Coops against Collapse - Metacrisis Salon #16

​As we navigate an era defined by polycrisis and the looming threat of systemic collapse, a vital question emerges: How do we prepare? How might we learn from history and take advantage of this moment to build structures that make our communities genuinely resilient? The blueprints for surviving failing systems already exist.

​Black Americans have been building cooperatives since before the Civil War. Mutual aid societies paid for burials and pooled money to buy relatives out of slavery. Farmers shared land, seed, and credit. Families ran grocery stores, credit unions, and housing that they owned together. Members were boycotted, sabotaged, and sometimes killed for it. They built anyway.

​Jessica Gordon Nembhard spent fifteen years in the archives to document that record. Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice is the first nationwide study of Black cooperatives since W. E. B. Du Bois published his own in 1907. It follows Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Nannie Helen Burroughs, the Young Negroes' Co-operative League that Ella Baker ran in the 1930s, Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farm in Mississippi, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, and the Black Panther Party's survival programs. Many civil rights leaders learned to organize inside a co-op before they ever led a march.

​Salon #12 asked how the powerless win. Salon #14 asked how a few people hold power over everyone else. As we face the metacrisis, Salon #16 asks what people with the least power in American history did when the banks, the market, and the state were actively against them—and what resilient structures we can build from their record right now.

​Jessica Gordon Nembhard is a political economist and Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Africana Studies department at John Jay College, CUNY. She co-founded the Democracy Collaborative and was inducted into the U.S. Cooperative Hall of Fame in 2016. A tenth-anniversary edition of Collective Courage came out in 2024.

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​Evening Flow
3:00 PM, Volunteer Cooking
5:00 PM, Arrival & mingling
6:00 PM, Welcome & framing
6:20 PM, Part 1: Historical examples of community thriving amidst adverse conditions
6:40 PM, Discussion + Shareback
7:00 PM, Part 2: In anticipation of collapse, what it means to build collective power.
7:20 PM, Q&A
7:45 PM Community Announcements + Close
8:00 PM, Book Signing + Break
8:30 PM, Working Groups and Community Deepening.
10:00 PM, End

​Community-made vegan & gluten-free dinner, snacks, and drinks provided.

​We have a handful of FREE tickets for Volunteers who want to help with setup (3 PM) and/or cleanup (10 PM). DM me if you're interested.

​Copies of Collective Courage will be available to buy and sign.