Time for OWS to' embrace the co-op movement?

The Park Slope Food Co-op, in Brooklyn, New York, is one of many American co-ops.

Nikolas Kozloff, Opinion, Al Jazeera English:

Are Americans finally to the point where they are tired of corporations owning everything?

Head into Liberty Plaza in Lower Manhattan, and one is immediately struck by the self-governing nature of the "Occupy" encampment.

A community which adheres to non-hierarchical decision making, Occupy conducts General Assembly meetings which are transparent and open to the public. Meals too are prepared communally, and there's even a public library. On the other hand, it's not as if Occupy is putting novel ideas into practice, since the encampment harks back historically to the co-operative movement.

According to the International Co-operative Alliance, an independent non-governmental organisation founded over a century ago, a co-operative is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise".

Co-ops, which tend to aspire to other values besides pure profit-making, can be heterogeneous and may range from small-scale businesses to multimillion-dollar enterprises.

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