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“We were so excited about the fact we were going to cook our first meal together and people can taste it,” Bryant says. “That’s so exciting to me as a young black mom who was incarcerated. For my child to know that his mom was in a situation that felt like the end of the world and look at her now.”

They made jerk chicken strips and red beans and rice, with onions and peppers. It was a practice run, and they distributed that first set of warm meals out to friends and family — and got some feedback they used to improve their recipes.

Movement Generation has been coalescing in our (virtual) dream tank and like many of you we are leaning into and processing the range of emotions stirred up by the pandemic crisis.

Thanks to a grant from CDF's Howard Bowers Fund, Spanish speaking communities will have access in their native language to Food Co-op Initiative's Guide to Starting a Food Co-op. Developed in 2017 with assistance from a previous Bowers grant, the Guide is a valuable starting point for food cooperative development. The FCI grant was one of eleven grants made by the Bowers Fund in May.

According to a report by the IPPR, social care’s large corporate business model is financially unsustainable and detrimental to quality. Evidence shows that the model has led to less training for staff, higher turnover and lower pay which have the knock-on effect of a deteriorating quality of care. The financi

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[Editor's Note: Ajowa Ifateyo wrote about Puerto Rico's prison cooperatives for GEO in 2015.]

Columbia Shafer lives in Oakland and has noticed there are a lot of employee-owned businesses near her. And not just any businesses – pizza shops. That got her wondering why pizza? And why here?

The answer to "Why pizza?" became obvious as soon as I started talking to people: “It’s delicious.” “Pizza never goes out of style.” “Why pizza? Pizza is the best!” All real answers I got.

Thirty-eight families in south Minneapolis will gain ownership of their five apartment buildings after spending years battling with their landlord, Stephen Frenz, who had been trying to evict them.

“This is an amazing victory. I am so happy,” Chloe Jackson said in a statement Monday. She is a resident of one of the properties and board president of the tenants rights group Inquilinxs Unidxs Por Justicia (United Renters for Justice).

About a year ago, now living in New Mexico and still a climbing enthusiast, Grubb and a couple of friends founded Rerouted Co-op: a marketplace for used gear, made simple. (Although the company currently operates as an LLC, they are planning to become an employee-owned cooperative.)

Housing is a key determinant in one’s access to quality education, work, environment, health, and security. Yet private homeownership — touted as the primary means of acquiring financial wealth and security for everyday Americans — has become increasingly elusive, as exploitation of the housing market by real estate speculators, corporate landlords, and Wall Street drives wealth inequality and reinforces a social caste system that locks people — especially Black, Indigenous, migrant communities and women and gender nonconforming people — into poverty and out of opportunity.

We are seeing protests, civil unrest, and even uprisings sweep across cities and towns all over the United States. What started in reaction to the brutal police murder of George Floyd has become about the systematic abuse, oppression, and destruction of black and brown communities nationwide.

What do you get when you combine precarious labour, a co-op start-up, and a pandemic? A major struggle for survival, that’s what. But you also get opportunities to do things a bit differently.

COVID-19 has caused a fundamental rethink of the global economy. Failing supply lines have called into question the wisdom of depending, even for our most basic needs, on production the other side of the world --a dependence that undermines local communities everywhere and places intolerable stress on the environment.

At the same time, many people have come to appreciate the value of a slower-paced, less stressful life: one that offers more time for friends and family, for baking, for growing a garden.

Co-operative businesses aren’t exempt from economic downturns. But research does show co-ops perform better in a crisis.