Andrew McLeod is a cooperative development consultant who holds the Master in Management – Co-operatives and Credit Unions graduate degree from the Sobey Business School at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is a founding member of Collective Seeds Consulting Cooperative.
He has been involved in the cooperative movement since 1992, including two years as editor of the Cooperative Business Journal. His interests include democratic processes, the intersection of cooperative economics and religion, community-based food production and distribution, international models for power-sharing, and cooperative disaster recovery techniques.
Andrew is the author of Holy Cooperation!: Building Graceful Economies, a book that explores cooperative elements of Christianity. He has also presented a paper on common cooperative tendencies found in Judaism, Christianity and Islam; his more recent research includes a focus on 19th Century Mormon economic organizing.
He also maintains another blog on faith-based cooperation.
Cooperate and No One Gets Hurt 
Andrew,
I’m delighted that you stumbled across our http://www.cesj.org website and discovered our proposed “New Birth” project for a radical overhaul of the prison problem. Here’s our “Metro East Citizens Land Cooperative” project that has brought together the 11 mayors in one of America’s most-poverty impacted areas right across the river in Illinois from St. Louis: http://www.cesj.org/homestead/strategies/community/MECLCv2-07Legis.pdf. As a cooperative development specialist, I think you’ll appreciate our outside-the-box approach to democratizing ownership of the means of production for rebuilding communities, with Kelsonian innovations of finance. To give you some understanding of how we earn our bread, see http://www.eei-consultants.com.
Own or Be Owned,
Norm Kurland
I’m really glad I found you again. 🙂
I got the email from the Tacoma Art Place too late to attend on the 6th. I am highly disappointed, as I have been having thoughts of co-oping myself….Are you speaking anywhere else in the Seattle/Tacoma, etc. area in the next few days? Thanks! Merrillee
I’ll be flying to my next stop in Wisconsin this morning, but am planning to stop back in this area in April or so. You can keep abreast of my speaking plans at http://www.holycoop.wordpress.com. Thanks for the interest.
Hi Andrew,
I’m really glad to have found your blog. I’m working on co-op advocacy in Ontario and appreciate seeing what is happening across the border.
Zip on over to ontariocoops.wordpress.com when you have the time and see what we’re up to.
Without co-operation, we’re lost.
Paul
Hope to meet you in Detroit. Keep up the great work!
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Hi Andrew. I’m delighted to have come across your blog. These are exciting times for those of us who are activists for cooperatives. Your book looks fascinating and I plan to purchase it. I’ve also linked to your blog from my blog “Building The Third Way: Economic Democracy for the New Millennium.”
http://buildingthirdway.blogspot.com/
Keep up the great work.
Hi Andrew,
We are currently forming a co-operative in Belfast, in the north of Ireland. Its a Design, Film and Photography co-operative and in development at the moment. We came across your blog and would like to ask for you kind permission to use your blog title “Co-operate and no one gets hurt” in some shape or form in our publicity, for we truly believe it is the work of a genius!
Thanks
Clem Bradley
Thanks for the inquiry. I agree that the blog title is a work of genius, for which I can only claim credit for having the good sense to spread around. Here’s one of my earliest posts, in which I share some thoughts that you might find interesting:
I originally saw the slogan on a food co-op’s T-shirt at a conference way back in 2005, and don’t recall which co-op it was.
In any case, I think they are pretty permissive. After almost a couple of years of blogging under this banner, I have yet to hear from their lawyers or goons. I suspect they’ll be even less inclined to come after you. And of course, that assumes they feel any ownership of it.
Thanks for checking though. And while I’m at it, thanks to whomever reappropriated this phrase from the bank-robbers: Your brilliance is duly noted.
In cooperation,
Andrew
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Hi Brethren,
Co-operation is good if it does not leads to discrimination on the any basis.
Righteousness is of our Father God and Discrimination of Satan.
In Jesus, we have been made the sons of Most High Father whilst in Discrination, you become the sons of most High Devil that creates riots.
Choice is yours.