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.
