How ORF Recipients Are Building Legacies

 

Black Futures Month is “a visionary, forward-looking spin on celebrations of Blackness in February; a time to consider and celebrate our radical Black history and to dream and imagine a world in which all Black people are free.” — The Movement for Black Lives

Extracting wealth from Black people has been the foundation of the US economy, with lynching and racial terror long serving as tools to undermine the economic self-determination of Black folks. In light of this history, what does repair look like? The answer lies in cooperatives.

As we navigate the tumultuous start of 2025, we bolster ourselves in takeaways from last year’s National Conference on Black Cooperative Agenda. Cohosted by Nexus and the Network for Developing Conscious Communities, the summer gathering focused on:

• Building Collective Power – Creating a space for Black-led cooperatives to connect, strategize, and align efforts for economic self-determination.
• Sharing Knowledge & Resources – Highlighting successful cooperative models, discussing challenges, and providing tools to support Black cooperative development.
• Policy & Advocacy – Identifying policies that support Black cooperative businesses and pushing for systemic changes that advance economic justice.
• Celebrating Black Cooperative Leadership – Uplifting the historical and present contributions of Black cooperators in building sustainable economies.
• Strengthening Networks – Fostering relationships among cooperatives, funders, and movement organizations to sustain long-term collaboration.

Among Nexus’ attendees were conference organizers and facilitators Nonkululeko (Nkuli) Shongwe, Director of Community Wealth Building; Leanna Browne, North Star Program Manager; and Christina Nicholson, Cooperative Developer for the Shared Ownership Center @ Nexus.

“We had a great location in Union Depot,” Christina recalls. “It was walkable from hotels, the speakers were great, Mayor Carter and his team were warm and available, and there were a lot of really good workshops.”

Leanna adds, “It was really great to be surrounded by beautiful Black folks doing amazing Black cooperative work.”

“What inspired me most was seeing firsthand how cooperatives aren’t just businesses, but spaces of cultural and political resistance,” Nkuli says. “It’s about more than just economic exchange—it’s about shifting our relationships with each other and with the land, and imagining a world where we can live with dignity, freedom, and equality. By embracing the cooperative model, we tap into our collective power, building a future rooted in cooperation, justice, and liberation.”

Grounding in History

The role of cooperatives in racial and economic justice, Nkuli explains, must be understood in the context of colonialism—both its historical foundations and its continued presence through exploitation in the diaspora today. The extraction of Black labor and resources did not end with slavery; it evolved through wage theft, debt traps, land dispossession, and the systematic devaluation of Black workers and entrepreneurs. Global racial capitalism continues to siphon wealth from the Global South while using the labor of Black and Brown communities in the diaspora to sustain economies built on our oppression.

Cooperatives disrupt this ongoing colonial extraction by reclaiming ownership over our labor, land, and financial systems. They create spaces where Black people can practice self-governance, build leadership, and develop economic strategies that prioritize collective well-being over individual gain. They allow us to experiment with new ways of organizing resources that are rooted in our traditions of mutual aid and solidarity. For example:

• Worker-owned cooperatives ensure that people doing the labor also share in the profits, eliminating the racial wage gap and creating dignified, sustainable employment.
• Housing cooperatives fight displacement and gentrification by allowing Black people to own and control land collectively, keeping homes affordable and rooted in the community.
• Investment and financial cooperatives give us access to capital on our own terms, reducing dependence on predatory banks and lending institutions that have historically denied us wealth-building opportunities.

Cooperatives are also a form of reparative justice. They allow us to rebuild what was taken—whether through stolen labor, redlining, land dispossession, or other systemic barriers—and create structures where wealth stays within our communities instead of being extracted. By growing and strengthening cooperative ecosystems, we are not just resisting oppression but actively building the future we deserve.

At the conference, Leanna moderated the panel Fostering Creativity: Artists Cooperatives and Collective Movements. “I set the space by providing some historical context of where we have seen artist cooperatives and collective movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance, Black Arts Movement, Combahee River Collective and Freedom Quilting Bee,” Leanna says. “I began the session by reading the poem “Paul Robeson” by Gwendolyn Brooks, which ends with:

we are each other’s harvest
we are each other’s business
we are each other’s magnitude and bond.

Envisioning Our Future

“I see a future where Black-led cooperatives are thriving, interconnected, and deeply rooted in our cultural traditions of collective care and shared prosperity,” Nkuli says. “I want to see more cooperatives that go beyond survival and actually create lasting wealth. Land trusts that secure housing, worker-owned businesses that provide dignified jobs, and investment cooperatives that allow us to collectively control capital. I envision a strong cooperative ecosystem where Black co-ops are resourced, supported, and protected by policies that recognize our historical exclusion from traditional economic opportunities. This means shifting the narrative from co-ops being a niche or temporary solution to them being a powerful and scalable model for self-determination.”

Christina adds, “My vision is a breadth and depth of interdependent economic communities that provide credit unions, housing, grocers, gardens, technology, jobs, commerce, and childcare in wholistic healthy settings that are gentle, loving, and free.”

Nkuli sees cooperatives helping us reclaim our power, define our own futures, and build economies that reflect our values, free from the constraints of oppressive systems. “Ultimately, my vision is about sovereignty. I want Black communities to own our futures, build intergenerational wealth, and create economic models that reflect our values of mutual aid, solidarity, and abundance on a global scale.”

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Nexus is proud to provide programming and funding designed by and for the Black community year-round. Through programs like our North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship, we’ve been able to bring worker-owners of Black-led cooperatives together to live into a future of Black wealth.