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A Nation Engaged: Seeking Economic Opportunity Through Worker-Owned Businesses

North Carolina Public Radio | By Laura Lee,
Frank Stasio
Published September 27, 2016 at 12:25 PM EDT
Textiles
Wikimedia commons
/
Textiles

 

Textiles
Credit Wikimedia commons
/
Textiles

Last night, presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton traded barbs about many subjects including America's economic strength. Economic stability is a key issue in the election and also in the lives of many Americans. A conversation wtih Melissa Hoover, executive director of the Democracy at Work Institute; Thomas Beckett, co-director of Carolina Common Enterprise, and Molly Hemstreet, founder and member-owner of Opportunity Threads.

As part of the NPR Nation Engaged project, host Frank Stasio asks, “What can we do to create economic opportunity for more Americans?” One possible solution is worker-owned businesses.

Stasio talks with Melissa Hoover, executive director of the Democracy at Work Institute; Thomas Beckett, co-director of Carolina Common Enterprise, a firm focused on advising individuals and communities who want to form cooperative organizations; and Molly Hemstreet, founder and member-owner of Opportunity Threads, a worker-owned textile plant in Burke County, North Carolina.​

Copyright 2016 North Carolina Public Radio

Laura Lee
Laura Lee began her journalism career as a producer and booker at NPR. She returned to her native North Carolina to manage The State of Things, a live daily statewide show on WUNC. After working as a managing editor of an education journalism start-up, she became a writer and editor at a national education publication, Edutopia. She then served as the news editor at Carolina Public Press, a statewide investigative newsroom. In 2022, she worked to build collaborative coverage of elections administration and democracy in North Carolina.

Laura received her master’s in journalism from the University of Maryland and her bachelor’s degree in political science and J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
See stories by Laura Lee
Frank Stasio
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
See stories by Frank Stasio