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.
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.
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.
Spring Up
For over 10 years, Spring Up has used fiction, art, role play, and community education to popularize the skills and frameworks necessary to be free together. We support individuals and grass roots formations through offering free resources, zines + workbooks, 1:1 coaching, and webinars, courses + retreats at bluelight academy of the liberatory arts.
Solidarity Economy
The online marketplace for cooperatives
Shop products and services from member-owned businesses.
New Orleans Food Co-Op
TOGETHER WE: Provide access to healthy food at a fair price; Are a center of community activity; Promote local and regional food production; Keep capital and jobs in our community; Practice environmental responsibility and sustainability; Reflect our unique and diverse community.
Veggi Farmers Co-operative
VEGGI Farmers Cooperative is currently made up of 10 farmers growing on 2.0 acres in New Orleans East. Rooted in cultural tradition and community resilience, VEGGI grows heirloom produce native to both Louisiana and the Vietnamese diaspora using eco-friendly methods.
Red Cypress Consulting
We craft communications, creative and digital campaigning strategies rooted in community so that our movements can grow as big as they need to create real change. Whether you have a campaign to win, a narrative to shift, or a voter base to turn out, our team can help you reach new heights while staying true to where you come from.
Cooperative Codebase
We specialize in creating custom software solutions that empower community organizations and cooperatives.
Melegance
Founded by Jaleesa Jackson, Melegance LLC a communications consultancy that collaborates with changemakers to work toward collective liberation through storytelling.
Mycelium
Advancing technological sovereignty for the solidarity economy by putting workers and their communities in control of their technological tools and infrastructure. Through deep, relational collaboration, we co-create solutions that serve both the material and moral imperatives of our partners.
New Economy Coalition
NEC exists to support a just transition from an extractive to a regenerative economy by building the scale and power of the solidarity economy movement in Black, Indigenous, and working class communities in every region of the United States.
Speakeasy Farm
1/4 acre urban farm growing plants for community food, medicine, & habitat
Ujima Childcare Co-op
Ujima is providing community-led education that activates the young learner into collective action, through project-based learning, cooperative practices and Black libratory care. The Ujima Childcare Cooperative is held by organizers, educators, artists, and environmentalists who share their wealth of knowledge, to families of all structures, that centers a child’s development and prepares them to be change-makers.
Lavendar Lounge
Lavender Lounge designs monthly events built to strengthen the BIPOC Lesbian community in NOLA
Urban Dream
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. ❤️
Pagoda Cafe
We are Pagoda Cafe, a worker owned cafe with breakfast tacos, homemade pastries, & sandwiches. We offer a large drink menu with locally roasted coffee.
Builders of the Highway
Builders of the Highway Foundation is a non-profit organization whose vision is for a world, functioning in truth, peace, and happiness. Our mission is to provide educational, economic, cultural, social, spiritual, and organizing resources for community advocacy to support the unification of good people.
TMH Solutions Hub
TMH Financial & Management Solutions is proud to be a financial management company that helps business clients make sound financial decisions on a daily basis. 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.
Bancha Lenguas
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.
Civic Studio
Our co-op is a multi-disciplinary group with diverse cultural, economic, and educational backgrounds. Our skills and experiences include research, writing, planning, design, curation, fabrication, media, technology, environment, sociology, ecology, education, organizing, and strategy.
Birthmark Doula Collective
Birthmark is a New Orleans-based birth justice cooperative dedicated to supporting, educating, and advocating for pregnant and parenting people and their families, with a focus on increasing access to respectful services for communities facing barriers to care
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.