{"id":2300,"date":"2014-12-11T12:23:43","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T17:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/?p=2300"},"modified":"2015-07-20T16:03:29","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T20:03:29","slug":"anything-is-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/anything-is-possible\/","title":{"rendered":"Anything is possible."},"content":{"rendered":"

People say to me they don\u2019t think us workers can be owners. But I say to them, believe it, because here we are. Now that we\u2019ve done this, who knows what\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n

To be honest, at first I didn\u2019t believe it either. I thought of quitting, but I stuck it out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cAfter 40 years on the floor, I didn\u2019t dare dream that<\/a>
\n I could actually become an owner in my own factory.\u201d<\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

I moved to Chicago from my hometown of Morton, Mississippi, in 1988, to take care of my mother. I was offered a job in a windows factory, and to me, that was as good an opportunity as I could hope for: a job to survive.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After decades of surviving, my worst fear happened: in 2008, the factory closed and laid everyone off. At my age, I thought there was no chance someone like me could get a job. I had given up.<\/p>\n

Then, out of the blue, I was asked to meet about workers buying back the company. I didn\u2019t believe it would work, but I kept showing up every day while we tried to start the cooperative. I guess part of me believed I could do it. And we did do it — now my coworkers and I own New Era Windows<\/a>. We work together, teach each other, and treat each other like I\u2019ve never been treated in a factory before.<\/p>\n

It was only because of The Working World and the support they have given us that we were able to follow this dream. No one else would have loaned money to people like us to do this. But they believed in us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to support organizations like The Working World,<\/a>
\n because everyone deserves the shot I got.\u201d<\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Just a few years ago, I thought my life was over. Now, I feel excited, I want to live a long time, I want to watch this grow and grow and see what we can do next.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Arizona Stingley
\nWorker-Owner, New Era Windows<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Donate<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People say to me they don\u2019t think us workers can be owners. But I say to them, believe it, because here…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1337,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[72],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2300"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2317,"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300\/revisions\/2317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theworkingworld.org\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}