GR Food Co-op
Annual Report 2023
President’s Message
Linda Jones
I’ve been living in Ludington all summer while we wait for the remodel of our new house to get finished. I’ve been looking at our lighthouse and it is giving me a metaphor for what we are doing as a co-op for the community of Grand Rapids.
Our coop is a lighthouse for Grand Rapids, showing the way to a safe journey away from the rocks of extractive capitalism, rocks that only care about maximizing their financial wealth at all cost, and guiding us to the safe harbor of a cooperative economic system designed to serve life as its central aim.
The foundational question we as a society need to be asking in light of the multiple crises we are facing right now is “Who owns the earth?” Who should control our food and water access? Private companies seeking to gain as much profit as possible or the communities that are dependent on those resources for life.
The coop model stands wholly on the side of life. We are all coming together to bring an approach to providing food to our community that is grounded in sharing the wealth and responsibility equitably with the workers, the farmers, the food producers, and the shoppers. We will be sourcing our food as locally and sustainably as possible, paying our workers as close to a living wage as possible, investing our profits back into our community through returns to our owners.
The accountability to do all this comes from the democratically, one owner-household, one vote power structure of coops. There are no corporate overlords trying to extract as much wealth as they can from our earth in the cooperative power structure. We hold the power equally together.
This coming year we will be focusing our energy toward the goal of growing our ownership to 800 households by June. We are requesting proposals from community organizers to contract one of them to lead us in this campaign. All our owners will be asked to be involved in this effort.
In the new year, we will be also offering ways for our owners and others in the community to come together and learn about the myths of capitalism that inform our whole way of life and how we can make systemic change to a new economic model that nourishes all life. We are seeing system collapse in so many ways right now and it is beyond high time that we start building a new system that can help us all live well instead of some having way more than they need and the rest suffering.
After this successful owner growth campaign, we will be moving into the next phase of our co-op growth where we find our site, start our community investment drive, and build out our store. Its going to be an exciting 2024!
Annual Report 2023
President’s Message
Linda Jones
I’ve been living in Ludington all summer while we wait for the remodel of our new house to get finished. I’ve been looking at our lighthouse and it is giving me a metaphor for what we are doing as a co-op for the community of Grand Rapids.
Our coop is a lighthouse for Grand Rapids, showing the way to a safe journey away from the rocks of extractive capitalism, rocks that only care about maximizing their financial wealth at all cost, and guiding us to the safe harbor of a cooperative economic system designed to serve life as its central aim.
The foundational question we as a society need to be asking in light of the multiple crises we are facing right now is “Who owns the earth?” Who should control our food and water access? Private companies seeking to gain as much profit as possible or the communities that are dependent on those resources for life.
The coop model stands wholly on the side of life. We are all coming together to bring an approach to providing food to our community that is grounded in sharing the wealth and responsibility equitably with the workers, the farmers, the food producers, and the shoppers. We will be sourcing our food as locally and sustainably as possible, paying our workers as close to a living wage as possible, investing our profits back into our community through returns to our owners.
The accountability to do all this comes from the democratically, one owner-household, one vote power structure of coops. There are no corporate overlords trying to extract as much wealth as they can from our earth in the cooperative power structure. We hold the power equally together.
This coming year we will be focusing our energy toward the goal of growing our ownership to 800 households by June. We are requesting proposals from community organizers to contract one of them to lead us in this campaign. All our owners will be asked to be involved in this effort.
In the new year, we will be also offering ways for our owners and others in the community to come together and learn about the myths of capitalism that inform our whole way of life and how we can make systemic change to a new economic model that nourishes all life. We are seeing system collapse in so many ways right now and it is beyond high time that we start building a new system that can help us all live well instead of some having way more than they need and the rest suffering.
After this successful owner growth campaign, we will be moving into the next phase of our co-op growth where we find our site, start our community investment drive, and build out our store. Its going to be an exciting 2024!
