For the first six months, the study circles met twice a month, drawing on a budget of $650 per group to pay for study materials, childcare, field trips and supplies. Most groups began by studying “Collective Courage;” they also tapped articles, videos, internet searches and guest speakers as they dug into how and why to start a co-op. A group looking to start a tool-sharing co-op visited Home Depot together; the PWA Handymen group traveled to New York City to confer with co-op worker-owners there.

“They wrestled with foundational conversations,” Medley says, “asking, ‘Is this even a good idea for a co-op?’ They worked on defining their cooperative structure – would it be a worker co-op? A consumer co-op? And on building skills in teamwork, decision-making and consensus-building.”

Annette Griffin, a Philadelphia native and a bookkeeper for more than 30 years, participated in 20/20 with her daughter, sister and nephew to explore forming a bookkeeping cooperative.

For her, the “Collective Courage” findings struck a chord.

“It was kind of like the principles I grew up on,” she says. “I didn’t realize how much of that was already in me.” She sees now that during her 1960s childhood, her mother was working cooperatively with other mothers. “I thought they were just getting together to have a good time,” she recalls, “but they actually had a mutual fund where they were pooling their money to spend on trips or summer activities for their kids, or helping someone pay a bill.”

The study period helped the Bonfire Media team build relationships, deepen trust and understand the potential of co-ops, says Maddie Taterka, one of Bonfire’s seven worker-owners. They also learned plenty in the business training. “The business planning process showed us just how much we still needed to figure out in terms of operations,” she says. “Business financing, revenue models, budgets, cash flow. I have a bachelor’s in women’s studies, so this is not where I’ve been. I think a lot of business details surprised us all.”

Maddie Taterka (left) and Emily Zeitlyn (behind) work on a film in the editing lab at the office of Bonfire Media Collective.

Medley speaks candidly about challenges along the way. When PWA and MexCon, an immigrant construction worker group, needed more Spanish-language materials and assistance, PACA joined the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to link them to resources. When interpersonal tensions arose across groups in the large, diverse cohort PACA brought in AORTA, itself a worker-owned co-op, to offer anti-oppression training. When the midpoint came and some groups were still not completely clear on what a co-op was, the curriculum was adjusted.

At the program’s midpoint, PACA hosted a daylong teach-in featuring Gordon Nembhard as a speaker. As anticipated, Medley says, not all groups were ready to proceed with their vision. About half continued to the business development portion, which included daylong sessions delivered by Elysian Fields (now Wanderwell) and CultureWorks.

A Mixed Bag of Successes, with Lasting Influence

“Of the 20 groups, a staggering variety came out of this,” Medley says. Some groups realized a co-op was not the best plan for them. Seven of the 20 groups are “in business” now, according to PACA, with a few — such as Bonfire Media Collective and PWA Handymen Cooperative — already formalized as co-ops. Others are operating less formally as democratically managed businesses or are works-in-progress.

Bonfire Media has landed at least five video and design projects as a co-op, and thanks to PACA’s connections with a network of co-op friendly lenders, they are close to securing needed loan funding, Taterka says.

PWA has ramped up marketing efforts and recently won a demolition contract with a nonprofit organization that is building a community center in the city’s Kensington neighborhood.

Griffin’s group has yet to form a co-op, but she is proud to say that as of February, she is supporting herself as an independent bookkeeper. Her business name, A & Associates, reflects a continuing hope to bring her family on board, perhaps with other bookkeepers or CPAs, and form a co-op.

Griffin’s experience illustrates the ripple effect of programs such as 20/20. She’s grown as an activist and a leader, attending city council hearings and becoming a PACA board member. She credits 20/20 and the anti-oppression training for enhancing her family relationships and deepening her understanding of unfamiliar groups.

“They talked about how to embrace diversity, how to talk to one another, to get your point across without being so harsh, and to agree to disagree. It helped, even within our family,” she says. “And we learned about other people. For me, it opened up my mind to the LGBTQ community. If I see you as a woman, but you want to be called ‘him’ then I call you ‘him.’ So for me, it helped in that way.”

Tortillas for the Greater Good

This fall, restaurateur Ben Miller, along with immigrant restaurant workers and Lancaster County corn farmers, will launch the worker/producer co-op Masa Cooperativa to produce and sell masa and tortillas. The new co-op will employ immigrant workers, operate a market for specialty corn growers and supply authentic, locally produced ingredients to Mexican restaurants.

The PWA Handymen Cooperative is an LLC founded by immigrant day laborers that offers residential and commercial renovation services. (Photo courtesy of PWA Handymen)

On a sweltering August morning, Miller was in the throes of final preparations on a new site for South Philly Barbacoa, the Mexican eatery he owns with his wife, chef Cristina Martinez, who has gained fame both as an acclaimed chef and an outspoken advocate for undocumented immigrants. Barbacoa was sharing space with their other restaurant, El Compadre, nestled nearby among the dense cluster of Mexican and Asian businesses in the Italian Market area.

Conversing amid the clamor of staple guns securing brightly-colored oilcloth covers onto tables, Miller explained that the co-op model ties in with his desire to legitimize the work of undocumented immigrants.

He and his employees initially joined the 20/20 program to explore turning the thriving restaurant into a worker co-op. While undocumented residents are denied legal employment, there’s no reason they can’t own businesses, he noted. But Martinez, whose secret family recipes have made the restaurant what it is, wasn’t ready. “In the end, I was not able to convince my wife to ‘give over the keys to her house,’ figuratively,” Miller said. “And it is hers. So at the end of the 20/20 program we decided to keep the restaurant going the way it is now.”

Still, the 20/20 education spurred a new idea of creating a multi-stakeholder masa co-op with both worker-owners (Miller and several immigrant workers) and producer-owners (the farmers).

Barbacoa makes masa in-house already, grinding specialty Mexican corn grown by two Lancaster County farmers into soft dough for the restaurant’s tortillas. The co-op will expand that operation substantially. The farmers are putting up the initial investment for the larger machinery needed to produce more and sell in bulk to other restaurants, Miller said.

Miller is passionate about making immigrants’ labor legal, sharing the wealth, buying good corn (“Imported corn is irradiated at the border – it has the life taken out of it”) and supporting local farmers. He lobbies other restaurants to use good masa, which he said will raise the quality of Mexican food and increase community well-being, cultural pride and business success. If Masa Cooperativa succeeds, he might just bring Martinez around to converting the restaurant to a co-op.