In an article titled "Some Very Creative Economic Fix-Its," New York Times writer David Segal states at the outset: "We are not going to shop our way out of this mess."

"So the question of our anxious age," he poses, is: "What will return our economy to full-throttled life?" His answer, of course, is the kind of sustained growth that will put back to work the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs in recent years.

But how?

In the story, Gar Alperovitz, a professor at the University of Maryland, singles out Cleveland's Evergreen Cooperatives as one possible solution.

Professor Alperovitz admires local co-operatives that are sprouting up around the country, citing that they tend to be employee owned, and get off the ground with private and foundation funding. "Many of his favorite examples are found in Cleveland," writes Segal, "like the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, an employee-owned firm that provides laundry services to hospitals, which started in 2009."