MSJ Highlights: Quarter Three
Enjoy these highlights from our past quarter of The Main Street Journal and MSJ Extra! issues.
Our MSJ Extra! interviews highlight prominent policymakers, book authors, and other rabble-rousers.
In July, The Main Street Journal focused on the evolution of locally owned bookstores.
Our first story, from the New York Times, shows how independent bookstores have reinvigorated themselves against Amazon by becoming cooperatives and thriving community centers: “From Los Angeles to Baltimore, these cooperatives have become indispensable anchors in neighborhoods suffering from widening wealth gaps, housing insecurity, and racial violence…” They are serving as food banks, addiction treatment centers, advocacy hubs, and contraception distribution points.
We shared a call for locals to unite in August.
The world’s most impressive community and worker-owned businesses operate as teams. Think Mondragon, the largest worker cooperative in the world, an alliance of 81 self-governing co-ops based in the Basque Region of Spain that employs 71,000 people and runs 12 research-and-development centers. Or producer cooperatives like Ace Hardware or Land-O-Lakes. Or the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses in Ann Arbor, MI, now with nearly 20 interconnected local businesses. These collaborations bring down costs and improve sales through joint hiring, joint purchasing, joint financing, joint bidding on contracts, and joint marketing and branding.
September included an issue highlighting ESG (environmental, social, and governance) standards.
A study just released by HIP Investor, an impact-investment advisory firm based in California, shows that pension funds in blue states promoting strong ESG (environmental, social, and governance) standards significantly outperform those in red states that do not. In fact, the relative loss in pension-fund value in anti-ESG states over the last twelve years exceeds $133 billion.
As always, if you want more news, please subscribe to The Main Street Journal through this link.