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Building a Cooperative Future

You are invited to the 2024 Annual RMFU Pre-Convention, “Building a Cooperative Future,”

Thursday, November 21, from 2:00 – 5:30 PM at The Double Tree by Hilton, Colorado Springs:
1775 East Cheyenne Mountain Boulevard, Colorado Springs, CO, 80906, Pueblo/Teller Conference Room

 

Join the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union Cooperative Development Center for an engaging discussion on cooperatives. Learn from visionary leaders driving the cooperative economy forward in Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico. 

The event starts at 2:00 PM at the DoubleTree Hotel, with a farm-to-table dinner following the event at the University Colorado, Colorado Springs, 1420 Austin Bluffs Pkwy, Colorado Springs, CO 80918

Register for the dinner event here (maximum of 40 attendees)

UCCS Address: 4925 N Nevada Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80918 – parking in the 500 series lots to the north of the building and walk into the east doors on the 2nd floor. The event will be hosted out of room 223 towards the center of the 2nd floor near the cafe.


Co-op Programming Begins at 2:00PM – 5:30PM MST:

Welcome from Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, President, Chad Franke

Hybrid option available. Questions or interested in attending virtually? Contact RMFU Cooperative Development Center Director Sandra Baca at sandra.baca@rmfu.org


 

Meet our Co-op Presenters

Linda Phillips, RMFU Co-op Center Advisory Board Member

Identifying Co-op Types and Community Needs

Linda Phillips has her own practice at Phillips Law Offices LLC and is also currently Senior of Counsel at Jason Wiener PC, a public benefit corporation, based in Denver, Colorado, working part time as a mentor and trainer. Linda obtained a J.D. from the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law in 2003. Prior to that, starting in 1991 she worked as a paralegal providing legal services with attorney James B. Dean to cooperatives throughout Colorado. Linda represents small to medium-sized businesses, with a strong emphasis on all types of cooperatives, including marketing, purchasing, consumer and worker co-ops. Her work includes cooperative formations, business structural analysis, and general counsel for the cooperative community related to their business enterprises. Linda advises clients about cooperative entities and tax issues involved with starting a company or converting to an employee-owned entity. Linda helped form and was on the Board of Directors of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center, a nonprofit that promotes employee-owned business models in Colorado. She aided the organization grow and focus its efforts on employee ownership as a viable alternative to today’s corporate culture. Linda is retiring from direct client services but will continue to participate in the cooperative community with writing and speaking engagements. Linda is a member of the newly formed Advisory Board for RMFU Cooperative Development Center.

Liza Marron, Saguache County Commissioner

Tap Roots: 10 years of Deep Cooperation Among Colorado Food Hub

Liza Marron is one of the founders of the San Luis Valley Local Foods Coalition. The Coalition works in rural agricultural Colorado to foster an equitable local food system through the Rio Grande Farm Park and the Valley Roots Food Hub and is conducting a food and ag action plan in all six counties of the San Luis Valley. Liza was part of a community cohort in 1999 that conducted assessments and founded the Saguache County Sustainable Environment and Economic Development (ScSEED). Marron has retired from the SLVLFC and now serves as a Saguache County Commissioner. She has been a Rocky Mountain Farmers Union member since 2016 and serves as the Secretary of the San Luis Valley Chapter and is a member of the newly formed Advisory Board for RMFU Cooperative Development Center.

Liza lives in Saguache with her horses, dogs, cat and chickens, her garden and her bicycle.

Dan Hobbs, RMFU Cooperative Development Specialist, Colorado Farmer, and owner of Pueblo Seed and Food Company

Tap Roots: 10 years of Deep Cooperation Among Colorado Food Hub

Dan Hobbs is a fifth generation Coloradan and a first-generation farmer. He worked with the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union as a rural cooperative development specialist for many years and grows certified organic heritage grains, legumes, open pollinated seeds, varietal garlic and chile peppers on 30 irrigated acres in McElmo Canyon, located in the Four Corners region. He and partner, Nanna Meyer, operate a vertically integrated enterprise that includes seed cleaning, milling and baking in Cortez, Colorado. Their business is Pueblo Seed and Food Company.

Al Lake, Matt Noyes, and Eddie Sutherland

Case Study at Sun Mountain Farm Club

Al Lake (they/them) works in Community Composting through Food to Power, does farm work part-time, and is an artist working with natural and waste materials. They live and work in Colorado Springs and surrounding areas.

Matt Noyes (he/they) is a part-time farm worker, solidarity economy and cooperative educator/organizer, and translator based in Colorado Springs. He studied solidarity economy and cooperative organization at Mondragon University and is co-author of Cooperatives at Work (with George Cheney and others). He is active in food rescue, a local buyers’ club, the farm and art market and several cooperatives, including Social.coop and GEO.coop.

Eddie Sutherland is a student at UCCS studying Geography and Environmental Studies. He has a passion for sustainable agriculture and soil health and worked for an agronomist in the San Luis Valley as well as smaller organic operations in the San Luis Valley and the Pikes Peak Region.

Minsun Ji, Executive Director, Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center

Colorado Farm Worker Cooperative (CFWC)

Minsun is the 2024 Cooperative Champion and will receive her award, Friday, November 22 at 10AM. 

Minsun Ji (Ph.D.) is a labor-community organizer, activist scholar, and popular educator. Currently, Minsun is the Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center (RMEOC), which promotes employee ownership through co-op conversion, co-op incubation, research, and policy. As part of a cooperative incubation project with RMEOC, she led the launch of the Drivers Cooperative-Colorado, which is Colorado’s largest worker cooperative. She is also working on various rural co-op projects such as the Sand Dunes Mushroom Cooperative (SDMC), a cooperative store project in Gardner in Huerfano County, and the Colorado Farmworkers Cooperative Project to create an alternative for farm workers and farm owners to overcome labor shortage issues in rural Colorado.

Minsun was the graduate program director of the Center for New Directions in Politics and Public Policy in the Political Science Department at the University of Colorado Denver. Minsun also organized immigrant janitors with the Service Employee International Union (SEIU), was an economic justice program director with the American Friends Service Committee and was the founder and executive director of Denver’s first immigrant worker center, El Centro Humanitario para los Trabajadores (Humanitarian Center for Workers).

Salvador González, Cooperative Development Specialist, Center for Community Wealth Building

State of the Colorado Co-op Sector / CTA

Salvador Gonzalez Meza (he/him) serves as the Cooperative Development Specialist for the Center for Community Wealth Building, where he empowers community members to launch and develop cooperatives. He leads the Train-the-Trainer in Co-op Development program, an initiative he helped shape as an alumnus, which has expanded the ecosystem of cooperative trainers and developers. Salvador has significantly increased access to cooperative development resources in the Hispanic community by facilitating the trainer curriculum entirely in Spanish, growing the network to over 50 trainers.

With a focus on food system cooperatives—including worker-owned, consumer-owned, and multisector-owned models—Salvador works to increase community ownership throughout the food sector and supply chain. His efforts aim to create wealth-building opportunities in traditional industries where BIPOC ownership and labor contributions have historically been undervalued.

Salvador’s commitment to cooperative principles stems from his experience with nonprofits and social enterprises dedicated to food justice. He holds a BA and MA in Political Science from the University of Colorado, specializing in New Directions for Politics and Public Policy in the Social Economy and Sustainable Development. His master’s thesis explored the Political Economy of Co-op Law Development, reflecting his deep understanding of the intersection between policy and cooperative structures. He is a candidate for an MBA with Colorado State University.

As an active community leader, Salvador serves on the Food Justice Northwest Aurora steering committee and has completed the Next Economy MBA with Lift Economy and CooperationWorks! trainings. His dedication to social change extends to campaigns for human and immigrant rights, environmental justice, and economic equity. Salvador’s expertise is continually enriched through participation in key industry events, including the USFWC meeting in Philadelphia, Co-op Cincy’s Dream to Action, and Human Agenda’s Immersion Tour to Cuba.

Sandra Baca, Director, RMFU Cooperative Development Center

Organizer, Moderator

Sandra Baca (she/her/ella) is the director of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union (RMFU) Cooperative Development Center and has worked for the RMFU Foundation for 8 years in various roles. She currently directs the efforts of the Cooperative Development Center to ensure clients receive the technical assistance needed to explore the idea of developing a cooperative to address a community need. She is responsible for the management, research, planning, and implementation of federal and local grant programs and manages the intake and assessment of client groups, monitors work plans, collects data, prepares quarterly reports, and evaluates project performance. She is also responsible for the Center’s publications, web presence, social media, and content with respect to equity and cultural adaptation of the cooperative business model focusing on cooperation, democracy, social and racial justice, and environmental sustainability.

Sandra is a family Leader, social justice advocate, food sovereignty enthusiasts, and human rights supporter. Sandra studied criminology at Metro State University and Arapahoe Community College in Colorado. During that time, she served on her neighborhood food pantry’s board of directors for six years, helped families avoid foreclosure, and participated as a community voice for the Denver Independent Monitor: Kids and Cops community advisory board. She helped start-up the Southwest Denver Food Coalition—a network of food pantries sharing services, resources, and feeding the hungry. Sandra is a Colorado native advocating for a transformative vision of society based on democratic self-management, redistribution, solidarity, and reciprocity. Caring for my community has led me to cooperatives and the tools that pave the way toward an economy that prioritizes people over profits – an economy I aspire to be part of.

 

Juliette Jack Banerjee, RMFU Cooperative Development Specialist

Moderator

Juliette (she/her) has a master’s degree in international economic development from the University of Denver and experience in the solidarity economy starting as a researcher and consultant in the global microfinance movement. She has worked with nonprofits, grassroots self-help groups, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Washington, DC and other countries, in economic empowerment, microcredit, public health, and women’s entrepreneurship. She has returned to Colorado to focus on the local economy, with an emphasis on food systems and the cooperative sector, having trained in cooperative development at the Center for Community Wealth Building in Denver. A recent area of interest includes distributed leadership and decision-making within cooperatives, and she guides organizations (including cooperatives) in the transition to the non-hierarchical model of Sociocratic governance. She also loves working in her community garden, going on long walks with her dog, and playing in the kitchen.

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