Cooperation, Please!
Eesha Williams' "Lessons in Cooperation" [April 9, 2009] gave a perspective on the Brattleboro Food Coop which rarely if ever gets discussed on the official BFC venues. The responses quoted in Williams' report to legitimate questions about how the member/owners' money is used gave an accurate flavor of the type of we-know-best-trust-us leadership which makes "support of active involvement of its members" a hollow buzz-phrase. Every major initiative, including a recently voted-on change in bylaws which will have a profound impact on the Coop's future, gets passed after an orchestrated campaign of one-sided propaganda, never as the result of an open discussion weighing the pros and cons.
The Coop is undertaking a major restructuring which will reduce member discounts in order to raise capital for an ambitious building campaign. When members express concern, the answer is always: "Trust us, we have thoroughly studied this and the plan is sound." Coop members are expected to take it on faith that the board officers with their spreadsheets and hand-held electronic gadgets are as sharp as they seem, and are not in fact running the Coop into the ground with grandiose dreams.
Steven K. Brooks
Brattleboro Coop Member
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Northampton Street People
I've been following with a mixture of amusement and disgust the ongoing fracas concerning street people in downtown Northampton. Seems to me that local street denizens fall into three categories. There are the musicians and performers who should be allowed to do what they're doing. They work hard for their money and the music itself is usually quite good. The second group contains those who suffer from some form of mental affliction and there are services in place to take care of their basic survival needs. Then you have the last group, namely the beggars. Personally, I don't like being accosted by beggars, especially when they are young, healthy men and women, all perfectly capable of swinging a hammer or wielding a paint roller. Offer them a good paying job and watch them refuse, as they did even before the economy soured. As far as misrepresenting begging as a social justice issue, hell would have frozen over before you'd see the likes of Sojourner Truth or Frederick Douglass begging in the streets. They had too much dignity and self-respect. As does every working individual I know who is struggling in this current crisis.
Daniel A. Brown
Greenfield
Correction: Last week (see In Brief, "The Mayor Strikes Back"), we incorrectly identified the April 8 meeting on Springfield economic development projects as a meeting of the City Council's Audit Committee. It was a meeting of the Planning and Economic Development Committee.
