The Cooperative Oral History Project is dedicated to documenting the memories and experiences of cooperative and collective members in two very different cities: Austin and New Orleans.
On each city’s page, you will find excerpted audio interviews with cooperatives and collective members, along with the full transcript of our conversation. Check back often for new interviews from participants in New Orleans and Austin.
The project has a strong social and environmental justice component: in their interviews, cooperative and collective members explore how their organizations create alternative solutions to combat economic, political, and social inequality dividing their cities as well as the nation at large.
Oral histories are extended interviews composed of free-form and open-ended questions that give participants the freedom to create their own narrative about their experiences. In these interviews, cooperative and collective members tell stories about what cooperative organizing means to them: why they joined the cooperative, how and why their cooperative formed, and what issues their cooperative identifies as most pressing within their community.
Anne Gessler 