Cooperation for liberation
WE ENVISION
a New Orleans with a strong Solidarity Economy Movement:
where Black, Brown, and Indigenous New Orleanians–fueled by the inherent brilliance, bravery and audacity of our ancestors– sustainably own our own labor and mentor each other on the collective and equitable governance of resources such as: food, care, land, and culture.
CNOs’ mission is to strengthen the solidarity economy movement in New Orleans, centering Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, prioritizing people and planet over profit. We do this by organizing educational resources, honoring people’s stories, base building, and technical assistance that supports building economic alternatives to meet our needs.
Solidarity and Cooperation 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. When we live in solidarity with one another, we are moving with the intention of caring for one another, and knowing that our own health and security comes from the health and security of our communities.
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. Solidarity economies center the needs of a region or community over monetary gain. Part of building a solidarity economy movement is shifting our expectations as working class people of how the economy is a resource that should benefit us--not exploit us--and that we can work in alignment with our values without sacrificing our basic needs.
Cooperation New Orleans believes in creating the space, conversation, educational opportunities, and hands-on technical assistance necessary to see this movement thrive in New Orleans. We see informal and formal.
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.
Our base is comprised of Black and Indigenous working-class New Orleanians working together to meet our own needs.
Our ecosystem is made up of these workers, small businesses, cooperatives, non-profit organizations, technical assistant providers, donors, and .
What is your role in the solidarity economy?
"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 the needs of our communities. Below is a list of some of our cooperators, and where you can find them in New Orleans.
Groups listed as "TA Providers" are co-ops and movement partners that also work to provide technical assistance and support to other cooperative projects in our ecosystem.
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.
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.
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.
Want to support a worker-owned business in New Orleans?
Find them on the map!