A business without bosses

across the country worker-owned businesses are driven to meet the needs of their communities one-third of households across the country are struggling to afford the amount and quality of food they would like the pandemic has emphasized the issue of food insecurity and racial disparity in the us the communities hardest hit by covid19 have historically been denied access to healthy food in in black and brown communities south and west side communities in chicago already a number of these communities face food insecure like 86 88 percent of households already have food insecurity an issue the pandemic amplified food insecurity has gone up 50 above what it already was the worker run cooperative shy fresh kitchen launched as the pandemic hit to provide healthy meals to the community and to support food sovereignty which aims to guarantee access to culturally appropriate healthy and sustainable food that good stuff today we got collard greens with smoked turkey meat as well as fried chicken macaroni and cheese broccoli and um our our chef's specialty pizza it's a vegetarian pizza that everybody loves and before i was in a transitional home and when cover 19 hit it was a struggle to get any type of meal you know because we wasn't allowed to go outside and the stuff that they was bringing was horrible so you know when this opportunity it just all clicked in together for my life you know journey to to be able to do this at a time like that shy fresh kitchen is owned and run by formerly incarcerated women of color i've been knowing all of the co-workers from um our incarceration i already knew all of them to me what makes the co-op special is we designed our own job you know we work as well as own this company and we designed it to what would work for us what would make it not feel like a job when we come into this environment it's they're like a powerful and fun and deeply loving crew that have turned our little project or idea into a business that is rooted in all of our deepest values our values of of liberation of of humanity and centering the needs of folks in our community co-ops can be limited by their consensus-based decision-making a tool of democratic governance that is alien to many workers in the u.s and can be difficult to learn we are not trained to make decisions in large groups efficiently and respectfully we are often trained either to give orders or to receive them and not to collectively move things forward like most co-ops shy fresh receives little or no support from government agencies they have been able to access capital by receiving several grants overcoming a challenge all cooperatives face but they still struggle to secure large contracts that would allow them to scale up we are trying to be competitive bitter on different contracts that are coming out we are minority and women owned certified at the county level which uh works at both the state and the city level to uh they absolutely we could we could have more more support we could have support with resources um navigating a lot of you know like it would be great to have someone to help me navigate the rfp process and to have folks reaching out to us specifically as an as a as a business that is creating community wealth that is having a positive impact on our own communities if they if the city had resources and outreach specific specifically available to us that would be that would be really powerful the challenges facing disinvested communities are immense and won't be solved by co-ops alone but renee hatcher argues they can be part of the solution i think the shy fresh is a really beautiful example of some of what we should be thinking about around the move for abolition in creating a new and different type of economy that is not exploitative but also like uh really trying to deal with all of the harm that the carceral state has inflicted specifically on black communities