Cooperation for Liberation
What is a Cooperative?
Cooperatives come from the Black and Indigenous practice of collective work to meet collective needs. Cooperation can look like community childcare, feeding one another, pooling together our resources to meet our needs, practicing mutual aid in our daily lives or in the face of a disaster, owning our own work through a cooperative business, and so on. We engage in cooperative practices in our daily lives.
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As workers, we are continuously at risk of being taken advantage of by our current capitalist system, which values the product of our labor over our humanity as workers, community members, family members, and culture bearers.
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Cooperative businesses and projects use practices that our communities have been using for centuries, along with the
7 Cooperative Principles to allow workers to have ownership of their work, and ultimately care for themselves and others.
Cooperation New Orleans seeks to support the creation and ongoing support of worker-owned cooperatives.
A worker-owned cooperative is a business in which the people who work for the business are the owners of the business. Unlike a non-cooperative business, there is not a single boss making all the decisions. Instead, a group of worker-owners work together to make decisions and run the business.
Click below for more information and resources put together by Cooperation New Orleans.
"Black cooperatives are actually not a new strategy, it was in cooperation that formerly enslaved people built community, and so it is no surprise that many Black communities continue to create cooperative enterprises as a means to own the development that is taking place in their neighborhoods. "
Tamah Yisrael, Founder and Steering Committee Member
Co-ops and Community
Our ecosystem is comprised of various individuals, cooperative businesses and mutual aid projects working to meet people's needs. Below is a list of some of our cooperators, and where you can find them in New Orleans.
BanchaLenguas is a worker-owned collective based in New Orleans (also named Bulbancha by the original native peoples of this land and its descendants) that partners with communities to create multilingual spaces through high-quality and responsible in-person and virtual interpretation, translation, consulting and language justice training.
Birthmark Doula Collective is a birth justice organization dedicated to supporting, informing and advocating for pregnant and parenting people and their families in New Orleans.
We are committed to equip families with the keys to success in life. Through our own moral actions we are leading the path from a poverty condition. We introduce change by providing resources and information causing people to take a different approach in life.
We co-create bold ideas and solutions through storytelling, art, design, and community-based planning with diverse partners across sectors and issue areas.
A food truck serving real and vegan chicken goods New Orleans, Louisiana.
Worker-owned cooperative providing affordable craft & costume materials to the culture bearer community of New Orleans.
Melegance
Founded by Jaleesa Jackson, Melegance LLC a communications consultancy that collaborates with changemakers to work toward collective liberation through storytelling.
Project Hustle:
Project Hustle is a Black, queer, hood feminist-led transformative organizing project in Southeast Louisiana. We center Black working class hustlers through people-power building, popular education, and storytelling projects that capture our creativity and ingenuity as Black women, Black femmes, and Black queer workers.
Urban Dream Co-op is an event services cooperative where we provide live music, a deli style food pop-up, and access to a community cultural center. Through this model we are building in the elements to create a sustainable business and do the work we love. We currently provide fresh wraps, sandwiches, salads and other grab & go offerings inside of the New Orleans Food Co-op. The Yisrael Family has been providing live music for special occasions, conferences, venues and festivals for over 20 years. Through Urban Dream co-op we continue to deliver exceptional live entertainment. We also provide catering packages that include our deli menu, a healthy New Orleans style menu or special menu for your event or office catering needs. Ask us about our Music and catering packages. We are creating events like concerts, cosplay and karaoke, game nights. Educational workshops and programs that are for the whole family and community. We provide space for small groups up to 75 people for special occasions, showers, dinners and other special events you create. We provide opportunities for our community, local artists, network partners and other cooperatives to have co-working and meeting space at the cultural center.
Mycelium
Mycelium is a tech solutions co-op. We believe that technology can be liberatory when it is intentionally built with our peers in the solidarity economy. This is why we work with co-ops and other democratically-run organizations to align their digital infrastructure with their specific organizational needs. We co-design tech solutions to meet everyday practices such as inventory management, customer interactions, and collective decision-making. Our hope is to broaden the power of the solidarity economy to advance our shared vision today and into the future.
We are a worker owned cafe with breakfast tacos, homemade pastries, & sandwiches. We offer a large drink menu with locally roasted coffee.
Studio Lalala:
Studio Lalala is an independent film production cooperative that works with QTBIPOC self taught artists to tell our stories, resource and teach our community, and gain financial autonomy from our work.
TMH Financial
Our commitment is to help businesses succeed by performing the critical accounting and bookkeeping functions needed to remain financially solvent and compliant with financial regulations.
Round Sky Solutions is a worker-owned coop that delivers the capacity to rapidly metabolize complexity into effective action for mission-driven organizations and individuals through trainings and individualized coaching.