Racial Justice

A list of readings on Black liberation and economic democracy.

Jessica Gordon-Nembhard talks about her research into the history of African-American co-ops.

The following is a verbal report presented to the members of the Ella Jo Baker Intentional Community Cooperative (EJBICC), during their 2025 Annual Meeting.

Dr. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard is a Community Justice and Social Economic Development Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at John Jay College. She is an internationally recognized and widely published political economist specializing in cooperative economics, community economic development, racial wealth inequality, solidarity economics, Black Political Economy, popular economic literacy, and community-based approaches to justice. In this broadcast, she discusses the history & importance of Black economic cooperatives.

In 2014, the seminal book, Collective Courage: A History of African-American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice debuted, and with it a flame sparked in the cooperative movement. 

Focused on 12 Southeastern states, the new institution will offer low-interest loans and technical support to help farmers, landowners, cooperatives, and ag-based businesses start and grow operations.

Reem’s California is a worker-owned restaurant. It is democratically run by local workers. Using worker-ownership, the restaurant challenges the long-standing inequality and violence prevalent in the restaurant industry, and provides an empowering and transforming workplace for those who have faced the most barriers–people of color, queer, formerly incarcerated folks, and undocumented individuals.

In 2022 Rhode Island passed the Rhode Island Cannabis Act. This made cannabis legal for adult use and mandated that a cannabis retailer license will be awarded to one social equity applicant and one worker cooperative per zone. There will be four licenses per geographic zone which means that half of the licenses are meant to create racial and economic justice within the cannabis industry in Rhode Island. A total of 12 licenses are specifically reserved for social equity applicants and worker cooperatives.

In this video, our panel of experts in the cooperative cannabis industry discuss challenges and opportunities to expand ownership and give reparations to those impacted by the War on Drugs.

In his 50-year career as a lawyer full of foundational work for worker cooperatives, agricultural cooperatives and democratic ownership, Arrington helped Southern black farmers’ agricultural cooperatives save their lands, developed a community economic development program in Tanzania and later became involved in the African Development Bank, supported a black construction workers in Los Angeles (APR Masonry Arts), generated capital for U.S. worker cooperative startups, and advised co-op loan funds.