A worker cooperative is a cooperative self-managed by its workers. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which managers and administration is elected by every worker-owner, and finally it can refer to a situation in which managers are considered, and treated as, workers of the firm. In traditional forms of worker cooperative, all shares are held by the workforce with no outside or consumer owners, and each member has one voting share. In practice, control by worker-owners may be exercised through individual, collective or majority ownership by the workforce, or the retention of individual, collective or majority voting rights (exercised on a one-member one-vote basis).

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Howard Zinn (1922–2010) lived through and participated in two of the most important social movements of the 20th century: the Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Born into poverty, Zinn was thrown into radicalism by his reading and his surroundings. The Communist Party emerged in the 1930s as a major force in New York City, and it was through its cultural world that Zinn came to appreciate the political addresses to the left of liberalism. In 1939, he went to a demonstration against fascist Spain, saw the mounted police beat the protesters (including himself), and decided, “I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country, something rotten at the root.

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The people who run this country, they have to convince Americans that they are some kind of moral leader. A lot of them do it through religion: ‘I’m an upstanding Christian.’ [or] ‘I’m a Jewish person that unquestionably supports Israel’ so no one can question where they stand morally because they have a bloc of politics to rely upon to be their shield, and also to act as a proxy to them, in case they ever fall into the danger of receiving an overt amount of criticism for their beliefs. That said, when we talk about a group of people that are trying to present themselves as an answer to America’s problems—that answer has to come through the communication to work with people, to have a voice and address the issues. Not to blame the people because they have the least amount of blame for what’s going on. The fact that we’re having a conversation about the economy and not a conversation about the two unsustainable wars that put the economy where it is, I think that’s absurd. At some point, Republicans and Democrats can get on each other all day long, but unless one of them provides a viable solution for all the issues rather than a solution because some people don’t like another individual, that’s another story. People can tell me all day that Obama is a war president. He’s an individual who’s violated human rights of other people with drone strikes and what not, that he deported more people than [George W.] Bush, which is true, all these things are potentially true, but at the same time, do I think that Mitt Romney is going to be the solution to that problem? Do I think in any way shape or form, that it would be logical for black and Latino people to vote for someone like that? Or even white Americans who are looking to advance themselves in middle class and working class America. No. That doesn’t mean that I think Barack Obama is a savior or that I’m campaigning or even voting for him. Don’t tell me simply because the food in front of me is rotten that the shit you got in the trunk of your car is better. I digress from that by saying that traditionally in hip-hop, we’ve had a very political culture that’s always been associated with questioning what people tell us is unquestionable. Only because the hypocrisy [of] what we’re told we can question and what we can’t question or what we remember and what we’re told not remember. In school, it was drilled in our heads about 9/11…about the holocaust, yet the holocaust of an indigenous people, which amounts 80 million to 100 million people over the course of 100 years, a million people a year…If we’re talking about World War II being from 1939-1945, six years, six million people of the Jewish faith we’re killed by this, then [why aren’t] we talking about a holocaust that went on for about 100 years? That’s not to quantify them and say one is worse than the other or one is better. That’s not to say one shouldn’t be regarded uniquely in history, but now we’re told about one that is so holy and it should never be talked about or questioned, only researched—I’m not a holocaust denier, I’ve never been that. I was touched early by the historical facts presented about everyone’s struggles and all the genocides that have taken place. But if we’re told that we should always remember one… When you talk about slavery, and the African genocide, that’s just slavery, get over it. Or you guys lost a war. Get over it. You’re not using the litmus by which you require other people to live their life. You’re acting like a drunk irresponsible parent.
That shouldn’t be the leadership of America. The leadership of America shouldn’t be don’t do as I do, do as I say—no! It should be people who lead by example. Individuals that are willing to sacrifice their own personal gain and personal visions to be put before the people as an example of what they’re willing to give. Instead, politicians become champions for individuals who carry the most amount of influence and most amount of corruption that exist within the American state right now, which has now become a political caste system.

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