The Collective Courage Fund
The Cooperative Approach to Building Black Independent Political Power
“The history of African-American cooperativism is really a parallel, a sort of a silent partner, to the long civil rights movement. The story is not just about the triumph and the survival of co-ops in the black community, but it’s also about the sabotage and the challenges.”
– Jessica Gordon Nembhard
An image of a group of people protesting during the civil rights movement.
The Collective Courage Fund
The Partnership Fund, The National Black Food and Justice Alliance, Piece by Piece Strategies have partnered with local Black led cooperatives across the country to develop the Collective Courage Fund. This Fund is committed to building a robust cooperative movement of urban and rural black cooperatives. This fund is named after “ Collective Courage: The History of Black Cooperative Thought and Practice'' by Jessica Gordan Nemhard. This steller book has inspired Black Cooperators across the United States by sharing the stories, victories, and challenges of the Black Cooperative Movement in the US.
What is a Cooperative?
Cooperatives are tools to win long term power through economic development and cooperation, while building community belonging and a sense of shared fate. Cooperatives, or co-ops, are organizations democratically owned and controlled by their members - people who work, produce or consume goods at the Co-op. Historically cooperatives develop when the community cannot get its needs met in the traditional market. These organizations are critical political and economic enterprises. They create community assets (buildings, land, food systems, market systems), educate members (training on nutrition, farming, leadership, management) and build community (gathering spaces, meetings and culture) as core functions of the cooperative. Indigenous peoples across the globe have documented use of these principles and, in post-colonial regions, these were first documented by the founders of Rochdale Equitable Partners Society during the Industrial Revolution and adopted later by the International Co-operative Alliance in 1995. The seven cooperative principles are the core values that guide the cooperative movement.
The Seven Principles
• Voluntary and open membership.
Democratic member control.
Member economic participation.
Autonomy and independence.
Education, training, and information.
Cooperation among cooperatives.
Concern for community.
A button from the Emancipation March in 1963
A button from the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee that says WE SHALL OVERCOME in the center.
A train ticket stub from the "Freedom Train" from 1965.
A button from the March on Washington in 1963.
The Resurgence of the Cooperative Movement: Black Cooperatives as Movement Building Engines
We have a rich history that tells us we are on the right path. The Black Cooperative history has been long and rich in the US. In fact, Ella Baker, a leader in developing the Youth Cooperative League, organized a meeting at Shaw University in Raleigh NC that founded the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Franklinton Center at Bricks in Whitakers, North Carolina was a key cooperative training center working with farmers and others to develop cooperative distribution and production centers. Collective Courage: the History of Black Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice (Nembhard, 2014) is a guiding light for Black cooperators sharing the long history of trials and triumphs. Collective Courage also highlights the challenges faced by Black cooperatives including racist violence, sabotage, undercapitalization, and the need for more education and training. Unfortunately, in today's Black cooperative movement our members face similar challenges.
There is a movement afoot. Across the country, Black led grocery store cooperatives are growing. The organizing efforts of these cooperatives vary in scale and sophistication. Currently there are Black led cooperatives like the Gem City Cooperative in Dayton Ohio, Fertile Ground in Raleigh, NC, One Community Cooperative in Petersburg Florida, SoLA in South Los Angeles, The Detroit People’s Food Cooperative in Detroit Michigan, Little Africa Cooperative in Cleveland Ohio and others.
Black Cooperatives, while being incubators for civic engagement, are much more. They are spaces where the Black community can practice governance of the commons. Black grocery cooperatives are growing. The crisis in food systems leaves many urban communities hungry. Food justice efforts are gaining ground as they center the importance of the land, building community belonging and developing a new economy. This concept centers asset accumulation and the fight to reclaim Black land and economic resources. To win these transformative changes Black cooperatives are centering leadership development and education, training and organizing as critical skills that must live within the membership. We collectively envision a national sustainable Black food cooperative movement that can feed and employ tens of thousands across the country.
In addition to all of these impacts, investing in Black led cooperatives builds self determination in communities traditionally marginalized and excluded from institutional economic resources. Cooperatives must build the assets to get a site, prepare land to grow food and profit to pay employees. They have the unrealized capacity to be vehicles for building the independent political power necessary to win substantial change to improve the quality of life in their communities.
Black Led cooperatives can be key anchors in the struggle to win true democracy and liberation. Black cooperatives are membership based, anti-racist in their approach, collaborative and focused on building exercising governing power through economic development and inclusion. Cooperatives have the potential to become members of civic engagement collaboratives, receiving coaching resources, data support and technical assistance. This project is an innovative approach to increasing civic engagement, strengthening the cooperative movement to build power in local communities in target states.
Black Cooperatives as Innovations to Increase Civic Engagement
The Black vote is critical to win any democratic race statewide, especially in states with Black populations above 25%. Civic engagement organizations across the country focus on integrated voter engagement. The civic engagement movement (including funders, voter engagement and movement building organizations, policy advocacy organizations) historically engages Black voters in October and disappears after the election, only to return again next October. Many of these programs include efforts to register voters, encourage them to turn out in elections, endorse candidates and support public education programs.
Year after year parties and politicians, and in many cases, donors and foundations pour financial resources to encourage Black turnout, however many of the organizations receiving these funds are white led and / or live outside the target Black community. They drop into a community around election time, leaving few if any resources behind.
While it is critical to increase voter turnout and overall civic engagement, after the elections communities are left with little more than a few percentage points increase, if that. There is a gap.
The Current Need - The Solution
The crisis facing Black communities mandates innovation in the support and development of Black independent political infrastructure. Black Led Food Cooperatives are a burgeoning movement in which investment, alignment and capacity building will manifest a stronger, Black led, independent political movement. These organizations are critical because they can not only engage their individual membership base, they are also able to engage locally because their membership is rooted in the community.
This project seeks to grow Black civic engagement infrastructure in a way that grows community power, assets, resources, employment and connection. We need infrastructure that is generative, community governed and controlled. The growing Black cooperative resurgence is one answer.
In many states, there exists a gap. Black led organizations are not a central part of the civic engagement movement. In states where collaborative tables exist, like the State Voices network and other large organizing collaboratives, Black cooperatives are not at the table.
While Black cooperative efforts are isolated and underinvested, they work on the front lines against community assaults via lack of jobs, housing and transportation systems. Key investments could build a bridge, strengthening the cooperative movement and deepening Black leadership within the civic engagement infrastructure across the country.