more with your Palestinian identity?
Alyan: As a Palestinian, one of the things I contend with is guilt. Can I claim this identity, even if I'm not suffering the way people in Palestine are? Can I claim this identity even though I'm not living under occupation? My biggest fear is that I'll be accused of slipping that identity on and off.
I'm very conscious that I say I'm Palestinian-American - I don't shy away from it. In terms of writing Salt Houses, though, I do think it was in part a subconscious testament that I'm unapologetically Palestinian. And that identity belongs to me in a different way, but I would say just as much as anybody who claims ownership of it.
Jazeera: Who did you write this book for?
Alyan: This was a book inspired by a family that was also written for them. I don't mean to sound ungrateful for all the praise I've received, but when my brother read it and texted saying: "You did it, you did the thing you were supposed to do", that was it. Nothing will top that.
This is not my story. And when you look at it that way, the most gratifying responses are from the people I had in mind when writing.
Al Jazeera: Will you be focusing more on novels now, versus poetry?
Alyan: Hopefully this is the beginning of more of both. I can't imagine not writing poetry. It feeds something essential in me that fiction doesn't. It also taught me a lot about patience and about taking what seems like a daunting task and breaking it into pieces.
I'm well into a new novel, which is about an expatriate family that returns to sell its ancestral home in Beirut. The book is written simultaneously in the 1950s and 1960s in Damascus and Beirut, and then in the present day over one summer, as the adult children try to dissuade the patriarch from selling the home.
I like the idea of not being in one perspective forever, as that would be a little restless for me.
Al Jazeera: How do you feel about the reception for Salt Houses?
Alyan: For a while, I felt like it was happening to somebody else. Praise in publishing is such an individualistic thing. Granted, I sat down and created the product, but it felt like a collectivist process.
Writing this book for me took generations. I think of Salt Houses as a book that's been generations in the making, and that's taken a tribe to write.
This is a book my grandmother wrote without realising and my great-grandparents wrote without realising. This is a book that existed through so many people and so many iterations and so many cities.
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