Describing a place as a food desert, says food sovereignty activist Sophi Wilmore, “implies that this is a natural phenomenon—that the lack of healthy, fresh, nutritious foods in certain neighborhoods is par for the course, normal, organic.” 

On the contrary, says Wilmore: The real issue is structural racism, and unjust systems that keep people impoverished, hungry, and positioned for incarceration. 

Wilmore is the co-executive director of Feed Black Futures, a community-based, Black, queer-led food sovereignty organization in California that connects Black and brown farmers with Black mamas and caregivers whose lives and families have been impacted by incarceration and the criminal legal system. 

“It’s all part of the systems of oppression and how they function,” they say. “Getting us further away from the places that have the highest food distribution intersects with food apartheid. These are the places where there is limited-to-no access to fresh foods and vegetables.” 

Food apartheid, a term coined by the farmer and advocate Karen Washington, has real impacts. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, among the more than 54 million Americans who lack access to healthy food, formerly incarcerated people and their children are at least twice as likely to suffer from food insecurity. People with felony drug convictions, for example, are permanently banned from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, though many states, including California, have opted out of this ban. 

But even joining, or re-joining, government food programs can be difficult for formerly incarcerated people, who often lack the information, resources, and support they need to restart their lives. This makes the lack of healthy food an “often overlooked consequence of incarceration” that is connected to other societal injustices, such as homelessness and unemployment. 

This type of structural racism hinders the well-being of Black women and caregivers who have been impacted by the justice system, Wilmore said, and who are owed reparations. 

“We were promised land after the abolition of slavery and never received that land,” they said. 

In response, Feed Black Futures pursues reparations through a teach them to fish strategy of food justice, food education, and farmer training to decrease dependency on industrial and capitalist food systems that put profit over people and the planet. 

Ali Anderson, FBF’s founder and co-executive director, jumpstarted Feed Black Futures with a crowdfunding campaign to raise $10,000 and feed 20 families that benefited from the annual Black Mamas Day Bail Out at the start of the pandemic. She collaborated with the Essie Justice Group, a women-led membership organization that supports Black and Latinx women and families affected by incarceration. A month later, Anderson had surpassed the initial goal to raise about $90,000.

That initial effort motivated Anderson, an experienced community organizer who holds a masters degree in public health from Emory University, to start Feed Black Futures. 

Today, the organization, grounded in principles of abolition, liberation, and self empowerment, connects Black women and their families and caregivers with nutritious foods and fresh produce purchased from Black and brown farmers—what Anderson calls “building pathways of food and land sovereignty in California.”

Fannie Lou Hamer, a community organizer and civil-rights activist who died in 1977, once said: “Down where we are, food is used as a political weapon. But if you have a pig in your backyard, if you have some vegetables in your garden, you can feed yourself and your family and nobody can push you around.” 

Feed Black Futures breathes life into Hamer’s words by training participants to start and nurture backyard, apartment, and community gardens — and to advocate for food sovereignty policies and practices that enable marginalized communities to gain access to fresh food production and equitable food distribution. 

In practice, Wilmore and Anderson’s organization has made more than 5,000 food deliveries to over 215 individuals, trained over 166 people in agricultural practices, and invested $120,000 in Black-and brown-owned farms in Alameda County in the San Francisco Bay Area.  

Feed Black Futures considers all of the people they help as members. That includes people who have received food services and gone through garden and farmer training. Participation replaces dues or any other type of remuneration. Wilmore’s hope is FBF’s investment in members will create a larger base of people advocating for food sovereignty. She also sees a future expanded platform that includes Black and brown farmers too.

Oakland resident Joymara Coleman, who has loved ones in the prison system, has been a Feed Black Futures member for the past two years. She says that knowing where her food comes from has had a positive impact on her emotional, mental, and physical health. 

“Anybody can get a community food bank box of non-perishables full of GMOs,” she said, but Feed Black Futures “gives us something more, like being intentional about the quality of food, the energy that went into growing that food, knowing that this is a symbiotic relationship between the grower and the consumer. That for me is the ultimate self-care.” 

By partnering with groups such as the Essie Justice Group, Agroecology Commons, and others in California and across the country, Wilmore said she hopes one day Feed Black Futures will become irrelevant, as more BIPOC women and families give up unhealthy food systems, support ecologically sound Black and brown farmers, and no longer go hungry because they or people they love were once incarcerated. 

“A great way to keep people impoverished is to keep them reliant on a system they cannot control,” Wilmore said. “Their choices are limited as to where they can get their food from. So we’re talking about food sovereignty as a mechanism for liberation.”

The post Reclaiming food sovereignty: How Feed Black Futures is challenging structural racism through food justice appeared first on Shareable.

During that time, gentrification and cost of living in Oakland surpassed cities like San Francisco, forcing Blacks and other people of color to relocate. Temporary and short-term leases strangled the existence of Black businesses and arts and cultural organizations.

These same arts and cultural groups led the charge to ensure that Oaklanders persevered. They were the first responders who provided access to rapid COVID testing, food, and other services. Their murals portrayed protests of racial inequity and police brutality, but also encouraged solidarity, self-determination, and activism. Yet, these groups were fighting to survive economically in the same city that leaned on them for answers during a dire stretch of time.

“At that time, our city — like many cities across the country — was going through major disruption and shifts. Because we were on lockdown, it gave organizations — and Black organizations in particular — an opportunity to have deep listening sessions, and to take a step back from the work and look at things in a new way,” Harris said. 

BlacSpace Cooperative became that lasting response. Still in its infancy, BlacSpace constructed a self-supportive Black-business and economic-development ecosystem to continuously seed Black arts, ownership, and culture in Oakland, now and in the future. The co-op is the container that creates and collects talent, services, funding, and knowledge and shares those resources with its members. 

“We are here to say that we want to stay in Oakland. We deserve to stay in Oakland. We want to make it as a Black presence,” said Carolyn Johnson, CEO of the Black Culture Zone (BCZ) and BlacSpace co-founder.

Historically, Black cultural and creative enterprises had supported economies, creating jobs, and driving positive sustainability. Harris, an artist, vocalist, East Oakland native, entrepreneur, and consultant with over two decades experience of working with Black cultural and arts organizations, knew this. She led the charge to explore lasting, substantial strategies for shifting the city’s economy to value the Black communities that had lived in the city for most of its 171 years, and who shaped the cultural roots from which the city profited. 

In 2020, Harris co-founded BlacSpace with Johnson from BCZ; Anyka Howard from the Betti Ono Foundation; Dr. Ayodele Nzinga from the Black Arts Movement Business District Community Development Corporation (BAMBD CDC); Noni Session from East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EBPREC); and Anna Shneiderman, formerly of the Ragged Wing Ensemble, and who now shares administrative roles with Harris. The Co-op incorporated in November 2022. 

Harris refers to these founding organizations as Black cultural anchors because of the collective work they put into advancing their own and other Black organizations. “We’re not trying to be just another cooperative…. We actually want to create revenue streams and other resources,” she said. 

A cooperative with a twist

Harris has also said that Black people have always used cooperatives as synergistic methods to support each other’s progress. She cited the Black Church and the Black Panthers as examples. BlacSpace follows traditional cooperative footsteps with a bit of a unique twist. The cooperative is open to Black arts and cultural organizations and anchors that seek some form of permanence, whether a physical space or an ongoing presence.

“We’re thinking of BlacSpace physically as actual Black-owned spaces, but we’re also thinking about it a little bit more metaphorically. The Betti Ono Foundation right now does not have a physical brick and mortar space in Oakland, but they are working with Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to create safe spaces on public transportation,” Harris said. “One of the major ways that Black women are sexually assaulted happens in public transportation. The Betti Ono Foundation is working with BART to change that. They don’t have to be a brick and mortar space to create a Black space.” 

A roadmap toward permanence and sustainability

BlacSpace offers a roadmap, and helps members and other groups navigate a way around external funding dependencies, or the need every two-to-three years to “do a new dance” to access money based on funders’ priorities, not the organizations’ needs.

A mutual aid network is one way the cooperative synergizes efforts and resources. Members might share BlacSpace staff, so that they would not need to double as volunteers in pursuit of the mission. If a bookkeeper is needed, one could be hired to address the needs of multiple members. 

Knowledge is also shared, recorded and archived for future use.

“For Betti Ono, that means funding a cultural permanence strategy, so they can really figure out [their options]. For BAMBD CDC, it was a staffing strategy. We hired an HR consultant [and] we’re writing job descriptions. We’re putting systems in place to … allow that organization to be sustainable. For Black Culture Zone, it is looking at all of the different real estate acquisition projects that they have on the table, and helping them to create a funding matrix to figure out what the different ownership models … what the different investment models could look like,” Harris said.

Cooperative support also comes through the creation of stories, webinars, materials, and other tools Harris refers to as “living artifacts” that members and others have access to as needed. 

The intention for BlacSpace is for it to be a cultural roadmap for sharing — not just in Oakland, but in other cities across the United States, too. 

BlacSpace Cooperative members come from across the Oakland diaspora

Harris said that BlacSpace is still in an early stage of development; the ways in which the group develops and grows is dependent on its membership.

Currently, the cooperative’s board consists of the leaders of the four founding organizations in addition to BlacSpace cultural management staff, including Harris and Shneiderman, plus Sadé Shakur, Administrative & Infrastructure Lead, and Shaina Simmons, Storytelling Lead. Plans to add Black cultural anchor organizations to the cooperative are in the works. These groups will also have access to the mutual aid network. Other membership levels may include staff and community options. 

Any Black cultural hub or organization from the Oakland diaspora — meaning groups and individuals that work toward real estate acquisition, own real estate, or have some other level of dedicated presence in Oakland — can qualify as a BlacSpace member — whether they operate in the city or not, Harris said.

The exorbitant cost of living and working in Oakland has forced Black artists and Black cultural organizations into exile. Harris currently splits her residence between Mexico City, Mexico and Oakland, although she still works, coalesces, and contributes to the collective progress of her native city. 

The Betti Ono Foundation had a space in the city that became too expensive to maintain. Though currently looking for a permanent space, this foundation, too, works on behalf of Black cultural permanence. Though not a BlacSpace member, the Repaired Nations of Oakland cooperative teaches groups and individuals how to start, enhance, or improve their cooperatives. The group received a $2 million dollar grant to purchase and develop land in Oakland, but even that amount is not enough to buy in the city.

Helping a historically disinvested, redlined community see value in their presence in a city that decreased its municipal services after remote workers (who had relocated to Oakland during the pandemic) left again, is a collective responsibility on the parts of Black cultural anchor organizations, but also self-determination on the parts of the people, Harris said.

Funders connect with BlacSpace’s “teach them to fish” mission

Funders who support “solidarity over charity” or the “teach them to fish” proverb, have also been supportive of BlacSpace’s mission. To date, “The all-time total from all [our] funders has been just over $2.3 million,” according to Shneiderman. ( This amount refers to all funding including future pledges through 2025.)

Previously funded by AmbitioUS and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA)/CultureBank, their current funders are the Kenneth Ranin, Mellon, and Zellerbach Family foundations. 

Harris appreciates all of the funders who have embraced BlacSpace. She is also mindful that the tenuousness of support from foundations — whose grants may only last from one to three years — underscores a need for Black arts and cultural anchors to devise more viable, long-term solutions. 

“During the global pandemic and George Floyd uprisings, Black organizations were getting more money than we ever had, and we knew that this was not going to last,” Harris said. “We need to leverage this moment to build structures of cooperativism. We need to figure out how each of us is getting more money. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.”

The post BlacSpace Cooperative weaves solidarity to solidify Black arts, cultural presence in Oakland appeared first on Shareable.

Some experts and owners would say there is no need to imagine. The world is already growing beyond the usual profit-for-a-few model. 

“We have evidence all around us that societal expectations of business are shifting,” Clarisse Magnin-Mallez said during a 2021 McKinsey Global Initiative (MGI) Inside the Strategy Room podcast. “I found it striking that 87 percent of people who were asked about the role of companies declared that they should create value for multiple interests, not just make profits.” 

The profit-from-the-top-down business model is changing, according to OwnCo co-founder Harry Wilson. Wilson and co-founders Sascha Kellert and Špela Prijon launched OwnCo in January 2023 to help early-stage businesses share ownership with their community contributors, empowering their voices in shaping and growing entities that affect them. 

Wilson said that community-minded founders and business owners want to make a positive change in the world by looking at alternative ways to grow a business beyond the usual “cash-burning” strategy. They also want to share their profits with community contributors who have added value to their companies or organizations. That value manifests in a variety of ways, including participation, purchasing services, new business referrals, doing good for community organizations that support a business’s mission, or other non-monetary contributions.

“We’re working with a fitness company called Maverick who wanted to attract the top 10 trainers in LA. So how can they do that? By giving them ownership, because these people are at the top of their field, and possessing ownership is something that appeals to them,” Wilson said.

Similarly, OwnCo client Somos offers free and fee-based services for the use of an online platform that helps language instructors from all over the world grow an ecosystem for teaching, connecting with students, building community, and marketing their classes and products. Instructors who charge for their classes, services, and products will be charged a percentage-based fee where they keep 90 percent of their sales. Somos assesses a nine percent commission and gives one percent to community partners who engage in work relative to their mission. As for community ownership, Somos is very similar to Maverick’s template for awarding their shares. 

“We’re not asking for money,” says Khawar Malik, Somos founder and CEO. “Teachers’ participation will generate ownership shares.” Somos has only recently begun to set up their co-ownership program, but Malik said participation could include receiving tokens when teachers sign up students for paid classes or elect a “Lifetime” deal for a one-time charge.

Somos will set aside 32.5 percent of its business for community ownership. Refugee employees, teachers, and core community partners aligned with Somos’s mission to champion language, workers, and migrant rights will be eligible for this option. 

OwnCo client Novlr, a platform for writers to plan, draft, and publish their work, will initially set aside 10% of its business for co-ownership opportunities. According to co-founder Thomas Muirhead, after they accrue over 10,000 co-owning writers, the community-owned portion of the company could grow from 10 percent to 20 percent. 

“There is a general swell of enthusiasm for employee ownership, community ownership, and stakeholder ownership. It’s an important shift toward the organizations we want to design to be like in the future. The people who [add] value to an organization should be the ones who benefit from it,” Muirhead said. 

Whether companies accept in-kind contributions as a pathway to co-ownership, modest monetary investments remain an option. Novlr co-owners will be able to pay a one-time buy-in fee bundled with a lifetime membership. In return, these writer co-owners will elect representatives to an executive board to weigh in on how the business grows. A “Writer’s Trust” will be established to enable the redistribution of future profits to community owners.

For community-centered entities like Maverick, Somos, and Novlr, OwnCo helps establish transparency between founders and their community contributors. Founders use OwnCo’s platform to administer credits, set goals, disburse payouts, and sign legal contracts with their community to identify expectations. Contributors, too, can see the business’s activities, monitor their shares, and execute other agreed-upon tasks. 

OwnCo, has also designated 30 percent of its equity for community contributors or people who subscribe to the platform or provide referrals. Customers who pay at least the $500 monthly subscription fee get 400 OwnCo shares, which could be worth over $20k by 2025 if OwnCo is successful.

“We use our own model, so we are co-owned by our community. If you are a customer, then you also get ownership in OwnCo. If you help us get customers, you get ownership, too,” Wilson said. Currently, OwnCo has 25 clients doing business in the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Europe, including the United Kingdom. 

Wilson said OwnCo has no direct competitors, although growing distrust, disenfranchisement, and dwindling patience with traditional investments and profit-driven models have led people to place their trust, their money, and/or their participation in similar community-empowering ownerships, like crowdfunding, communal farming, property coops, credit unions, investment pools, and ROSCAs (rotating savings and credit associations). These have all been ways to empower and include people who have habitually felt left out of traditional wealth-building and ownership models. 

In the 2020 Shareable article, “From  Sharing Economy to Community Economy: Why it is important to learn how to design communities,” Marta Mainier wrote, “The community economy is the most interesting evolution of the sharing economy, an economy made up of companies, groups, places that put the community at the center of their business strategy; by doing so, they transform markets and organizations.”

Muirhead hopes Novlr’s community-ownership initiative will transform the publishing industry. “The main driver for this is the goal for Novlr to really grow, to scale where it really represents creative writers, where changes in the publishing industry might be possible because — as a writer-owned industry — we may be able to lobby as a group and disrupt the publishing industry,” he said.

Though OwnCo currently only works with budding businesses and organizations, Wilson can see a scenario where community ownership is not primarily driven by the owners, but also the contributors. “It would be interesting to get community members to rise up and start demanding changes from [traditional businesses],” he said. “For them, we could be the platform that organizes petitions… to say that if you share ownership, they’d help grow the business with this or that contribution.”

“It’s all about putting a dent in the world. With our model, decisions are made by the people who are impacted by the business. Instead of an Airbnb CEO who lives on another continent, the vacation hosts and neighbors will have a say over how proceeds are invested and distributed. So you have more wealth distribution, and thousands of people can have an impact on businesses that affect them, instead of one or a few,” Wilson summed.

The post Empowering community ownership toward disrupting business as usual appeared first on Shareable.

La BOM’s president and founder Sylvain Mustaki had been searching for a way to make a difference in an economic climate that disenfranchised people who struggled financially. 

Mustaki says that Libraries of Things (LoT) help reduce waste through the loaning and lending of useful but costly everyday tools, appliances, and other items, but says empowering everyday people to share is his focus.

I’m afraid we have difficult times coming, particularly for poor people. Building a community based on sharing and mutual help is the best chance for the people to get through hard times. We had to do something. — Sylvain Mustaki, president and founder of La BOM 

La BOM was conceived in 2019 and has enjoyed support from the community as well as foundations, regional government, and Montreuil Mayor Patrice Bessac. Yet the COVID pandemic delayed the library’s launch by almost three years. 

Mustaki, a former rock’n’roll producer, believes La BOM is the first of its kind and magnitude in France.  His road to founding this sort of lending library began with lots of research, starting with Shareable’s book, “Sharing Cities: Activating Urban Commons.” He sought guidance from Shareable Interim Executive Director Tom Llewellyn and LoT organizers in Quebec, Geneva, and other cities. Working with Shareable while figuring out what to do next, Mustaki hosted a sharing festival in 2019 and invited Llewellyn, along with Mayor Bessac and other government officials, to speak at the event.  

According to Llewellyn, the festival inspired Mayor Bessac, who would later challenge Llewellyn and Mustaki to do something to promote a sharing economy in Montreuil. 

Llewellyn, who had co-founded a tool library in Asheville, North Carolina, before joining Shareable, proposed they open a library of things in France. LoTs are a good way to “put sharing into people’s hands. Let them touch and feel (sharing) in a way that they will understand that it is appropriate for the community,” he said.

Mustaki agreed. An LoT would be a good fit for Montreuil, a city of 110,000 people known for their sharing spirit, left-wing ideology, and 2,500 active community associations. An LoT would also support ecological goals to divert usable items from landfills and offer ways to share popular though less-used items affordably. 

LoTs are very much like traditional libraries, with one exception. Instead of lending books, LoTs loans other items and objects, such as kitchen tools and utensils, camping gear, toys, and men’s suits. Many focus on one category, such as tools or kitchen implements, while La BOM differs and offers a variety of things.

“We have 500 items,” Mustaki said. “The angle is to offer any object that can be used in everyday life, but that is not used very often. So, it can be a tent, glasses for a party, and all kinds of items for a normal life but that you don’t use on a frequent basis.”

La BOM gets its inventory from object loans, donations, and purchases. If there are popular items that have not been donated, loaned or in good condition, the group purchases what is needed. Those purchases represent less than 5% of the inventory, while loaned items are only a part of La BOM’s offering until lenders request their return.

Mustaki would like to see La BOM’s inventory expand from 500 to 1,000 objects over the next few years. 

Rental fees range from €5.00 per week for items valued at less than €100.00 to €50.00 per week for objects that cost over €1000.00. Subscribers must visit the site to retrieve their items, though Mustaki hopes to ship items in the future. 

La BOM has 665 members. Membership is kept affordable at €10.00 a year, though no one is denied because of a lack of funds. 

“If they cannot afford the standard membership fee, we will accept less,” he said. 

Commenting in a Shareable article about libraries of things around the world, Gene Homicki, founder of an LoT management system called myTurn, noted that great LoTs offer more than items. 

The most successful libraries of things are the ones [that] do more than just lend items. They also create a strong sense of community. For example, offering sliding-scale subscriptions based on income or usage to help ensure a diverse community can afford to access the library. — Gene Homicki, myTurn founder

La BOM’s community is centered on its 600-square-meter building — more than enough space for a library of things and several other sharing opportunities. Both subscribers and residents living in the greater Paris area can frequent La BOM for its photography, music, sewing, and textile studios, a wood shop, a repair shop, and an alkaline (disposable) battery exchange.

The RegenBox battery charger and exchange designed by ATELiER 21, allows for a daily per-person swap of four expired batteries for recharged ones. Llewellyn says La BOM’s battery exchange can recharge up to 200 batteries daily and estimates up to 50 people could utilize this service per day. 

It’s an amazing pilot with an environmental impact that is off the charts, and these batteries are being kept out of landfills. — Tom Llewellyn on La BOM’s alkaline battery exchange

The repair shop also allows people to visit and receive free help to fix common appliances, furniture, radios, televisions, and other things. 

Llewellyn says these activities and spaces expand La BOM’s purpose, from sharing things to sharing knowledge and resources, making it more of a sharing hub than just an LoT. 

This includes hosting workshops on sharing and other topics and offering space rentals for corporate and neighborhood events, as well as movie productions. 

Mustaki believes La BOM’s purpose and potential far outweigh its challenges. Covering the library’s operational costs can be a balancing act between monthly expenses of €12,000, a monthly income from object loans, workshops, and leases that vacillates between €3000 and €5000, and reimbursable subsidies based on specific uses more than general operating support. 

Mustaki says La BOM is well supported by locals. However, in addition to covering monthly operational costs, La BOM’s other pressing need is to increase the number of people who know and routinely use La BOM’s LoT and other sharing spaces. 

“Every time I have the opportunity to say what it is and what it stands for, people say, ‘wow, what a great idea.’ But you may say it’s a great idea and only use it once,” he said. 

“At the moment, about 80 to 90 percent of the people do not know we exist. We don’t have TV spots. It’s all person-to-person, though I think in time people will learn about the existence of La BOM, what it offers, and what it stands for,” Mustaki added. 

Llewellyn agrees that attracting members has been a challenge, but like Mustaki, sees great potential in the near future. 

“Membership will grow on the back end. Once people know about it and start going to La BOM for other reasons, like its various studios and its free repair shop and alkaline-battery swap, they will be far more likely to become members,” said Llewellyn. “It’s so much more than a library of things. It’s a sharing hub, and that’s their greatest asset.” 

Check out these related articles:

• How Libraries of Things build resilience, fight climate change, and bring communities together
• The lending ripple: How libraries of things are changing their cities for the better
• How to start a Library of Things

The post The making of La BOM: Montreuil’s new Library of Things and Sharing Hub appeared first on Shareable.

Fortunately over the last 20 years, builders have been utilizing shipping containers as affordable, environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional constructions. These days, it is not uncommon to see homes, schools, hospitals, and even swimming pools constructed from shipping containers. 

Armed with this knowledge, urban planners and community developers have joined the movement, using shipping containers to construct temporary and permanent shopping malls that empower Black and Brown entrepreneurs, help fledgling businesses, and revive downtown areas in disenfranchised neighborhoods.

The story of Chicago’s Boxville 

One such neighborhood is Bronzeville in Chicago. Bronzeville was once an epicenter for arts, culture and commerce, filled with a community of working middle-to-upper-class Black families. 

Since 1970, the city’s population has decreased by 59%. Bronzeville is now home to just under 26,000 residents. With a primarily Black demographic, the median household income in the area is $30,979, just half of Chicago’s median income of $61,811.

Bernard Lloyd is working to change that. Lloyd is the founder of Urban Juncture, a nonprofit organization dedicated to revitalizing disinvested Black urban communities by rebuilding neighborhood commerce around culture and innovation. 

We are focused on creating local opportunity and that is where the injustice has been. — Bernard Lloyd, founder of Urban Juncture 

Urban Juncture established Build Bronzeville, which consists of five initiatives designed to revitalize the once-prosperous community. 

Five years ago, the Boxville Marketplace became one of those initiatives. Boxville is one of Chicago’s first shipping container restaurant and retail centers. Created as a stepping stone for Black businesses to grow, progress, and prosper, the accelerator enterprise is located in a former vacant lot at 330 East 51st Street and covers about one-third of a city block.

Boxville allows entrepreneurs and small businesses to open shop affordably and receive supportive services. The start up capital required to access typical commercial storefronts can be wildly expensive. For business owners wishing to locate in Bronzeville, expenses and challenges multiply. Years of disinvestment, disengagement, and blight have left the city with few prime commercial spaces, under-resourced business districts and a surplus of dilapidated buildings. 

“Entrepreneurs and small businesses already struggle to find capital,” said Katrina Roddy, Boxville’s Director. “If they are trying to locate on Chicago’s south side, they may have the additional expense of having to renovate a storefront on a commercial strip where few other businesses exist. Now, they’ve got to find a way to draw customers to their location, too.” That’s where Boxville comes in, she explained.   

Boxville is the tipping point to keeping the Black dollar circulating. We always talk about the circulation of the African American dollar between our Brown and Black communities and our businesses. Now we have a spot. — Katrina Roddy, Boxville Director

Boxville offers small businesses, entrepreneurs, and budding restaurants opportunities to test and grow their markets before moving on to a long-term or permanent brick and mortar space. Partners also receive small business training and coaching in areas such as financing, business development, and marketing.

Roddy works with community partners, like the Small Business Development Center (also located in the Boxville incubator) to ascertain if a business has the potential to become a Boxville partner, using pop-up events to measure business growth potential and prospective community impact. 

Once the offer to become an official Boxville partner is extended to a pop-up vendor, they can set up shop at the 51st Street location. Retail space in a container ranges from $450 to $850, depending on the size of the space. The fees cover the cost of a micro (10 X 8) or standard (20 X 8) sized, insulated, retrofitted container, electricity, and up to two windows. Vendors cover the cost of heating and cooling, and are permitted to fix up their spaces as they desire.

Corey Gilkey, owner of Friistyle Restaurant, began as a pop-up vendor before becoming a Boxville partner. Gilkey now operates a restaurant, where he sells his loaded pomme frittes,  (fried potatoes) at a brick-and-mortar location, about one block from Boxville. 

Stoviink Creatives sells wellness and mindfulness products. Co-owners Storie Devereaux and Tovi Khali decided to become a part of Boxville seven months ago after thriving as an online business during the pandemic. 

“It was time to create more visibility,” said co-owner Storie Devereaux. “Our products are sensory, so we wanted customers to experience our products in a different way.” Like Gilkey, Devereaux and her partner want to expand to permanent locations in Bronzeville or Englewood. 

Roddy believes the success seen by the Boxville marketplace and its alumni will create lasting positive change for the community of Bronzeville. 

We see people investing in Bronzeville as a result of our work. Someone just bought a building on the corner. They plan to open two retail shops. Across the street, we see new construction. In the next three to five years, it will look different on 51st Street.

Boxville is open year-round, and currently has ten businesses, having previously featured as many as seventeen. This decrease, according to Roddy, is not a negative. It is a sign that Boxville is accomplishing its goal. “We don’t expect Boxville partners to be in Boxville for more than two years…We’re just trying to provide the community with a stepping stone before they have to make the huge investment associated with brick-and-mortar costs,” Roddy said.

For the neighborhood that surrounds it, Boxville is as much about community as it is commerce. In addition to hosting local businesses, the marketplace also includes spaces for free community fitness classes and “Neighborhood Square” events, where neighbors gather to talk, listen to music, and dance. 

Addressing a history of economic exclusion 

While Boxville is an undeniable success, the story of Bronzeville and communities like it aren’t unusual. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asserts that the disparity in incomes and businesses in Black communities across the nation is not an accident nor is it a scarlet letter attached to a particular race. Centuries of divestment have sought to undermine social and economic advancement in many historically Black and Brown neighborhoods.

From reconstruction to Jim Crow, to the present day, our economy has never worked fairly for Black Americans — or really any American of color. — Janet Yellen, U.S. Treasury Secretary 

Yellen notes that U.S. policy makers have historically established racially influenced rules for the economy that prevented intergenerational wealth transfers among Black Americans.

In 2019, there were a total of 5,771,292 businesses with more than one employee. Black owned businesses represented 2.3%  (134,567) of that number. These businesses traditionally have been sole proprietorships that are more likely to hire Black workers who otherwise might be unemployed or ignored in traditional job markets. 

In efforts to close the enduring wealth gap, communities across the country are looking to utilize new means of building out Black and Brown economic power. 

Boxville ‘with a twist’: Atlanta’s Beltline Marketplace

Like Boxville organizers, Atlanta Beltline, Inc (ABI) and The Village Market (TVM) also hope to address the wealth inequality between Black-owned and other minority and white-owned businesses. 

ABI and TVM have begun piloting an initiative similar to Boxville. The twist: the pilot program solely targets locally-owned Black businesses. Doors opened mid-July at Beltline Marketplace, which like Boxville, was constructed entirety from shipping containers. The marketplace offers six local Black-owned businesses exposure to Atlanta Beltline’s two million annual visitors. 

Each business receives affordable commercial space and business support services before and during the inaugural season, which lasts from early summer to November 2022. The pilot project is supported by a $750,000 grant from the Kendeda Fund. 

This collaboration ensures economic mobility, accessibility, and a progressive way forward as the Beltline begins to nurture relationships with local, independently owned, Black-owned businesses that have been displaced due to the surge in commercial rents. — TVM Founder and CEO Dr. Lakeysha Hallmon

Beyond the pilot program, Beltline MarketPlace plans to open up to businesses of all backgrounds as more locations pop up around the eastern and western sides of the Beltline loop. 

Continuing to create space for emergent entrepreneurs 

Roughly half of all small businesses fail within their first five years, and prospects are even more bleak for entrepreneurs of color, who face issues like lack of access to capital, resources, expertise and customers.  

Marketplaces like Boxville and Beltline remove these barriers by absorbing the cost of building out space, locating businesses in highly visible areas, and providing affordable lease rates below traditional commercial markets. And this model is becoming quite popular already.

Community developers and organizers in cities like Cleveland, Ohio, Sparta, Michigan, London, England, and Toronto, Canada are among the many cities utilizing the model to bolster local economies and revive struggling commercial centers. 

Enticing entrepreneurs back to downtown locations at a fraction of the costs, shipping container marketplaces are helping to return life and economic opportunities to flailing neighborhoods, strengthening localized Black and Brown economic power and creating social environments that celebrate sustainable, community-based commerce. 

Check out these related articles:

• In Vancouver, shipping containers are the new tool libraries
• Shipping containers morph into an office building
• Pop-up stores build local economies through sharing

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Hagelberg, 38, is a social justice artist, community gardener and founder and Executive Director of the Calumet Artist Residency. He’s an active proponent of the arts and is invested in localized regenerative efforts to reconstruct his hometown of Gary, Indiana into a self-sustaining entity.

Even as a Gary native, Hagelberg admits that his journey into community activism wasn’t always clear. 

Laying the foundation

After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from Ball State University in 2006, Hagelberg says the job market for sculptors — his chosen path of study — was nonexistent. He was unsure what kind of art he wanted to make, so he went to work for his parents building playgrounds across the country.

The work was grueling — digging holes, mixing and pouring concrete, and handling heavy equipment — but it was also income. He traveled to over 25 states as a freelance playground builder and gave fellow artists with whom he had met in school the same opportunity to make money. Doing this work helped him to see that he wanted something different. 

I felt compelled to find a way to use my art to make a difference and to do it in Gary. — Corey Hagelberg

Hagelberg’s former partner Kate Land and his parents were key to his decision.

“My parents moved to Gary during white flight, against the trend. My mom worked as a social worker for decades, and my dad built affordable playgrounds. So my work to fight the stigma of Gary, which also exists within our own citizens, is really following in their footsteps,” Hagelberg said.

By 2012, in the midst of a housing crisis, Hagelberg and Land returned to Gary where they could live more affordably than other popular places like Chicago, Portland, or Austin where some of their friends were relocating. 

Returning to his roots

Hagelberg returned to a city described as one of the most abandoned municipalities in the nation. Gary was hemorrhaging people. In a 2020 census, Gary’s population was 75,486 in 2020, down over 27,000 people since the year 2000. 

Predominantly Black, the city’s other demographics included a median household income of $31,315 and a poverty rate of 33.2%. A 2019 census found only 36% of Gary’s population were employed.  

Some blamed these declines on political infractions that led to Gary’s resources being usurped by other cities. Others cite economic opportunity deficits, disinvestment, redlining, and major abuses of the environment by industries and utility companies as potential factors. 

But Hagelberg didn’t let these dismal conditions sway his convictions. In fact, he says, they solidified them.  

“I decided to center my art practice around the idea of social change in this region because I believe we must model what we want to see,” Hagelberg said. 

One of his first forays into community activism involved organizing around environmental issues like corporate air pollution and climate injustice, continuing in the spirit of earlier leaders and elected officials like the late Mayor Richard Hatcher.

My vision is a regenerative city where we don’t have to bring in so much from the outside. Where we are supporting each other or working together in a way that we have healthy food, food security, and resilience to the effects of climate change.

Hagelberg’s vision can be seen in his community works as well as his imaginative woodcuts, which showcase gothic likenesses of trees with braided roots and sunflower fields. Etched into each art piece are adages, like “Grow strong roots”, “And then the smokestacks were gone” or “Make peace, plant a tree”. 

Merging art & impact: The birth of CAR

While creating his own art, Hagelberg saw collaborations with fellow artists as a way to support the community’s call for an end to food deserts and the desecration of Gary’s natural resources. 

Along with Land, he acquired and converted two neighboring abandoned houses in Miller, a lake shore neighborhood on Gary’s far east side near the Dunes, into the Calumet Artist Residency (CAR) in 2012. The two properties became studio and living space for artists in residence where over 40 artists could stay anywhere from a few weeks to several months. 

In 2014, CAR became an official nonprofit organization through which Hagelberg worked with area schools and community organizations to give voice to the people who knew Gary intimately. The Gary Poetry Project was one such example. 

“We had over 60 workshops where we had a form that people would fill out. Over 280 people chose a line that would be part of a collaborative poem, and we painted those lines throughout the city,” said Hagelberg.

Hagelberg credits former CAR resident Jeff Biggers with breathing life into a pivotal project that married Hagelberg’s practice as a social justice artist to his commitment to regenerative practices combating food insecurity and climate change. 

A noted journalist, historian and playwright, Biggers had begun developing skits to help communities like Gary envision themselves as regenerative cities, in efforts to combat climate change and create local food security. 

One such script was performed at the local Progressive Church urban farm. Entitled South Shore Ecopolis, the play described what a regenerative Gary would look like in 2030. 

“It was a beautiful vision of pop-up shops, corner bakeries, urban gardens, renewable energy, recycling things, and working as a community to meet the city’s needs,” Hagelberg said. 

The beauty of the play, Hagelberg says, was that it highlighted work that folks were already doing in the community. 

“Part of it is not just saying look what could happen if we did this. It’s saying look at what will happen as a result of the work already being done,” he added.

South Shore Ecopolis became a precursor to Kaminsky’s Lot, a longer-length play and part of Hagelberg’s climate justice collaboration with Indiana University Northwest in 2021. 

“It was a slow process of learning what dynamic an artist in residency could bring to the community and seeing what other artist residencies around the country were doing in terms of bringing artists in to do innovative projects in communities or supporting artists in that community or both,” said Hagelberg who visited Braddock, Pennsylvania, a city that shared Gary’s struggles, to observe their arts and gardening social practices. 

“They used the Braddock Public Library as a vehicle for their work, creating lending collections of household tools and materials, artworks, and community spaces. There was incredible beauty in their practice,” he said.

Other projects included two poetry zines that celebrate Black history and culture and the Resilient Midtown Tours. In the 1940s and 1950s, Gary’s Midtown had been the place where Blacks were forced to live during the city’s segregation and Jim Crow practices. 

Instead of a racial pen, this Central District became a place “where early opportunities opened up for Blacks. It was the only place in town for decades where Black politics, art, cuisine, culture, and music could thrive freely,” said historian and freelance writer Korry Shephard, who collaborated on this project as a tour guide.  

“Midtown started brutally, but many historical men and women found ways to overcome systemic poverty, blemish, low income ownership, and shady business practices to build a better world for themselves,” Shepard added.

Gardening for good: Sowing the seeds of change

Hagelberg credits social change artists like Theaster Gates for helping him identify various ways in which art could create social change. Localized community organizing movements gave him the knowledge that culture could act as a major precursor to change. 

Observing Gates’ immersive life practices to intentionally pursue art through everyday activities, Hagelberg learned that even “shoveling mulch” could be part of the process of creating art, which is the reason Hagelberg can be found in community growing spaces across the city as much as his own studio. 

For Hagelberg, community gardening was also a way to express himself artistically and demonstrate his love for Gary and its residents. 

Through gardening, Hagelberg has collaborated with numerous organizations, such as Brother’s Keeper, the Sojourner Truth House, and Faith Farms.

Libré Booker, founder of Living Green Garden in Gary, describes Hagelberg as a person who networks easily and shares his knowledge and connections with an open hand.  

“I don’t know how Corey did it, but he somehow knew of the different community gardens in Gary’s Midtown neighborhood and connected us,” Booker said. “This network led to the recently formed Midtown Garden Coalition, devoted to providing food to local residents and eliminating food deserts in Gary.” 

Continuing on for the love of community

When asked to reflect on the impact of his work, Hagelberg says it’s hard to quantify. Arbitrary metrics aren’t really the point of his regenerative community efforts.

“It’s hard to say,” he says. “I mean, this year we gave away 800 native fruit and nut trees to support local food resiliency and natural restoration efforts. In the last three years, we’ve produced around 1000 pounds of food.” 

Numbers and notable accolades aside, Hagelberg says his biggest motivator in continuing his work is to change the status quo by shining a light on the uncomfortable, systemic truths that have shaped his community — and many like it.

“As an artist and community organizer, I think I’m starting conversations. One of the major things we do in terms of all these issues is to talk about them to make sure we don’t shy away from discussing racism, climate change, or the effects of extreme poverty,” he said. “Because when those things remain in the shadows, nothing ever moves forward.”

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Such is the case in Chicago. During the pandemic, approximately 40 mutual aid groups sprang forward to address the growing numbers of citizens who were or were becoming food insecure. Market Box was one of them.  

“We wanted to make sure there was an alternative for folks who needed to access food and for them to do so without risking their lives or catching COVID 19,” said Hannah Nyhart, Market Box co-founder. In addition to her work with Market Box, she’s also  co-owner of Build Coffee, a café and bookstore located in Experimental Station.  The Woodlawn-based Station acts as a community hub and business incubator where people from various organizations democratically coalesce to “build independent cultural infrastructure” on Chicago’s south side. 

When Market Box began, Nyhart and other Market Box co–founders from Invisible Institute and South Side Weekly were all tenants at Experimental Station.  During the pandemic, they became inspired to help people who they saw had difficulty accessing food or were unable to receive food deliveries safely. 

“Back when COVID first hit, I had a friend whose mother was receiving Market Box,” said Zakiya McKinley, a real estate agent, Market Box recipient, and volunteer who rallied her mother, daughter, aunt, and sister to help deliver food to neighbors in need. “[This friend] reached out to me knowing that I am the mother of a child on the autism spectrum. She thought Market Box would be a help, and it was,” McKinley said. She shares the food she receives in monthly events she calls ‘mini-Christmases’ where she cooks a meal for about six neighbors—three of whom are elderly.

The pandemic pushed many communities into food insecurity, including elderly and immunocompromised individuals, families of those who’d recently lost employment, and those left without access to transportation or governmental support.   

But Market Box says they were aware of the pre-pandemic issue of food insecurity in Chicago’s food deserts. These deserts existed prior to the pandemic and continued to prevail in Black and Brown communities where, according to an Illinois Institute of Technology study published in July 2021, 26 of 57 communities with below-average access to food were African-American neighborhoods.

Compounding the effects of pre-existing inaccessibility, the pandemic made it harder for these communities to find aid, access or resources. 

“The other need that we saw is that all of the farmer’s markets were shutting down [due to safety mandates], so suddenly there were no clear channels for folks to go and access fresh food,” Nyhart explained. “So we had people who were shut off from their usual outlets for getting food. We had people who wanted to help but didn’t know how or who had produce and not the usual channels for selling it.” 

Market Box was born out of these three needs, designed as a way to crowdsource funds to purchase foods from farmers and then deliver it to people’s homes. Their distribution network covers families living south of Roosevelt Road and north of 95th Street and from Lake Michigan on the east to Western Avenue on the west. 

“Within these boundaries, we deliver to primarily Black and Brown folks who have identified themselves as needing assistance. We do not ask for verification of the need. Market Box goes where called within those boundaries. We are built for and by the south side of Chicago,” Nyhart said.

Reverend David Black of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago agrees. He feels that, while Market Box’s efforts at direct aid serve as an immense contribution to the community, the effect of their work is even deeper than it appears on the surface.

[Market Box’s work] reinforces a culture of expectation that we can, we must, and we will take care of one another, especially in the middle of a global disaster when it feels like the world is ending. — Reverend David Black                 

With the help of 288 volunteers, Market Box orchestrates bi-monthly food deliveries to over 509 households reaching over 1200 people. Even as the pandemic declined and pantries, restaurants, and other food services returned to normal operations, Market Box retained 80% of its list and added 102 households over the last 12 months.  

“Over the next few months, we will be increasing our household deliveries by 40 households,” Nyhart added.

While Market Box may be a recent addition to the South Side’s network of solidarity, the practice of mutual aid is not new to the area or its people. In fact, mutual aid has deep roots in Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities.

In the 1800s, free African American communities pooled their resources to care for the elderly, widows, and children or to buy land. Mutualista societies, located in Texas in 1922, collaborated to help Mexican immigrants learn English and garner resources, like food and housing. In 1969, the Black Panthers sponsored free breakfast programs in Oakland and San Francisco, California.            

Unlike pantries or charities, mutual aid organizations are defined by reciprocity. “People support each other by based on what others need and what they can provide, unlike charity and government assistance, which are one-sided giving,” writes Margaret McAden in the article Mutually Inclusive. 

Mutual aid organizations can also differ from pantries in that they may not have set or permanent locations from which they work from, distribute or source food. According to 19th Ward Mutual Aid organizer and founder Tim Noonan, most pantries get their food from food banks, donations, or drives whereas quite a few Chicago-based groups utilized USDA’s Farmers to Families Food Box Program, before it was discontinued in May of 2021. 

Market Box used a different model for operating. In 2021, Market Box raised $200,000 from individual donors and small organizations. That money was used to purchase food from small to medium farms with 90% of the food being sourced from the Midwest. The following summer, 80% of Market Boxes’ source farms were within a one state radius.        

Run democratically by volunteers who organize food, coordinate deliveries and track the recipients, Market Box distributions are parceled by trust. 

We trust that people know what they need, and that people are going to show up for one another. We don’t need any type of identification or verification. Working on that trust has meant that we are able to use the networks that already exist.

Nyhart believes this network of trust strengthens Market Box’s work and their ties to the community. “Some recipients may ask for an extra bag for a neighbor who needs food, too. That makes it easier for us to reach folks who need the help,” she said.

Nyhart credits Market Boxes’ hardiness to the continued commitment of their volunteers and the input and feedback of their recipients. “It’s been such a huge learning curve for all of us, but one thing that I’ve been really proud of is that we have sustained relationships with people for two years. We are more regular than the post office. We’ve been able to show up from month to month, and part of that is that we have this really committed volunteer base,” she said. “The heart of Market Box is the people.” 

Like other mutual aid groups, Market Box has had to make some adjustments due to learning curves, too. 

Nyhart says that when they first started packaging and delivering boxes, the team underestimated the amount of manpower needed for such an operation to run smoothly. One of their first efforts took place back in January 2021. At the time, they were still worried about the potential spread of COVID indoors, so they packed boxes outside. The cold weather was particularly unforgiving and before they had time to finish their work, drivers began arriving expecting to load and deliver food to waiting families. 

“But it ended up being really beautiful,” Nyhart said. “Because what happened was that all these people who had signed up to come deliver bags spent the first half hour packing with us. It was very messy, but it also meant that everybody got to meet each other. Everyone [was] in the trenches together. Looking back, I feel really good about how things turned out even though I would have done it differently. But we learned.” 

The group has had other watershed moments that led to growth or new arrangements. In the coming years, they plan to identify, integrate, and purchase more food from Black and Brown farmers. They currently source from small midwestern farms owned primarily by white families. They have transformed from a coalition into an independent 501(c)(3) organization, which they hope will bolster their fundraising. Recently, the group also moved operations from Experimental Station to First Presbyterian Church. 

“We are thinking about how to really make this space our home over the next few years and how to really engage the direct community and spot some grant funding that will allow us to increase our distribution by 10%,” Nyhart said. “The biggest thing is that we’re thinking about how to continue shaping what was started as an emergency response into something that can sustain year after year.”

Check out these related articles and resources:

• 5 innovative solutions to food deserts
• For farmers, by farmers: an interview with GrownBy’s Lindsey Lusher Shute
• How this CSA started by a chemistry teacher may be the future of local agriculture
• Sustainable Economies Law Center’s Mutual Aid Toolkit

The post Market Box delivers food—and solidarity—to the people appeared first on Shareable.

But free boxing is not a thing — it is a movement of like-minded people committed to giving away items, from the expensive to the seemingly mundane, for reuse. Free Box participants believe it is better to put things no longer used in one household into the hands of others who need them, rather than allow them to go into landfills. 

Free boxing is usually not a random act. Instead, supporters of this movement coalesce into hyperlocal, interactive communities so their donation goes to a neighbor they know, or connect with for the first time in their gifting circle. Beverly Free Box (BFB) is one such circle. 

Every neighborhood needs a Free Box. It reduces landfill waste, helps spread wealth around, and minimizes hoarding and clutter. It also serves as a platform for connection among neighbors. — Sussan Navabi, a long-time Beverly Free Box participant

“Free boxing is not the kind of donating where you give to a group and then faceless people may later buy or receive your donation,” said Frau Rau, founder and administrator for BFB. 

Rau started BFB in April 2018, not long after moving to Beverly, a Chicago south side neighborhood known for its suburban, or village, appeal and where over 83 percent of its 19,791 residents are homeowners. 

Since graduating from college, Rau had noticed the abundance of still-useful things thrown out as garbage. Some of those things may not have met a certain standard, or were no longer useful to the owner. Other articles may have sat in homes as clutter for numerous reasons. Frau said, “These are the things that sit in people’s homes or end up in landfills when they could be reused repeatedly.”

Years earlier, while living in Irving Park, a Chicago north side neighborhood, Rau joined a group of moms who operated a local Free Box online to pass on children’s clothing and toys between themselves. Rau wanted to continue this movement in her new neighborhood when she moved to Beverly. “I began researching to see if there was free boxing in the area. When I didn’t discover any, I began mocking up a Facebook page for a community Free Box,” Rau said. 

Different Free Box groups operate in different ways. Some, like the Colorado based Telluride Free Box, have actual locations where neighbors, strangers and tourists can visit a physical space to peruse the shelves for things they need. A growing number of similar groups operate online either independently or with the assistance of not-for-profit organizations, such as the Buy Nothing Project or Freecycle Network. Both organizations offer online opportunities for individuals interested in “giving and getting stuff free” to find people in their neighborhoods with whom to interact. They both also offer online tools for managing reciprocal altruistic experiences, reporting suspicious posts, or blocking unwanted responders, and have paid staff to oversee operations that cater to thousands of users in local groups across the country. 

Beverly Free Box is not connected with a larger network. Instead, Rau and friend and co-administrator, Maureen Schleyer, manage the Facebook page where transactions transpire. In addition to promoting the hyper-reuse of various things, BFB also builds community. “We’ve seen friendships develop. We have people who are really invested in the group, and it’s a part of their daily lives,” Rau said. “I’ve talked to people who said they didn’t feel connected or know the neighborhood as well until they started free boxing.” 

BFB has over 3800 members and fields approximately 3500 transactions a month. Though the group has a private Facebook page, membership is open to anyone who meets their qualifications. Members must live in Beverly; agree to not claim anything until giving something away; and they cannot be members in multiple free box groups. Rau said these rules help the group remain hyperlocal.

Beverly Free Box is more about the people than the items. We want you to feel connected to the person you are giving to. — BFB co-administrator, Maureen Schleyer 

Using the site is simple, which was intentional, said Schleyer, who was aware of groups where people had to prove they needed an item before claiming it. “With Beverly Free Box, the first to claim, gets the item. Sometimes things are raffled, but you don’t have to prove your need, you simply claim it,” Schleyer said. 

Acquisition of items is decided between the donor and the recipient, and a lot of items are picked up on porches, but the recipient may have to arrange for delivery of larger items, like pianos, organs and armoires. BFB member Clare Duggan acquired a Grange of France armoire, which can be valued at $8000 to $30,000. She paid $500 to have it delivered to her home and says it was well worth the cost due to its sentimental value to her family.

Some of the other higher-priced items passed on have been a four-day vacation to a resort in the Bahamas, laptops and pianos. Among the least expensive were plant clippings, overly ripe bananas, perfume samples and broken crayons.

In addition to posting available items, members can request ISO (in search of) items. BFB member Anne-Marie Williams needed pill bottles to create emergency kits of $3 in quarters and a dryer sheet for people who are homeless. “I asked for pill bottles and got 500 overnight. There was an insane amount of people giving,” Williams said. 

Curb alerts and an in-person swap meets are two other ways BFB promotes reuse. Members may see usable items sitting on a curb prior to garbage pick-up, and will post an alert for anyone interested and able to pick the items up. Members can also post requests for items to help women who have been displaced due to domestic violence, families victimized by fires, or youth seen walking to school without winter coats and boots.

“There is always a cascade of giving during those times,” said Frau, who is amazed but not surprised by immediate altruistic responses from neighbors, particularly during times of hardship like the pandemic. 

Prior to the pandemic, a Los Angeles-based Buy Nothing group had just 40 members. A year later it skyrocketed to over 1800 members. BFB membership growth has been consistent over its four-year existence, even during the pandemic. But Schleyer said, the pandemic intensified BFB neighbor connections. “We got closer as a community,” she said.

Free Box also built a sense of community and camaraderie when we all needed to connect with others in some way to make it through the long periods of isolation. — BFB member Monica Wilczak.

“While Beverly may be perceived as having primarily higher-income residents, we really represent a greater spectrum of income levels,” Wilczak continued. “Also, unexpected losses in employment, housing, or health issues caused devastating insecurities during the pandemic. I’ve seen free boxers step up when a family becomes homeless due to a fire or marital crisis.”

Rau and Schleyer say people have been isolated and anxious, but they don’t hesitate to help others. During the pandemic, BFB created an environment of giving, helping and advising. Some posted messages of gratitude or dropped off kind notes, flowers, and sometimes wine. Others joined the fight to thwart COVID-19 by donating bundles of elastic to a group that made masks for people who needed them, long before government-led distributions. Another BFB member asked people to donate wooden tabletops or planks to aid his efforts to build desks for the sudden inflation of remote learners in the neighborhood. “I loved being a part of that,” Schleyer said. 

As unified as BFB is, there have been challenges in administering the group and coming up with answers for every issue. Both women monitor posts to ensure malicious bots do not become members, delete posts that break rules, and handle conflicts and misunderstandings. 

Schleyer and Rau address every issue as best they can. They don’t always have the answers, but as neighbors moderating a tight-knit community, they are always open to conversation.

Check out these related articles:

• How to start and participate in a Buy Nothing group
• 5 free apps to swap, share and sell your extra stuff
• A new landscape for skill-sharing emerges from pandemic aftermath

The post Beverly Free Box helps neighbors build community and fight waste appeared first on Shareable.

After years of frustration, West Side residents in the North Lawndale, East and West Garfield Park, and Near West Side neighborhoods, decided they’d had enough. Instead of waiting around for a solution, they would create one—from the ground up. The result was Chicago’s Encompassing Center. 

Sowing the Seeds of Change 

Centrally located to public transportation, the Center opened in the fall of 2019, but collective efforts had begun years earlier. In 2016, the Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers (CSOMHC) approached Father Larry Dowling and a few of his parishioners with a proposal to open a community-focused, community-created mental health center on Chicago’s West Side.   The Coalition spawned from a citizen’s initiative to contest Mayor Emmanuel’s earlier directive. In a show of organizing triumph, they’d led a successful grassroots campaign to pass legislation allowing any Chicago community to open its own Expanded Mental Health Services Program (EMHSP). 

The Encompassing Center would be their second victory. Their first success story came while helping Albany Park, a north side community, open their own community-based mental health service, The Kedzie Center. 

Under the direction of the Coalition and the Institute for Community Empowerment (ICE), an organizing and leadership training group, West Siders from four parishes and other organizations knocked on doors, petitioning residents for support of a community-controlled mental health center. 

“We needed 2800 signatures to get a referendum on the ballot to reply to two prompts ‘yes, we need a mental health center’, and ‘we are willing to increase our property taxes by four percent to pay for it’,” Father Dowling said. “We managed to get 10,260 people to sign our petitions.” Once on the ballot, the referendum received a 86.5% vote in favor of the measure. 

A Localized Approach to Mental Health Services 

The foundation had been laid, but navigating community members’ well-founded suspicions of traditional medical treatment would take some work. The effort required the Center’s developers to utilize a more holistic, empathetic view of mental health—one that honored folks’ lived experiences while providing them with the necessary resources to get better.  

“We realized mental health is not just about diagnosis, talk therapy, or medication,”  said Jennifer F. Smith, Program Director at the Encompassing Center. 

“It’s also about safe housing, adequate food, lack of opportunities, and overcoming fear or shame for having to rely on social services, like utilizing a food pantry. To fully support our clients, we can’t ignore the situations that make them anxious or unstable, so we connect them to the various other services they need.”

We realized mental health is not just about diagnosis, talk therapy, or medication…To fully support our clients, we can’t ignore the situations that make them anxious or unstable, so we connect them to the various other services they need.— Jennifer F. Smith, Program Director at the Encompassing Center

In addition to the three major mental health services, the Center also partners with Rush Day Hospital to offer psychiatric services for which client costs are covered by the Center. Center therapists and counselors work with community parishes, churches, organizations, and even individual residents to determine where help is most needed. 

“We can help a couple that just wants to learn better communication skills, or  we can connect someone with severe schizophrenia to a residential treatment program. Anyone in the community can reach out and request what’s needed for their particular area, anger management, a trauma book club, or talks about depression, grief, and loss. Whatever the need, we will put together the tools, programming, and staff to respond to their requests,” Smith said. 

A Community-Funded Endeavour 

The Center, which occupies a 6000 square foot space, operates on an annual budget of approximately one million dollars. The budget is funded by a property tax assessment of four percent of every $1000 collected from the four communities the Center serves. Eighty-five percent of the budget is allocated for direct services to residents. 

The Encompassing Center’s staff includes a substance abuse counselor, five therapists, a clinical supervisor, a program director, a receptionist, and a communications professional. In the two years since their doors opened, they’ve seen over 400 patients, and partnered with numerous groups on programmatic opportunities and community outreach. 

Like many other establishments, the Center’s reach and impact was thwarted by the Covid-19 pandemic.  They were forced to switch to tele-mental health in lieu of face-to-face therapy. Currently,the tele-mental health option remains, though in-person, and programmatic services are also available. Looking ahead, Smith expects the number of clients they see to multiply exponentially. 

For the People, By the People

The Center’s nine-member governing board ensures a steady, dependable flow of mental health services by providing necessary operational and financial oversight. Janice Oda-Gray, president of the Center’s  governing board, recalled a reporter who cautioned her about believing the Center was failproof, just because it’s funded by property taxes.  Impressed by the operation, the reporter said he’d seen “good things like the Center come and go” due to misappropriation of funds, Oda-Gray recalled. 

“That stuck in my head,” she said. “So every year, I have this long end of the year speech to the Board about how critical that it is to be fiscally-responsible. West Siders are under a lens, and they’re looking at us much stricter than any other organization because they expect us to fail. But we won’t. We will make sure that we’re above board and using funds as they are meant to be expended.”

That the operation remains locally funded is of chief importance to West Siders, many of whom are wary of outside organizations that traditionally swoop in with patronizing attempts to “save” West Siders.

On a separate occasion, Oda Gary was approached by a resident who had read a news article that incorrectly reported the Center was funded by the Archdiocese of Chicago. 

“I told him that was totally untrue,” Oda-Gray said. “Yes, we worked with the Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers , which is partially funded by the Archdiocese. And, yes, we contract Chicago Catholic Charities to staff our therapists and other positions.But the Center is funded by the community and paid for by our property taxes.” Hopefully, it always will be. 

Hopes for the Future

Smith calls The Center’s potential “limitless”, adding that she’d like to see staff and services increased. 

Last October, the Center celebrated its second operational year, and neighborhoods, like Little Village, Bronzeville, Englewood, Roseland, and Austin, are using the Encompassing Center as a template to open their own community-controlled mental health centers, according to Father Dowling.

Oda-Gray hopes to see an extension of the Center’s work in the form of satellite and mobile mental health centers, to address the needs of people who are transportation-challenged or who fear leaving their immediate neighborhoods. 

Overall, the team  wants to obliterate the stigmas and other barriers that prevent local residents from seeking the care they need. As Smith iterates: “We treat the brain like it is a separate organ whereas if we have high blood pressure or heart issues we will turn to a cardiologist in a heartbeat. We will go to our OB-Gyn or the eye doctor, but the brain is the one organ people shy away from when it’s just as important to take care of our minds as we would any other part of our body.”

Father Dowling agrees. “Twenty or thirty years ago, I was struggling with anxiety and depression and reached out and got help. It really changed my life and turned me in a whole new direction,” he said. “It’s why I’m in the ministry today because [getting that help] helped me refocus.” 

Check out these related articles:

• The do-it-ourselves revolution
• The power of nature in restoring personal and community wellbeing
• Community connection key to fighting loneliness in a pandemic

The post Mental health services for the people, by the people appeared first on Shareable.

Decades of redlining, structural and environmental racism, widespread resource extractions, and the Silicon Valley technology-fueled economic boom have reduced it to “eleven blocks of liquor stores, trash, and empty, defunct buildings,” according to Noni Session.

Session, a third-generation Oaklander, is the director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, an organization incorporated in 2017 that uses co-op organizing to directly confront the skyrocketing home and rental prices, neighborhood displacements, and entrenched income inequality, that disproportionately affect Black and brown communities around the East Bay. 

Problems — and solutions

The East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative is a multi-stakeholder cooperative with four types of members: staff collective owners; resident-owners who live in properties purchased by the cooperative; community owners who oversee projects and ensure accountability, guidance, and transparency; and investor-owners who buy one or more $1,000 shares with a projected 1.5 percent return after five years.

Resident-owners also make lease payments, and community members pay dues of $10 annually, monthly, or weekly. The co-op’s more than 400 investor-owners seed a significant portion of the group’s projects; mission-based lenders, foundations, and philanthropists also donate to the group. 

Session refers to money received from the group’s investors as “justice dollars” — and acknowledges that the 1.5 percent return on investment is no match for the 7 percent annual return of traditional investments. 

But a big return is not the point. 

“Our investors support transformation and community,” Session said. “They support helping people who have traditionally been barred from acquiring wealth and assets through land and property ownership. They support helping Black and Brown people decide on their own futures.”

Getting the 7th Street corridor back in orbit

The cooperative was incorporated in 2017 after advocacy and action by local social-justice groups. Four years later, the cooperative has closed on the Esther’s Orbit Room Cultural Revival Project, its third land and property acquisition, and a major growth opportunity. 

Centered on a shuttered blues and jazz club, located at 1724-7th Street near the West Oakland Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station, the cooperative’s goal is to transform the space into a vibrant cultural center, business district, and living space.

Esther’s began as a popular breakfast spot in 1950 before expanding in 1963 to become a music venue that once featured entertainers such as Tina Turner, B.B. King, Lou Rawls, Al Green, Z.Z. Hill, and Etta James. 

The club persisted through the displacement of neighborhoods and businesses due to multiple construction projects for highways, a post office, and the BART station, Esther’s remained a community stalwart until closing in 2011. In its heyday, Esther’s was just one of the diamonds dotting West Oakland’s historic 7th Street Corridor. 

Today, the real-estate cooperative’s community, investor and staff owners hope that their project will help restore the district’s vitality, necessity, and cultural glory.

Esther’s is a multi-use, two-level  building with 5000 square feet on each floor. As a revitalization project, it offers  many possibilities for co-operative ventures to support a wide array of people there. 

The upper level, Session said, will house approximately eight artists-resident owners. Between three to five commercial spaces may be created on the ground level. 

“For us that doesn’t mean three to five cooperative owners. It takes multiple people to run a business. Our mission demands that the running of that business is equitable, so there could be anywhere from one to ten people involved in each commercial space — co-operators, co-managers,” she said.

Session also envisions a home for Oakland’s historically Black Farmers Market and space for up to ten healing-arts practitioners, a gallery, workspace for artists, yoga class, art openings, and film screenings. 

Our mission demands that the running of that business is equitable, so there could be anywhere from one to ten people involved in each commercial space — co-operators, co-managers. — EB PREC Executive Director, Noni Session 

“There’s a café potentially in the middle that may have wait staff with collaborative powers,” she added. “There’s a kitchen that could be for one or for multiple operators to use at different times of the day. The bar and music venue can be run collaboratively since it’s meant for performers.”

Session said the project will prioritize help build community and offer sorely needed local services to the 50,000 people who live around the 7th Street Census tract. 

The location also sees an additional 350,00 commuters pass through it every day, en route to and from San Jose, Silicon Valley, the North Bay, and San Francisco, who can stop to shop, conduct business, or interact, once the project is operational.

The real-estate cooperative purchased Esther’s Orbit Room and the two adjacent properties for $1.5 million dollars, using $1000 shares purchased by the cooperative’s investment owners, grants, and other philanthropic donations. 

Another $400,000 will be raised to seed and launch small businesses at the project site.

Past successes — and plans for the future

“Our goal is to take on as many ownership situations as possible,” Session said. “We shoot for three acquisitions a year, so we can support as many groups in attaining space and permanence in Oakland and the East Bay as possible given the conditions of the real estate market.”

This includes, she said, reviving multiple corridors, using the Esther’s Orbit Room project along the 7th Street Corridor as a model. 

“We want to use this capital to revive districts and revive cultural framework and revive connections and revive neighbors and the neighborhood,” Session said.

The East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative so far has two other properties — a four-unit apartment building that its residents purchased and converted under a collective ownership arrangement in 201; and a Berkeley based, four-bedroom single family home with a detached dance studio, which was donated to the group. 

Together, the two properties house eleven resident-owners who make shared lease payments based on the property’s mortgage, taxes, upkeep, and other incidentals. 

The good news, according to Session, is that unlike people who rent, resident owners get to pay down their cost of the project, so their lease payments lower over time. 

Resident-owners also have decision-making powers over the property, which is co-managed by Session’s organization. Together, they decide on acquisitions, repairs, improvements, maintenance, and emergencies. 

We want to use this [collective] capital to revive districts and revive cultural framework and revive connections and revive neighbors and the neighborhood.

Resident-owners can never be evicted, and the real-estate cooperative consistently looks for ways to boost their share in economic power and equity, according to Session. 

Still, as with anything in life, the cooperative is not immune to certain challenges. 

“There is a cost for being a market actor,” Session said. “To access the capital that allows us to remain competitive means finding capital that is 60 percent cheaper than what the commercial developers sources are. These justice dollars are not as plentiful as venture capital dollars.” 

Yet the successes of her organization are real, and are helping rebuild small, local economies in Oakland, where Black and brown communities are included in all processes from the ground up.

Check out these related articles & resources:

• How to start a housing co-op
• How a cooperative approach to property management can build collective power
• Homeownership is dead. Long live the permanent real estate cooperative.
• New York coop creates permanently affordable, commercial real estate

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