We think it's important for us to figure out ways to build and distribute wealth within
our communities so that we can continue to sustain ourselves.
In a world that makes it difficult for people to access time, space, material and energy,
co-ops enable one or groups of people to be able to access those things much more easily,
much more abundantly than they could have otherwise.
What you have is you have a community here that wants to contribute, that wants to do
positive, that wants to give back no resources.
I found out about this thing called the co-op economy.
I was like, okay, that sounds good.
I like a community where I want to reinvest my money back into my community.
In 2016 and 2017, the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance brought together 20 groups to build
cooperative businesses.
Drawing inspiration and insight from the history of African American co-ops, groups spent six
months learning, brainstorming and dreaming to create collective visions for their cooperative
businesses.
Together, groups formed the foundations of establishments that will contribute to and
enrich communities, families and cities.
Co-ops have been in every era, every people, every population, every continent to make
life better, both to survive and to prosper and finding ways to solve their own problems
by controlling their own resources, connecting with other people and using that power to
leverage an economy together.
I was talking to someone who was complaining about a corny store and wanted us to shut it
down and I said, why don't we own any of the corny stores historically?
Why don't we own any of the corny stores?
And so the idea of just giving the community a chance to own something that they can use
and not always be a consumer but to be an owner and a consumer is really my main reason
for wanting to do this.
Being one of 13, so I'm number 11, that lucky number, we know what it means to be inclusive,
we know what it means to be organized.
To me, that's what co-op represents, like a family community that you want to always
see your family throughout.
I think that allowed us to be able to bring out our talents that we each individually
possess.
Of course, her with me, but keeping me with marketing.
The girl is very good with organizing, keeping track of things, as Christina is good with
everything.
We had worked for a big contractor in Old City.
He hired us as subcontractors, but the environment was very heavy, the owner was not very nice
with our colleagues, he was a little rough, he was very heavy.
So we quit the job one day, because he was scolding one of my colleagues, he was
yelling things.
He was very angry and I liked how he was talking to some of our colleagues who also
worked with us.
So I said to my colleagues, let's quit the job that day, and little by little they
came over.
And when we realized that we were dead, all those who worked there ended up working
with us.
In many ways we worked as a cooperative, but we are not a formal cooperative.
For me, the most important thing is that we continue to work with a family.
Every day one is improving, and that is what is most important, not to learn, and maybe
to teach a little to those who are coming and all that, because as I said, not all
of us come knowing it, and we are learning it little by little.
I think I like that they can do it here, while one wants to do it, they can do it.
I am a developing member of Serenity Solar.
We want to start a co-op that focuses on solar installations in the North Philly market.
We want to incorporate training and hiring folks out of the North Philly area to work
in renewable energy, a profession that normally would be inaccessible to them.
And at the same time we want to see if we can provide low-cost renewable energy to residents
in this area.
The sun captures, it is then converted in here, it is measured here, and then it goes
out here to Pico.
And so this is a marriage.
South Philadelphia is often a reflection of disproportionate exchange of power, racial
inequity, gender inequity, economic inequity, just all these inequalities.
Serenity Solar is about reclaiming the community so that everyone's voice matters, not just
those who have a lot of money or more money than the rest of us.
But everyone's voice actually makes a difference.
We are forming the Kensington Cooperative Tool Library.
Like you would expect, you come and you run tools.
It's all about fostering community, teaching each other how to use tools.
So we came to Home Depot today to see how they run their tool rental services.
I think a lot of times when we're focusing on creating corporate businesses or even just
small businesses, there's no succession plan built in.
When you have multiple members that own the business, even if one member leaves, the business
is still going to stay in that community and it's going to be rooted there.
As people who've been working in the nonprofit sector, we feel like having this co-op would
first allow us to invest more of our time and energy in building with our community instead
of worrying about the needs to sustain our program because this would serve as a source
of income for us, but as a way to also claim the land, as a way to make a statement that
okay, this is our community and we are here and we occupy space that should belong to
the people.
So here at Resilient Roots Community Farm is the heart of the work that we do at Viet-Liet.
Here the elders teach the young folks how to garden and then the young folks then teach
younger folks and then just create a community how to grow.
We regularly work in the construction, some of us don't want to pay, which is better
known as salary robots, and then we learn from neighbors, through the means of communication
that there are cooperatives, we have learned that it is one of the ways to face capitalism
or the empire, we have the B and the hope of growing and surviving as human beings.
After six months of studying, co-ops and community members came together at the co-op teaching.
Drawing on lessons from each other, our ancestors and our histories, co-op members shared and
celebrated what they had learned as they prepared themselves for the joys and challenges to
come.
It's going to take all of us to build a more just and cooperative economy.
If we're going to work together, we all need to notice and act against the oppression that
divides us, these forms of oppression are bigger than all of us, they're the water that
we swim in and we have to choose every single day to swim against that.
So usually with libation, there is plants and there is water and we pour the water into
the plant just honoring those ancestors.
Those of us who are thinking and living cooperatively, we will be able to coexist by bargaining and
trading with each other and by making sure and maintaining that each of us have what
we need.
We're out here just reconnecting to each other and learning how to relate to each other in
a different way.
And right now, people really have to use their voices and find an alternative to what we
have been living.
You know, so I feel like this is an opportunity to come in on the ground level on a fair playing
field.
We use co-ops, we can establish a progressively self-supporting economy.
Nobody can leave us behind, right?
Nobody can make us poor, right?
We can control and it can be unstoppable.
