Cleveland Owns

Power through collective ownership

Cleveland Owns is looking for a motivated Americorps VISTA member ready to act for justice as part of our team. You’ll help incubate cooperatives businesses that build community wealth and power, an essential step towards building an equitable city where ownership is distributed in an equitable way. You’ll work in community organizing and co-op development. Learn more about the position and how to apply on our blog.

Cleveland Owns is a radical 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 enable groups of workers and neighbors to turn what they have into what they need to demand their share of the region’s prosperity.

Our work focuses on food justice, and on a just transition to a clean energy economy.

For example, we're working with a group of residents and representatives from local institutions in the Central and Kinsman neighborhoods to see if a food co-op could help meet the needs of local residents.

In the neighborhood of Hough, we're working with neighbors out to build the city's first community solar garden. We're also working with groups from Lakewood, Detroit Shoreway, and Cleveland Heights to found the Cleveland Solar Cooperative, a community-owned co-op that aims to promote energy democracy through democratic ownership of solar infrastructure.

Cleveland Owns writes in the Cleveland Business Journal

6/29/2020 03:11 PM

Today Mordecai, Indigo, Adam, and Jonathan write in the new Cleveland Business Journal that the uprisings in response to the police murder of George Floyd means it's time for an ownership revolution. Nothing less will do. Check it!

Cleveland Owns is hiring!

6/16/2020 11:32 AM

Through Americorps VISTA, we’re recruiting a motivated new team member unwilling to accept the inequality in Cleveland today, and ready to act for justice. As a part of the Cleveland Owns team, you’ll work in community organizing and co-op development related to our solar portfolio, including Cleveland Solar Cooperative and the Hough Community Solar Garden.

6/1/2020 12:17 PM

Cleveland Owns is proud to work with a group of organizers, residents, and institutions in the Central and Kinsman neighborhoods resisting the specific economic injustice of food apartheid. We're planning for a food cooperative in that area owned by residents and workers.

Cleveland Solar Cooperative is live!

5/26/2020 04:21 PM

This weekend the Cleveland Solar Cooperative held its first official member meeting, approved bylaws and elected a board. We're thrilled to see this group take flight! The Cleveland Solar Cooperative, a project of Cleveland Owns, will promote a more democratic energy system through collective ownership of solar arrays.