Buffalo is known for powerful snowdrifts and pro football. But like fellow Rust Belt cities across the Midwest, it’s also known for shuttered factories; capital flight; the “brain drain” of departing college-educated young people; and the legacies of urban renewal, redlining, and other racialized policy decisions that make it one of the most racially segregated metropolitan regions in the nation.

In the absence of an economy that works for us, the people of Buffalo, we have learned time and again to do for ourselves. We treat cooperative development work not as a static formula but as a learning laboratory where experimentation, creativity, and new expressions of leadership are accepted and encouraged. We enter this work with the assumption that “no one knows everything, but together we know a lot.” It’s the pooling and sharing of resources—knowledge, expertise, relationships, money—that create the conditions for worker-led and community-owned enterprises to move the needle on issues plaguing our neighborhoods and to advance economic, environmental, and racial justice.

Cooperation Buffalo began by pooling those resources we had on hand: the roadmap laid out by BreadHive’s founders, identifying local legal and tax experience with co-ops, a strong relationship with the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at SUNY Buffalo State for technical support, and equally strong relationships with base-building organizations like PUSH Buffalo that were helping neighborhoods define and articulate their needs. Our first donation came from Lexington Co-op Markets, a longstanding Buffalo grocery co-op whose workers have recently won a union contract.