Cleveland Owns

We're hiring! Cleveland Owns is recruiting a new team member motivated to challenge racial capitalism by building cooperatively owned enterprises as an Americorps VISTA with Cleveland Owns.

In this role, you’ll primarily support the Cleveland Solar Cooperative (www.clevelandsolar.org), a multi-class, multi-racial, resident-owned solar enterprise Cleveland Owns incubated. You’ll help manage the business development of solar projects and recruit new members to join the cooperative by connecting around the values at stake in the fight for climate justice and energy democracy.

Submit applications via our partner Think Tank, Inc. here by Friday, February 26th for an April 12th start date (negotiable). You can see a full job description on our blog.

Cleveland Owns is an incubator that equips groups to build wealth and power through collective ownership.

We believe who owns what matters. To build an equitable city, we must have an equitable distribution of ownership.

In a Cleveland owned by its residents, everyone has a stake in businesses and commercial real estate and other productive assets. Groups of workers and neighbors prosper alongside the city, and have the power to exercise control over what affects them.

As more people own assets that appreciate in value, we'll shrink the ownership gap, which is inextricably tied to the racial and gender wealth gaps. This is one step towards addressing the historical and present-day effects of white supremacy, patriarchy, and an economic system built on exploitation and extraction.

We support groups of workers and neighbors as they seeks to turn what they have into what they need to demand their share of the region’s prosperity.

Our work touches on food access, digital equity, collective purchasing for nonprofit organizations, and energy democracy, which you can read more about here. The common thread for all our work is building new, democratic institutions controlled directly by the people their serve.

How can we address digital inequality in Cleveland through collective ownership?

3/5/2021 11:48 AM

We must build a digital commons owned by Clevelanders that ensures high-speed free access to wireless internet as a 21st century human right for everyone, everywhere in the city, all the time.

Cleveland Owns bring community-ownership perspective to panel on community solar in Ohio

2/15/2021 10:47 AM

Earlier this month our ED, Jonathan, joined Sam of The BC in Hough on a statewide panel about community solar in Ohio.

Cleveland Owns is hiring a co-op developer through Americorps VISTA!

2/10/2021 10:53 AM

Cleveland Owns is recruiting a new team member motivated to challenge racial capitalism by building cooperatively owned enterprises as an Americorps VISTA. Submit applications via our partner Think Tank, Inc. by Friday, February 26th for an April 12th start date (negotiable).

Read the environmental policy platform for Cleveland we contributed to

12/17/2020 12:53 PM

Cleveland Owns joined a coalition of local environmental justice and advocacy groups to create a progressive policy agenda for environmental justice in Cleveland.