Podcasts about opportunity threads

In this episode, Neil and Will sit down with Molly Hemstreet the Co-Executive Director of the Industrial Commons - reviving the historic textile district in North Carolina one social enterprise at a time.  The Industrial Commons founds and scales employee owned social enterprises and industrial cooperatives, and support frontline workers to build a new southern working class that erases the inequities of generational poverty and guilds an economy and future for all.  Molly explains how it all started "with some thread" and how she has not only transformed her organization but the Carolina Textile District as well.  Take a listen to hear thoughts on social enterprises, cooperatives and the circular economy and how she thinks about the workplace and the future of work in the mountains.  You might even hear about Neil's "update."  Also, don't forget about the #AppBiz(s) of the week: Opportunity Threads; and The Collection! The Industrial Commons - www.theindustrialcommons.org  AppNews: "Interpreting Rural Life: From Appalachia to the World" - https://cas.appstate.edu/news/march-22-documentary-filmmakers-interpreting-rural-life-appalachia-world  The APPY Awards - https://www.facebook.com/theappalachianartsandentertainmentawards/ #AppBiz(s): Opportunity Threads - www.opportunitythreads.com Collection - https://createthecollection.com 

In episode 269, Kestrel welcomes Ngozi Okaro, the founder and executive director of Custom Collaborative, to the show. Custom Collaborative trains, mentors, and advocates for and with no/low-income and immigrant women to build the skills necessary to achieve economic success in the sustainable fashion industry and broader society. “I think that if workers owned the business, if the people who are actually putting in the labor are also owners, then they're less inclined to overproduce, because it's just their time and their resources that they're wasting. So, I think that cooperative is important for both local economies, I think also for the environment and also for human rights.” -Ngozi This week, we are talking about cooperatives, and the ways that worker-led fashion production can truly shake up the industry.  Power dynamics are a topic that comes up a lot on the show – and something that was discussed in depth throughout The Root, the 6-part series co-produced and hosted by Dominique Drakeford. Conversations around the distribution of power within the fashion space are imperative, but in the mainstream space, they often lead back to this assumption that well, we exist within a capitalistic system, and this is how the fashion system works, so we have to work within it.  Ok – yes, agreed that we must work within it to transform the way that big business is operating – through advocating for transformation and through regulation. But also – I'm super interested in the ways in which alternative business models can literally showcase in practice the ways in which other frameworks work. This week's guest is the founder and executive director of an organization that is building alternative models – in her case, through a New York-based worker-led cooperative. As she reminds us, cooperative ownership can actually counter overproduction – so it's not simply a model that is important for human rights, it's also a framework that can address the industry's waste issues and support local economies. Quotes & links from the conversation: Dennis Derryck, Professor at The New School, who has become a mentor to Ngozi “So, for us, cooperative is good because workers are owners — they can make the desicisions and share equity. And secondarily, it's helpful because if there are people who don't have work authorization, cooperative owners are legally able to work in the U.S.” -Ngozi (18:04) “How Employee-Owned Fashion Co-Ops Are Challenging Sweatshop Production”, article in The Good Trade Kestrel mentions “People who work in worker cooperatives generally have greater satisfaction, the businesses have more insights because people who are actually doing the work feel like they can bring to light ideas, they can make suggestions for making the business better.” -Ngozi (20:52) Opportunity Threads, a worker cooperative in North Carolina that Ngozi spoke to early in Custom Collaborative's development “I think that if workers owned the business, if the people who are actually putting in the labor are also owners, then they're less inclined to overproduce, because it's just their time and their resources that they're wasting. So, I think that cooperative is important for both local economies, I think also for the environment and also for human rights.” -Ngozi (25:24) “Where fashion is failing women, and where it's showing up”, article in Vogue Business which features quotes from Ngozi “It's great to acknowledge women and to celebrate them, but I do think it's a year round thing — it's not just March 8th or the month of March. It's really about including women in decision making and centering women when we're thinking about what to do next with a company.” (29:29) “When Custom Collaborative started in 2016, and even when I was planning in 2014 and ‘15, I didn't hear anybody talking about human rights and fair wages being part of sustainability. And I remember when I used to talk about it on panels and in interviews and just with people in general, a lot of times people would look at my oddly like I didn't know what I was talking about. But I feel like now in 2022, it's more a part of the conversation.” -Ngozi (33:21) An interview with Ngozi for the CFDA An interview with Ngozi for Musings Magazine Custom Collaborative Donate To Custom Collaborative > Follow Custom Collaborative on Instagram >

You'll find a link to watch this episode, check out the episode notes posted along with an invitation to join guests and Laura for a live premiere and chat event to view this week's episode via our YouTube channel, Sunday's 11:30am, at Patreon.com/theLFShow  When homecare workers at Cooperative Homecare Associates in the Bronx ran short of masks in the early days of the Covid pandemic, the worker-owners of Opportunity Threads in Morganton, North Carolina stepped up, retooling to make PPE for New York caregivers. Collaboration and democratic decision making is just part of how worker owned businesses, or co-ops, fared better than other companies during the pandemic. By and large they survived, even thrived, and today they're less likely to experience the labor shortages many businesses face as the economy reopens. “That's no coincidence,” say Laura's guests for this episode. Worker owned co-ops have long provided people the opportunity to create more just, resilient, and inclusive workplaces. To kick off International Co-op month, we hear from a journalist who's been covering this story, a law professor who advises co-ops, and one of the worker-owners of ChiFresh Kitchen, a Chicago-based co-op owned and operated mostly by formerly incarcerated women. Started during Covid, ChiFresh Kitchen continues to distribute tens of thousands of healthy meals a day to people who need them, and provide living wages to workers who are shut out elsewhere. All that plus Laura on two very different businesses in Chicago: El Milagro Tortilla and the New Era Windows cooperative.  Music in the Middle: “Self Love” by Joe Armon-Jones featuring Obongjayar from his album Turn to Clear View released on Brownswood Recordings. If you're a listener or a viewer, you spend time with us. Many of you have for years. So how about taking a few minutes to give us the support we need to keep doing what we do… Only a few minutes from you, pledging $3 or $5 or $11 a month, will keep us going all year. Go to Patreon.com/theLFShow and join our media team and support movement building. Thanks!

This episode focuses on is how to organize money so that it fosters the flourishing of where we live and work through generating different kinds of institutions and ways of building wealth in a community to those that dominate the existing economy.  Alternative, more democratic forms of economic production and investment and ways of structuring work and ownership are needed to address economic inequality, issues of racial equity, and the need for environmentally attuned forms of business. To discuss what is sometimes called the "solidarity economy," I talked to Felipe Witchger and Molly Hemstreet about the imaginative ways they are organizing money, how this work is embodied in a particular form of economic democracy - the cooperative - and how they envision a more just and generous kind of economy.GuestsMolly Hemstreet is the Executive Co-director for The Industrial Commons. She co-founded the organization in 2015 to support industrial workers across her region. She is a native of Morganton, North Carolina where she continues to work and raise her family. After leaving university and working for a bit as a teacher, she worked for the Center for Participatory Change organizing economic development initiatives across rural Western North Carolina in a response to the need for fair livelihoods, and then, in 2008, she founded Opportunity Threads, currently the largest, US based worker-owned company that does cut and sew work. She also co-founded the Carolina Textile District in 2013, which supports the resurgence of textiles across the Carolinas. Molly has also served on the national board of the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI) and the Board for the NC Employee Ownership Center. Felipe Witchger organizes at the intersection of cooperatives and financial investment. He co-convenes the US Economy of Francesco, at network of Catholics responding to Pope Francis's call for a more holistic vision of economic development, serves on the Board of Start.coop, and is Co-Founder of the Community Purchasing Alliance (CPA). Felipe has spent 10 years organizing education and faith leaders into a purchasing cooperative which is designed, governed, and owned by the communities it serves.  Prior to CPA, Felipe led energy research and consulting initiatives with agencies such as Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF) and Groundswell.Resources for Going DeeperLuigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, Civil Economy: Another Idea of the Market, trans., N. Michael Brennen (Agenda Publishing, 2016);Gary Dorrien, ‘Rethinking and Renewing Economic Democracy,' Economy, Difference, Empire: Social Ethics for Social Justice (Columbia University Press, 2010), Ch. 9;Vera Zamagni, “A Worldwide Historical Perspective on Cooperatives and Their Evolution,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mutual, Co-Operative, and Co-Owned Business, ed., Jonathan Michie, Joseph Blasi, and Cario Borzaga (Oxford University Press, 2017), Ch. 7; Jean-Louis Laville, “Social and Solidarity Economy in Historical Perspective,” in Social and Solidarity Economy: Beyond the Fringe, ed., Peter Utting (Zed Books, 2015), Ch. 1; Jessica Gordon Nembhard, ‘Introduction: A Continuous and Hidden History of Economic Defense and Collective Well-Being,' Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), 1-26; Lawrence Goodwyn, “The Cooperative Vision: Building a Democratic Economy,” The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Oxford University Press, 1978) Ch.3. A historical case study from the 19th C.

We chat with Walter Vicente, a Guatemalan immigrant and textile worker in North Carolina. But Walter isn’t just a worker … he is also a proud co-owner at a worker co-op called Opportunity Threads, a cut-and-sew factory in Morganton, North Carolina. As it says on the Opportunity Threads website: “Everyone in our plant is hired with the expectation of becoming a worker-owner. Worker-ownership means that if a worker stays on at Opportunity Threads they are given the opportunity to be an owner in the company... Ultimately the workers themselves and their families are the beneficiaries of the success and growth of this business.” Opportunity Threads also distinguishes itself by the fact that most of the workers there are Mayan immigrants who are part of a vibrant community known as the Maya of Morganton. Together, they are showing that another, more just, more humane, and more communal and equitable mode of production and commerce is possible … one that puts workers and communities first.   Additional links/info below... Opportunity Threads FAQ  Leon Fink, UNC Press, The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South  Cecilia Garza, Yes!, "A North Carolina Textile Co-Op Gives Immigrant Workers a Stake in the Business" Astra Taylor, What Is Democracy?  Maximillian Alvarez, The Baffler, "Wrestling with the Demo(n)s"   Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org) Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall" The Cedro Willie Band, "Moving On"

How does rural Appalachia regain an economic foothold after NAFTA initiated the exodus of the manufacturing industry? How do workers reclaim a sense of ownership, passion, and control over the work they do?  We're joined by Molly Hempstreet and Franzi Charen from The Industrial Commons, a local 501c3 committed to helping businesses transition from traditional top-down ownership to a worker-owned cooperative business model. Molly also runs a local cooperative business Opportunity Threads, and Franzi runs Hip Replacements in downtown Asheville along with starting the Asheville Grown Business Alliance (you may have seen their Love Asheville, Go Local stickers).

In this episode of the Business with Purpose podcast, Molly sits down with Shannon Whitehead of Factory45, an online accelerator prorgram that helps aspiring entrepreneurs launch clothing companies that are sustainably and ethically made in the USA! Brands that Mentioned in the podcast: Vetta Project Repat Opportunity Threads (listen to my podcast with Molly Hemstreet of Opportunity Threads here!) ... Read More about EP 8: Shannon Whitehead – Factory45

In this episode of the Business with Purpose podcast, Molly sits down with Molly Hemstreet, owner of Opportunity Threads, a worker-owned, cut and sew textile plant based in the foothills of Western North Carolina. They focus on sustainable production for entrepreneurs and mid-sized companies. I was so inspired by Molly and absolutely LOVED my time with her! A few of ... Read More about EP 7: Molly Hemstreet – Opportunity Threads

NCSU's Textile Testing Lab studies fabrics for a variety of criteria. Meanwhile, Opportunity Threads is giving immigrants jobs while bringing the textile industry back to NC. And Barry Porter talks about the work of the Triangle Region American Red Cross.

Opportunity Threads is helping its staff gain job skills & a stake in the company. Lumberton's Exploration Station offers kids hands-on science fun. CAM Raleigh showcases contemporary and modern art. And AOL Co-Founder Steve Case addressed graduates at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Opportunity Threads helps workers by giving them both a job & an investment in the company. Harrah's Cherokee Casino opens its expanded resort facility. And Brevard College is a comprehensive liberal arts college.