Cleveland Owns

Power through collective ownership

About Us  image
Cleveland Owns is a economic democracy incubator that builds cooperative businesses and leads campaigns for community control of resources.

We know that in racial capitalism, ownership matters, so we're organizing multiracial, grassroots cooperatives that enable member owners to build wealth and power. We're working towards a Cleveland owned by its residents.
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.

Today we support five cornerstone cooperatives working in clean energy, food access, and digital access, and collective purchasing. We also work for deeper democracy in the public sector, where we co-lead PB CLE, a coalition of 50+ organizations calling on Cleveland City Council to enable residents to allocate $30 million in ARPA funds using participatory budgeting.

The common thread for all our work is deep democracy through collective ownership and, in the case of the PB CLE, collective stewardship of public money -- economic democracy.


What we do image
Our lead organizer Jonathan Welle and partners in East Cleveland shared our plan to build a solar array owned by the community. Read more on our blog!
  • Oct 16, 2024

We at Cleveland Owns were honored to have Josephine Galdamez on the team as a Yale Environmental Fellow with Emerald Cities Collaborative this summer. Read more about her work with us in her own words!

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  • Sep 16, 2024

Last month the ~first ever~ statewide Co-op U started with 18 aspiring worker-owners from Cleveland.

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  • Aug 21, 2024

We gathered with dozens friends and comrades in East Cleveland in July to discuss an important part of the solidarity economy: Housing co-ops.

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  • May 23, 2024

Rust Belt Riders’ warehouse was full of energy and solidarity on May 4th as Cleveland Owns supporters from across the region gathered to celebrate 5 years of blossoming economic democracy. Many thanks to the friends and allies who joined the party - it was fun and restorative to feel the power of our community!

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  • May 1, 2024

Today we're pleased to release Cleveland Owns' first-ever strategic plan, a document that describes our vision, values, and work now and for the next three years.

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  • Apr 3, 2024

Check out our thread on how community ownership of the Brown could work -- it's working in Green Bay! And how we'd need to launch a national campaign to make it happen.

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  • Cleveland, Ohio