In America, corporations are king. It’s hard to even think about capitalism without the corporate system that keeps it flowing here in the United States. A movie called "Shift Change" wants to transform the way you think about the economy. It highlights worker-owned businesses in North America and Spain that flip the paradigm of corporate control on its head.
Ruth Backstrom, one of the founders of Transition Durham -- the group showing the movie Monday at FullSteam Brewery -- says its important for people to know there are other, more humanitarian, ways of doing business.
“They are interested in the people and the jobs first,” she said. “Not the profits first.”
Sandy Smith-Nonini,, an adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is leading a discussion following Monday’s screening. She said these cooperative businesses are more prevalent than people realize.
“In certain parts of the country, they are very common,” she said. "And some of the names we associate with corporations in the supermarket are actually very successful cooperatives.”
She named companies like REI, Sunkist and Land O’Lakes, just to name a few.
Smith-Nonini also said that she thinks individuals in the Western world have become more interested in new ways of running the economy since the financial collapse of 2008.
Preview of Shift Change
