The Cooperative Business Model in the Near West Side of Milwaukee.

• Date: 15 December 2020
• Author: Shine, Brendan

The Near West Side Partners is a nonprofit founded by five "anchor institutions": Aurora Health Care, Harley-Davidson, Marquette University, MillerCoors, and Potawatomi Business Development Corporation. Its mission is to revitalize and sustain the Near West Side of Milwaukee's business and residential corridor through commercial development, improved housing, and lowering crime. Since its founding in 2014, the Near West Side Partners has undertaken projects such as creating Rev-Up MKE, a competition to fund new businesses, revitalizing ten homes through their project Block Build MKE 2017, and removing a tobacco shop.

The Near West Side is an oddly-shaped area defined by the City of Milwaukee as being bound by I-43 (east), HWY 41 (west), Vliet Street and Highland Boulevard (north), and I-94 (south) and is broken up into seven neighborhoods: Avenues West, Cold Spring Park, Concordia, Martin Drive, Merrill Park, Miller Avenue, and The Valley/Piggsville. An understudied area, the most recent look at the Near Westside was Place Dynamics LLC's 2017 market analysis of the area, which is the only study available breaking down data by neighborhood. (1) This is especially important because by isolating data by neighborhood, Marquette University's large student population can be accounted for without misrepresenting the rest of the Near Westside. The data provided separates Marquette's statistics from the Avenue West population (where Marquette resides), allowing for more robust conclusions to be drawn. Place Dynamics LLC's data on median household income shows all neighborhoods in the Near Westside are either at the Milwaukee average or below. (2) Looking at unemployment, all but three--Avenues West, The Valley/Piggsville, and Marquette--are above the city's unemployment rate; the three exceptions, with Avenues West containing much of downtown, Piggsville being a smaller community and a more affluent community (compared to the remainder of the Near Westside), and Marquette containing many fulltime students explains why these three areas are the exception as well. (3) Looking at poverty rates, one can see that all locations are at or below the city's poverty rate, with Piggsville's comparatively higher income exempting it. (4) Avenues West's high poverty rate also demonstrates how higher employment rates have not reduced poverty in the area, with low quality jobs ineffectively providing livable wages. It should again be noted that Marquette's unemployment numbers are skewed due to their large student population.

The racial breakdown is fairly consistent with the rest of the Milwaukee area, with Marquette University's student population being the exception, having a much larger white population. (5) More recent data is available for the totality of the Near Westside for race, showing that 45 percent of the population is white, 38.4 percent is Black, 0.6 percent Native American, 7.2 percent Asian, 4.2 percent some other race, and 4.6 percent self-identifies as two or more races.6 With the majority of the permanent residents being people of color--since most Marquette students inevitably will leave the Near Westside--many of the area's problems are associated with the legacy of racially discriminatory practices and de facto discrimination/segregation presently, with Milwaukee historically being one of the most segregated cities in the US. (7)

The Near West Side of Milwaukee provides an opportunity to not only revitalize the area, but to do so by using cooperative business models as an alternative to traditional business models. Milwaukee as a whole has several cooperative businesses that are well-established, and the Near Westside has the opportunity to expand the cooperative model into its own area. Given their goals and extensive funding opportunities, this study asserts that the introduction of a cooperative business model--specifically a homecare co-op--would both align with their mission and benefit the community, as well as empowering one of the few markets dominated by women of color. The potential for gentrification is also a real threat for those in the area, and promoting community-run businesses of color such as co-ops can be crucial in combating such neo-colonialist practices.

The Near West Side of Milwaukee is in a state of transition; business is expanding within the area along with the opportunity to develop the neighborhoods and lives of the people living within it. There are initiatives already put in place by the Near West Side Partners as well as the Near West Side Business Improvement District 10 to revitalize the area and assist this transformation, if done well. Through new economic development, the circumstances to build up the community should be taken advantage of much like the redevelopment Sherman Phoenix, which rejuvenated not just local business, but also strengthened the culture and community bonds in the area. To develop for development's sake would therefore be a mistake, but instead the end goal should be the direct improvement of the quality of life to the tenants in the Near West Side.

To achieve such goals, Gandhi's economic philosophy envisions what aims a community should strive for, which are consistent with his mission to promote peace in municipalities across the world. This provides the vision of the end goal, but what is a proper means to transition towards his economic tenets? By comparing his economic philosophy to the core principles of cooperative business models, it will become apparent that the appropriate method of transition is by introducing a cooperative business into the Near West Side. Traditional business models can be a way to cross the bridge between the world as it is and the Gandhian vision of economic justice, but where the cooperative model is advantageous are the parallels between Gandhi's principles and the cooperative principles that directly pursue his ideals.

Gandhi's idea of Sarvodaya demonstrates his methodology by explaining his social ideals as containing dignity of labor, equitable distribution of wealth, communal self-sufficiency, and individual freedom. (8) His Sarvodaya philosophy was influenced by Ruskin's Unto This Last where through three conclusions he came to redevelop his economic philosophy:

1. That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all.

2. That a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's, inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work.

3. That a life of labor, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman, is the life worth living.

The first of these I knew, The second I had dimly realized. The third had never occurred to me. Unto This Last made it as clear as daylight for me that the second and the third were contained in the first. I arose with the dawn, ready to reduce these principles to practice. (9)

A cooperative business model promotes Gandhi's economic thinking because it embodies the same principles and also strives for a better world. To show how Gandhi's methods align with the cooperative model, this paper will outline the core principles of cooperative businesses and demonstrate how they promote Gandhi's method or his means of creating social change while improving work quality, conditions, and income inequality through peaceful means. The core principles of cooperative businesses used are from the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives (WCC) (10) and the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), (11) which provide a baseline of the goals of every co-op and what services they provide. These guidelines are similar to the worker co-op principles that Ranis (12) outlines with a few differences discussed later.

To explore these topics, this paper is broken into three sections: First, it provides an interpretation of Gandhi's economic philosophy and how the cooperative principles of Ranis, WCC, and ICA can implement his philosophy. Second, these principles will be shown within the contexts of cooperative, traditional, and alternative business models to demonstrate how they perform in practice. Finally, the home care industry will be evaluated to note its complications while demonstrating how the cooperative model can achieve Gandhi's economic goals as opposed to traditional or nonprofit business models. Gandhian Economics and Cooperative Principles

Bhabatosh Datta provides an excellent explanation of the basic principles of Gandhian economics, stating

...first, avoidance of mechanization and encouragement of cottage industries...; second, improvement of rural small scale agriculture; third, making the village community as much self-sufficient and self-reliant as practicable; fourth, decentralization of the administrative and economic structure; fifth, reducing income inequalities, by raising the income level among the poor and by changing the attitude and motivation of the rich; and sixth, ensuring that capitalists and big businessmen serve as 'trustees' for the whole community. (13) The influence of Gandhi's Khadi movement, which encouraged Indian citizens to spin their own clothes during a boycott of British goods, reflected his economic tenets. The prominence of self-sufficiency and self-reliance within municipalities along with his goal of reducing income inequalities has clear ethical value that should be strived towards.

The problems with these principles, however, are the total avoidance of mechanization, moving towards a completely decentralized administrative/economic structure, and the overreliance on big businessmen or "trustees" to act philanthropically, even giving up some of their power. Many of these arguments were not meant as practical means of changing the economy; rather they served as a symbolic way to point out the political problems of contemporary India regarding British rule. Concerning his statements on mechanization, "His essential protest was directed, not against industrialism as such, but against the...