The Shareholder Forum at the Brattleboro Food Co-op has met six times since its initial meeting on Aug. 10.
We've continued to meet monthly primarily as a “for shareholders, by shareholders” space for people to voice their concerns and learn together about how we can make change and what that change should be. The forum is also open to community members who aren't shareholders of the co-op.
It is the result of a deeper history of the Brattleboro Food Co-op: a history of people who have come, struggled, and gone and of an institution made of people and their labor - which has since veered toward a corporate model based on national averages rather than local vigor.
It's an inevitable turn for any institution that relies on profit, and we're all a part of its continuation. If we want to survive, we have to keep pushing profit.