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Catalyzing worker co-ops & the solidarity economy

Supermarket Chains Ignored This Black Community, So Residents Opened a Co-Op

“For me, it was very personal,” she said. “I had seen the neighborhood go from probably lower middle-class to low-income neighborhood. I was very interested in doing whatever I could to stop my neighborhood from further deterioration.”

She hadn’t done anything like this before, and didn’t know much about co-ops. And she wasn’t alone. Most residents who lived near what was then called the Bessemer Shopping Center had no clue what a cooperative was. But they knew they were tired of waiting for a corporation to come in and save them, or for the city to broker a deal to revive the strip.

“To me, the city of Greensboro totally ignored east Greensboro when it came to development,” Graves said, echoing a sentiment common among residents of the city’s predominantly Black east side. “This is for me and my community, my family, to show that we can do these things. We can make our own futures.”

Thompson’s Fund 4 Democratic Communities ponied up substantial funds to support the co-op grocery’s development, but she is quick to credit community buy-in for the store’s success. She recounted a story about a planning meeting in 2012 where resident Sadie Blue said, “If we’re serious about this, we need to pony up,” and threw a $20 bill on the table. Everyone started tossing bills in. Blue would become the co-op’s first official owner. Others slowly joined, some of them bringing envelopes with five $1 bills at a time to co-op meetings, making small but steady payments on their $100 memberships.

Read the rest at Munchies

 

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