In July 2024, the Council Office of Financial Analysis (COFA) reported that Chicago, Illinois, was witnessing a struggling job market, a decrease in multifamily housing starts, and a rise in single-family home prices. The following month, the City of Chicagoโs 2025 Budget Forecast projected a $982.4 million budget gap for the fiscal year.
Budget gaps can often result in reduced funding for crucial resources like social services and education.
Fortunately, there are numerous solidarity enterprises and mutual aid groups in Chicago that can help ease the brunt of these conditions. For instance, the community and neighborhood development organization Reason to Give offers education, school supplies, clothing, and toys to children and families in need. The nonprofit HighSight provides low-income high school students with scholarships and academic support, and the Sol House Cooperativeโs mission is to โprovide affordable homeownership opportunities on Chicagoสผs Northwest Side to socially conscious individuals who want to share in decision-making and property management responsibilities within a cooperative enterprise.โ
While speaking about the effective change โhyperlocal organizationsโ bring, Daniel Ash of the Chicago Community Trust told the Reader in 2021, โThese formal and informal networks that are centered around mutual aid are almost, by definition, more nimble because of their size and scaleโฆ And when youโre close to an issue, when you see people in need, there is a sort of innate response to act now.โ
The ChiCommons Cooperative, a worker-owned collective that aims to โfoster and grow a people-owned solidarity economy,โ has created an online map of more than 800 solidarity entities, cooperatives, and associated resources in the Chicago area. Similar to New Yorkโs Seeding Solidarity and the nationwide Solidarity Economy Map and Directory, ChiCommonsโs map points viewers to local housing collectives, food co-ops, worker collaboratives, credit unions, and other mutual aid-based groups. Its users can search by co-op category, zip code, city, or neighborhood.
Besides helping Chicago residents find community and resources, this map is valuable to groups and individuals working to develop co-ops. Steve Ediger, founding co-owner and acting president of ChiCommons, explains that consulting and incubation services can use it to learn โwho is in the universe of cooperatives in Chicago and what theyโre doing.โ
The map also serves as a regional resource for Find.coop, an international solidarity map curated by the Data Commons Cooperative.
Anyone interested in using ChiCommonsโs directory as a model for a similar project can access its source software on the developer platform GitHub. โWeโre very willing to talk to folks about what weโve done and what our experience has been with the map,โ Ediger notes.
Between 2010 and 2012, the Institute of Cultural Affairs laid the groundwork for the solidarity map by creating Accelerate77, a list of organizations promoting sustainability throughout Chicagoโs 77 community areas. In 2012, a sharing economy hub called the Chicago Time Exchange worked with the solidarity economy news source Shareable to create a map of shareable resources in the Chicago region. In 2016, two ChiCommons worker-owners used data from Accelerate77, Shareable, and other lists of local solidarity groups to create an early version of what would eventually become ChiCommonsโs solidarity map.
Explaining the importance of the solidarity economy, Shareable states that it โis a global movement to build a world that centers people and the planet rather than maximizing private profit and endless growth.โ
According to Ediger, the first version of ChiCommonsโs map contained between 400 and 600 entries. โSome were cooperatives, some were associated resources, some solidarity entities: things like community gardens, farmers markets, urban forums, worker co-ops, bicycle co-ops, housing co-ops, credit unions, mutual aid folksโall of the folks that are associated with the co-op and solidarity ecosystems.โ
Service Providers
Besides the solidarity map, ChiCommons has created the communications platform BlockShare. โItโs trying to provide the last-mile internet service to underserved communities,โ Ediger explains. Recipients of this service join the ChiCommons Cooperative as consumer-owners. Blockshare provides people with individual servers, enabling them to organize their communities and โshare their garden produce, time, talents, tools, and rides with each other,โ Ediger states.
ChiCommonsโs website notes that while the Chicago area is โa dynamic crossroads of cultures, commerce, and innovation,โ it โalso has legacy problems of inequality, disinvestment, and exclusion. Too often, existing institutions have ignored whole geographic, demographic, and generational segments of our communities, including access to technology and lifeโs necessities.โ
An analysis by the University of Chicagoโs Data Science Institute, based on responses received between 2014 and 2019, found that while approximately 80 percent of Chicagoโs households are internet-enabled, up to 40 percent of households in the cityโs least connected communities lack internet access. โMost disconnected households in Chicago are on the cityโs South and West Sides,โ the study states.
Co-operators
ChiCommons sustains itself by providing paid business and technology services to small businesses, nonprofits, cooperatives, and solidarity entities. For instance, the collective designed and implemented all the required technology for the grocery co-op Wild Onion Market, including its computers, network, internet connections, point-of-sale infrastructure, security cameras, and printers. ChiCommons also offers strategic planning and facilitation for prospective co-op founders.
Worker-owner Paul Bowman, who is developing a booking and management system for the Interpretersโ Cooperative of Madison, describes his position at ChiCommons as โan opportunity to be directly involved in cooperative work.โ Worker-owner Alvyn Walker says he enjoys โthe opportunity to collaborate with other people in a non-hierarchical environmentโ and the autonomy that self-employment brings.
Ediger, one of roughly 35 residents of a sustainability-oriented commune called the GreenRise Intentional Community, feels the most rewarding aspect of his involvement with ChiCommons is the sense of community it provides. โWhat I like, what gives me energy, is working toward common goals with like-minded people,โ he notes. โI practice my cooperativism on a daily basis. I shop, bank, and work at co-ops.โ
AUTHOR BIO: Damon Orion is a writer, journalist, musician, artist, and teacher in Santa Cruz, California. His work has appeared in Revolver, Guitar World, Spirituality + Health, Classic Rock, High Times, and other publications. Read more of his work atย DamonOrion.com.
This article was produced byย Local Peace Economy.