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If you ever want proof positive that having a board of directors run a non-profit is just a way to replicate the idiotic nearsightedness of for profit business- look no further then the East Bay center for creative reuse. The Center for creative reuse is an old 510 mainstay, providing dead industrial stock and other broken but beautiful household items to artists and DIY enthusiasts. When the workers organized with the IWW to try and have some hand in moving the business into the 21st century, the board of directors cracked down, using the 2020 pandemic as an excuse to fire the entire organized staff, plunging the NGO into financial chaos. The board was unable to fill positions until early 2021, taking on a massive debt burden in the process. By July 2022 the new batch of hires had all left as well citing the same shortsighted decisions that the IWW had organized to prevent in 2020. Now the Center is on the brink of collapse and is begging for money.
https://oaklandside.org/2023/07/14/east-bay-depot-for-creative-reuse-labor-financial-problems-pandemic/
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Boards of directors always claim to represent the community stakeholders in non-profits and coops. Really all they are is another vector that the business elite enforce their dogshit logic on even our own community institutions. If the Center had not tried to union bust the #IWW literally none of this would have happened. The workers had a better understanding of how to fix the business, but the board insisted on trying to turn a punk art shop into a boutique that offered programming classes.
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