New Executive Director for KCH

I’m excited to write that the KCH Board of Directors has appointed Matt Lechel to be KCH’s new Executive Director. Our extraordinary friend and founder, Michael Gregor, will continue to be an instrument of change in his new position as Director of Communications for Equality Michigan.

Matt has all of the qualifications needed to facilitate members of the KCH Board and the KCH houses in their efforts toward achieving their shared goals of sustainable homes, democratic communities, and exemplary rates of expansion…

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Keep your Cooperative Competitive: Start a Business

Although living in a cooperative should be the cheapest housing option, it does not always work out to be so in reality.

Some expenses (like a mortgage, payments to a landlord, or debt from major renovations) outweigh the savings that you gain from collective purchasing power. So, how do you make your cooperative less expensive? Start a business! It may sound crazy, but read on, friend. I have a success story.

In 2008, Kalamazoo Collective Housing started an apparel company called Grassroots Goods. Grassroots Goods produces organic cotton shirts (manufactured in the United States) with several attractive designs (printed in Kalamazoo, Michigan). The shirts are sold in bulk to retailers around the state, who have had a great deal of success selling our niche product….

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An event for you…

Cultivating Democratic Institutions;
Introductory Workshop on Racism and Anti-Racism.

WMU, Multicultural Center
(Trimpe Building)

January 29
11am-5pm
(Lunch Included)

Register in Advance www.kalamazoo.coop

The purpose of this workshop is to provide an introductory process for participants to explore and deepen their understanding of systematic racism and to begin to investigate ways to more effectively dismantle racism within their institutions. Specifically, workshop participants will:

• Explore common language and definitions to understand the continuing issue of racism throughout our country;
• Understand racism as a systemic issue, and not simply an issue of individual attitudes and actions;
• Explore approaches to dismantling racism that can provide a foundation for enduring solutions that lead to true racial healing, equity, and justice.

This workshop is conducted in an atmosphere of mutual respect, caring and safety, and is not based on confrontation, guilt and/or judgement.

Cooperative Decision Making

The Fletcher Collective operates on consensus. Consensus can be thought of as a direct democracy – the kind of democracy that your Social Studies teacher may have told you about just before explaining what the Electoral College is all about…

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Get Between the Pages

The Fletcher Collective is hosting a monthly reading group. We meet on the second Thursday of every month. On May 13, we’ll gather in our yellow living room to talk about David Foster Wallace’s “Good Old Neon.”

You are invited. The reading group is accessible, no matter what your confidence level. We take the perspective that no ideas are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in literary criticism. There’s no conclusion to interpretation.

The reading group is participant lead. From the selection of the readings to the format of the discussions, everything about the group is democratically determined. We’re open to anything – you name it: fiction, comics, non-fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction – what we’re especially into is first-rate recommendations. What readings do you want to talk about?

The reading group is moderated by a member of the Fletcher Collective. The moderators role is principally to ensure that anyone who desires to speak gets a chance. To make sure that things get off on the right foot, a member will also come prepared with a few prompts. Bring your own list of questions, too. We’re interested in your ideas about the text. Each perspective, or ‘take’ on a reading gets us closer to full knowledge of a text, and different perspectives are most quickly discoverable when many people are contributing to the discussion.

We’ve had the leisure to use an unguided discussion format. Our meetings have been, let’s say, ‘intimately sized.’ However, as we grow, we may try different styles. I wanted to get an idea of how other reading groups are structured, so I looked for online resources that list different formats for reading group discussions. I didn’t turn anything up. Let us know what your reading group experiences have been like, we’re curious to know what works. Or, if you bump into a website that’s worthwhile on your daily surf, post a link.

I did find general information on book clubs at this website. On this website, I found a list of different discussion styles for the classroom. I think that the formats titled “Posted Dialogues” and “Circe of Voices” look like they’d be amusing and productive if adapted for a reading group.

Poster by James Gleghorn

HERE WE GO

We are going to begin having no concrete notion of what to do. Our sport is discovering and improvising. It is the freeplay – generally, getting down. You are invited to jump in synthesizing on-hand wit and found (recycled) materials until we yield some kind of result.