@zkat Essentially it's an opt-in tax; you pick your network (say, #NoBAWC or #USFWC); they use the funds to organize and fund worker-and-community owned small businesses that pay a living wage.

You also get democratic control over the distribution-across-industry for where taxes go. Say:

- 15% to arts and entertainment
- 15% to the outdoors, sports and activities
- 15% to housing,
- 20% to food
- 15% to human-logistics
- 5% to digital-logistics,
- 15% to goods-logistics

But that means #ZincCoop is in a kind of weird spot. I don't want to charge the lovely folks at #NOBAWC or #USFWC to subsidize my time; since I don't have more availability anyway; but I would *love* for networks such as these to have their internal IT Directors acting a liaison for the national/multi-national collection of #CoOpSource co-conspirators, contributors, and maintainers

@smallcircles @the_Effekt @LibertyForward1

Yep, that's the point of Convene.

Build it with #Convene, it will run on any of the regional data cooperatives. Convene instances play well with each other, so if you're an artist and you list a product for sale in the #NoBAWC Neighborhood; you can also cross-publish it to the #USFWC Neighborhood and the #ArtisansCoop Neighborhood.

@toddxy I think there are already a number of non-cooperatives that serve in a similar space.

The #USFWC, for example, offers several membership categories for non-cooperatives: https://www.usworker.coop/join/

It sounds like what you are describing would fit nicely as either a Federation Partner or Cooperative Developer

Lovely time with the #USFWC #TechPeerNetwork! Sad that Ajoke is leaving us, but I'm hopeful we'll be able to keep ourselves together!

@bhaugen TBH, I wish more of the ecosystem stepped back from technocratic thinking; and focused on building the things that folks like the @BlackSocialists , #NoBAWC, #USFWC, and other cooperative organizations needed.

What I wouldn't give for even 5 "Client Owners" who were worker-coops internal IT-ish person who would just tell me where they're hurting so I can fix it.

Anyone else running the #Coop5k tomorrow? I’m running with the #USFWC team!

Also, today is the #ZincCoop member meeting, where we:

- Voted to renew our membership in the #usfwc!
- Published our Q1 quarterly expenses to OpenCollective: https://opencollective.com/zinc-community
- Discussed one of our members career trajectory and how we can best support them

If you join the Open Collective, we're resuming quarterly-ish progress updates; which is very excite.

Good statement from #USFWC officials: http://unioncoops.org/

"If the worker cooperative community is used as a tool to leverage against traditional collective bargaining strategies, it hurts both the labor movement and worker co-ops. The worker co-op movement is not and must not be antagonistic to labor unions."

I wish it had stressed democracy and workers power -- an important potential source of solidarity between unions and co-ops.

Really inspiring to see how much @USFWC has grown during the Annual Meeting. Great for worker co-op, great for our communities, and a hope for the future of the US! #coopmonth #usfwc #workercoops

What's the story behind the growth of #WorkerCoops? Media, activism, and government support are a few factors named by #USFWC E.D. #EstebanKelly: https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/08/09/key-trends-behind-the-growth-of-worker-co-ops/

#USFWC Advocacy Council election results:
https://nycworker.coop/election-results-advocacy-council-member-programming/