Six years after the 2008 economic meltdown, the overwhelming majority of people in the U.S. and the E.U are still struggling. Most people know the system is rigged against them, and there\u2019s no relief on the horizon. Disenchantment with \u201cfree-market\u201d capitalism\u2014and the global corporate\/banking model that caused the Western economies to tank\u2014is growing. The anti-globalization movement and Occupy Wall Street are the most well known expressions of resistance to the economic status quo. But disenchantment has filtered down to the person chatting in the barber’s chair or beauty shop.<\/p>\n

Everybody knows somebody who is unemployed or underemployed or loaded with student debt. Devastated communities, like Jackson, Mississippi,<\/strong> realize that waiting passively for \u201cjobs to come back\u201d\u2014to be granted at the whim of a corporation that extracts tax incentives from their community, pays low wages, and rewards it\u2019s CEOs with obscene\u00a0compensation packages\u2014is no longer a viable option.<\/p>\n

For things to really change, the extraction of wealth from our pockets and our communities has to stop. If we are to survive and support our families, we need\u00a0humane and better paying jobs that provide a living wage. If\u00a0the Earth is to survive, we have to move from an oligarch run, environment-destroying, war-centered economy to one that is life sustaining and wealth creating for everyone. But how can any of this happen when our elected officials are joined at the hip with those who have created\u00a0this sick economy?<\/p>\n

Waiting for austerity-addicted Washington, D.C. to create jobs isn\u2019t<\/em> the answer. Creating economic\u00a0democracy, at the local level, is.<\/em> Jackson, Mississippi, one of the poorest cities in the nation, is looking to older, successful, democratically run local cooperatives in Mondragon, Spain<\/strong> as a model for building wealth in their community.<\/p>\n