We celebrate Pride Month in June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan, NY. Stonewall was a multi-day protest led by activists to combat unjust and discriminatory brutality of members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Understanding the history, importance and meaning of Pride Month and its symbols is crucial and should play an important role far beyond the month of June.
Today I want to urge you to recommit to the continued fight for fairness, equality and justice and the right for people to openly express their individual and unique identities – and to share their stories without fear of retribution.
I joined C2BE because the organization is founded in justice. C2BE promotes a business case for economic justice inside our capitalist system. Worker-owned businesses do better. They are more resilient. They pay better wages and benefits. Employee owners have decision-making agency. Different employee ownership business structures—cooperatives, employee ownership trusts and others promote democratic ownership and jobs that are deeply rooted in the community.
Seeking support to spread the word, C2BE applied for and was accepted into the Economic Justice Alliance of Michigan (EJAM). EJAM is an alliance of grassroots organizations engaged in leadership development and advocacy to build working-class power. Becoming an EJAM member will allow C2BE to welcome a fellow who will work with us to organize and help advance the movement for worker ownership and economic justice in Michigan. Membership in EJAM will put C2BE in the company of other organizations that have honed their skills and provide knowledge and support. Ours is a movement where the “worker is the owner,” so there is parity of business interests and worker interests. We offer EJAM a new tool in the Michigan economic justice toolkit.
In the United states there are only two types of institutions created to protect working people in their role as workers: labor unions and employee-owned companies. C2BE focuses on the latter. There is a growing movement combining both institutions. Our own Mike Friedman has spent many years encouraging the labor movement to make good on what it is set up to do: protect working people in their working roles. We share his story below.
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