Acknowledgments

In the preface we described our journey from “I” to “we” in writing this book. We feel that this movement from our individual selves to an academic collectivity is only fitting in a book that describes the power and possibilities of solidarity. Maliha, Marianna, Craig, and Stephen acknowledge our debt to one another as we have each shared our lives and energies, to come together, to think together, to accept criticism, to “murder our darling” phrases, and to change our minds. This book has been our way of contributing to more livable tomorrows and sharing the tools of counter-mapping Solidarity Cities that we believe anyone can use. There were many people that helped us along the way.

Behind the “we” of our collective authorship of this book is an even bigger “we.” A “we” that we can try and recognize with the requisite understanding that we will fall short in naming all those to whom we are indebted. First of all, we express our gratitude to people about whom we wrote this book—the participants in solidarity economies and makers of solidarity cities, many of whom graciously shared their stories with us. Learning about their lives and contributions to our shared world got us excited about the topic in the first place, and the more we learned, the more engaged and committed we have become. We became mindful not only of their centuries-long resistance to the brutal forces of racial capitalism but also of the quiet everyday work of solidarity that sustains cities on a daily basis and keeps aspirations of better worlds alive. It is these everyday solidarities that bring people from different walks of life together so that they can—despite all challenges and adversities—break ground for community gardens, organize themselves into worker cooperatives, create noncapitalist financial structures, live together in housing co-ops, and work to provide daily food and goods at affordable prices. This work of solidarity changes urban worlds in major ways and transforms cities on the streets and in the lives of residents in both big and small ways. Through this work, the larger collective “we” has been forging ideas of social justice, democratic urban space, rights to public goods, and community well-being. It has been engaging in all kinds of hard “edgework” that bridges seemingly insurmountable fault lines of class, race, gender, and national belonging, among many other divides, and makes the world a better place for all of us.

In terms of making this research possible, we would like to express our gratitude to the National Science Foundation for the initial funding for this initiative (Collaborative Research Award “Mapping the Solidarity Economy in the United States”: Award Numbers 1340030, 1339748, 1339846, and 1339974). We’d also like to thank Hunter College, Drew University, Haverford College, and Worcester State University for their research funding and institutional support for this project. We would like to express particular gratitude to Haverford College, Hunter College, and Drew University for funding support that enabled the publication to be open access and in color. At Haverford, institutional support came from the Provost’s Office, the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship, and the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities. We are also grateful for the research support offered by the college’s research librarian staff, especially Margaret Schaus. Additional financial support came from a Q. A. Shaw McKean Jr. Research Fellowship and the Beyster Symposium at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. Hunter College provided support through department chair research funds #6D166-00 02 and #6D166-00 03, as well as PSC-CUNY grant #67762-00 45 “Mapping the Invisible: The Solidarity Economy” and a Faculty Engagement Grant for 2022. The 2014–2016 faculty seminar on neoliberalism funded by the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Office and co-organized with Sanford Schram helped ideas to coalesce.

We would like to acknowledge Katherine Gibson and Kevin St. Martin, editors of the Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds book series for their comments, guidance, and encouragement; and Jenny Cameron, Ethan Miller, Lindsay Naylor, and Keally McBride for invaluable feedback on the initial manuscript. We would also like to thank the University of Minnesota Press for supporting this book, Jason Weidemann and Zenyse Miller for guidance in developing the book and for stewarding it through to submission, and Ziggy Snow for his detailed review and edit of the manuscript and careful commentary. We would like to thank Ken Byrne for inspiring us with the original Diverse Economies Iceberg diagram. A special thanks goes to Rachel Gass and Laura Mercedes of Haverford College for reading, editing, and working over all the chapters in this book! Lisa Gaetjens, a talented cartographer from Hunter College, made our maps particularly beautiful.

Over the course of our research, we were helped along by many student research assistants. Zoe Coates Fuentes, Jillian Griffith, Justina Anise, and Sophia Martinez from Drew University provided highly significant and able help in relation to research on New York City. PhD students from the geography track of the Geography and Environmental Science program at CUNY Graduate Center and MA geography students from Hunter College have creatively worked on the project for years and made outstanding intellectual interventions while collecting and analyzing the data, doing surveys, researching literature on the ins and outs of cooperatives, and participating in our meetings and discussions. We would like to thank, in particular, Christian Siener, Jack Norton, Ekaterina Bezborodko, Robert Eletto, Lauren Hudson, Araby Smyth, Gabe Schuster, Holly Josephs, Joao Da Silva, Miranda Strominger, and Matt Herman. Special gratitude goes to graduate and undergraduate students who worked on numerous class projects researching and mapping different aspects of the solidarity economy at Hunter College and who generated many ideas through class discussions and conversations with related community advocacy groups inside and outside the classroom. Above all, Lauren Hudson provided especially invaluable insights to all of us while doing her own doctoral work on the solidarity economy at CUNY Graduate Center and enlarging its movement space through daily activism with SolidarityNYC. We would like to express our gratitude to Niki Volk, Peter Cutting, and Jeuji Diamondstone for help with interviews in Worcester and to Boone Shear, Penn Loh, Aaron Tanaka, Matt Feinstein, and Matt Worndorf for being a part of the solidarity economy and thinking together about it. At Haverford College, many brilliant students shared their talents, time, and research with us. These include especially Laura Mercedes, Rachel Gass, Althea Sellers, Madeline Smith-Gibbs, Chelsea Richardson, Noorie Chowdhury, Jared Sloan, Joseph Stein, Caleb Conner, Luke Aylward, Alex Egilman, Simon Balukonis, Haitong Xu, Ethan Adelman-Sil, Samantha Shain, Meg Byrum, Adrianna Morsey, and Anna Garrison-Bedell. In addition to all of these people, we are grateful to the hundreds of students taught at each of our institutions who heard about and shared their reactions to many of the ideas and arguments presented in this book.

The “we” that helped us to get to this point also includes institutions, organizations, and collectives devoted to furthering the Solidarity Economy movement. Neither the research project nor the book would have been possible without Emily Kawano, Julie Matthaei, and the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network. Noemi Giszpenc and Paul Fitzpatrick from Data Commons deserve a special acknowledgment for their support of the national mapping platform and for their work making the collaborative sharing of diverse databases possible. In Worcester, Stone Soup and its member organizations and the Regional Environmental Council and its gardens provided both direction and inspiration. In New York City, the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, the New York City Network of Worker Cooperatives, the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, and the New York City Worker Cooperative Coalition were generous with their knowledge and partnered with us for interviews and surveys. Cheyenna Layne Weber and Olivia Geiger of SolidarityNYC and artist Caroline Woolard have been powerful resources for activist research and critique. In Philadelphia, a great number of people and institutions involved in the local cooperative and urban agriculture movements have shared data and insight. The Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance provided crucial information and insight on local cooperatives. We are particularly thankful to Jamila Medley for sharing her deep knowledge of cooperatives. We are grateful to Andrés Celin and Blanca Pacheco for their help running focus groups. The Philadelphia Garden Data Collaborative, Soil Generation, the Neighborhood Gardens Trust, and the team involved in crafting the city’s 2023 urban agriculture strategic plan were crucial sources of data and understanding on community gardens. A particular thank you goes to Jenny Greenberg and Marlana Moore from the Neighborhood Gardens Trust for coordinating the collection and sharing of garden data. We also express gratitude to Iglesias Garden, including especially Mike Moran, César Viveros, and Adam Butler, for sharing the garden’s story and allowing us to feature it so prominently in the book. Data from the National Credit Union Administration, as well as conversations with them and groups like Inclusiv, helped us understand credit unions better. Thanks to the community members who have spoken up to challenge us.

Finally, each of us were supported by our families, friends, and colleagues who served as the book’s inspiration and interlocutors. We’d like to take the space to express our individual gratitude.

Maliha would like to thank Nasreen Safri, Shamoon Safri, Zainab, Alifa, Taiyyeba, and Andrew Skomra, the Kotharis, Camille Carlton, Nisreen Hussain, and an entire Darwala clan family reunion that I missed because of the final stages of this book’s submission. Nasreen and Shamoon Safri have been the pillars of my life, supporting me at each step. Taiyyeba made me into a Khala and, with Andrew, produced the gifts of Zainab and Alifa, who have been the inspiration for a better future and the girls who have my heart always. Ceren Özselçuk is the person I would choose to be my desert-island companion and the person whose ideas are the first to look to for clarity and brilliance in times of trouble. Chosen family encompasses all the loved ones who have helped nurture, teach, and talk through ideas at some point: Yahya Madra, Kenan Erçel, Jinee Lokaneeta, Sangay Mishra, Lara Fresko Madra, Ceyda Oner, Jack Amariglio, Christina Hatgis, Biju Mathew, Ali Mir, Sangeeta Kamat, Sangha Padhy, Ryvka Barnard, Allison Brown, Radhika Sainath, George DeMartino, and Katherine Gibson. Although Julie Graham and Stephen Resnick passed before this book was even drafted, their ideas and presence left an indelible mark. Each person deserves their own poem of praise. Many from Drew provided the camaraderie that allowed me to work with intensity on the book, but especially Jennifer Olmsted and Bernard Smith stand out for their support over the long years.

Marianna’s life and work would not be possible without Kevin and Anya, who fill my life with care and wit every single day. My mother, Tamara, lights my everyday with love too, despite the challenges of her age and health. So many people from different countries and places have taught me about the centrality of social reproduction and convinced me that it is everyday solidarities that matter for our being in this world more than anything. I would not be able to work on this book without the support of my dear people across the world: my amazing Highland Park neighbors; my extended family of Pavlovskaya-Meersmans and of St. Martins/Sheas in Westport, Massachusetts; my family for all purposes of Maria and Tim Ferreira-Beddard, as well as Natasha, Mariana, Tanya, Larisa, Oxana, Tetya Sveta, and the late Nina Ivanovna. Last but not least, I would like to thank Kath Gibson and my cherished CUNY colleagues Cindi Katz, Ruthie Gilmore, Rupal Oza, Monica Varsanyi, and Haydee Salmun for their politics, ideas, and feminist solidarities. Special gratitude goes to the Graduate Center and Hunter College students who shared the faith in the power of alternatives to challenge and change the dominant structures and who taught me about it through the outstanding graduate work they did with me and my inspiring colleagues. Special gratitude to Amanda Huron, Lauren Hudson, Erin Araujo, Celeste Winston, Hilary Wilson, Christian Anderson, David Spataro, Rob Eletto, Jordan Leff, Thor Ritz, Trudy Chandler, Valeria Treves, Katelyn Kennedy, and Coline Chevrin.

Stephen would like to thank Rebecca Healy and Eli Healy. They have put up with very early morning Zooms weekly and biweekly now for the last several years. To the rest of my family—Elizabeth Healy, Chris Healy, Jennifer Spooner, Frank Noble, Marie Noble, Andrew Noble, and Angela Noble—thanks for putting up with time away from the family to draft and redraft these pages. Thanks to Boone Shear, who has been a friend to this project and for his power of example in the cause. Thanks as well to colleagues who have become friends who have provided advice, feedback, and good direction at times: Janelle Cornwell, Bhavya Chitranshi, Anisah Madden, Suzanne Bergeron, Vin Lyon Callo, Peter North, Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, Gabrielle Morrele, Christina Grazzini, Ana Ines Heras, Herman Ruiz, Kelly Dombroski, Katharine McKinnon, George DeMartino, Yahya Madra, Kevin St. Martin, Ceren Özselçuk, Jack Amariglio, Patricia Benjamin, Eric Sarmiento, Nate Gabriel, Christina Jerne, and Oona Morrow. Thanks as well to friends, inside and outside the movement, who have shown me what solidarity looks and feels like: Bill and Mary Casey, Rod Daniels, James Bosanquet, Dan Mulvaney, and those who have shown me kindness.

Craig is grateful to the many colleagues who have sharpened my thinking on this project. Tom Donahue, Anita Isaacs, Steve McGovern, Barak Mendelsohn, Zach Oberfield, Paulina Ochoa, Joel Schlosser (at Bryn Mawr College), and Susanna Wing have been wonderful departmental colleagues who have graciously shared feedback over many years. Peleg Kremer has been a key partner in managing complex community garden databases. Esteban Romero has offered invaluable GIS support. John Muse and Stephanie Bursese opened my eyes to the world of artist collectives and cooperative art. I am indebted to the numerous teach-ins and collaborative workshops on mutual aid, racial capitalism, and transformative justice that unfolded around the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. I feel particular gratitude to the community teachers, the radical objectors, the call-outers and call-inners, the interveners who keep it real, and all of the people who have shaken things up in ways that have helped me grow through discomfort to see more clearly what solidarity in racialized contexts of gross inequality actually entails. Finally, none of this would have been possible for me without the care, honest feedback, and profound patience of Nilgün and Ozan. I love you both dearly. And to the rest of my intimate community of family and friends, I say, with all of my heart, thank you.