|
 Dear PACA Supporters,
PACA has gone through a lot this year, including my transition into the role of executive director back in February. As we are
now fully in the swing of the holiday season, I can’t help but to feel so much deep gratitude for having my job and for having been a part of building PACA for the last five years.
I am also deeply grateful for the many opportunities I have had to engage with hundreds of people over the last year who are enthusiastic about learning about co-ops and supporting the growth and advancement of this economic justice building movement.
Today is Giving Tuesday and I just wanted to take a moment to give thanks to all of you who are doing important movement building work in support of creating a more just and loving world. Whether you are a teacher, work in a hospital, are a co-op worker-owner or consumer owner. Whether you take care of aging parents or small children, your neighbors, or your partner, this spirit of giving and care-taking that we do for one another is the demonstration of love that our world needs to be better. And we are doing it.
When we also allow others into our networks and circles to contribute what they can and we reciprocate in form, we are extending the intangible essence of cooperation that binds us all together. We build our power this way.
If you shopped at a co-op this year, attended or volunteered at a PACA-hosted event, read PACA’s Co-op Scoop, visited our website or Facebook page, sent an email asking for information about co-ops, made a monetary donation to PACA, engaged in conversations about co-ops at home, in the store, or at work, thank you.
Our collective actions towards envisioning what a just world looks like and our efforts to build it are what movements around cooperative economics, healthcare, housing, education, ending mass incarceration, immigration reform, and so many other important issues that affect our lives are all about. We are fortunate to get to do this work together.
Because of our work together, in addition to our 20+ existing co-op members, PACA is supporting the formation, start-up phase development of, and operations of more than 20 co-ops owned primarily by low-income people of color who started co-ops to address the problems and inequalities in their communities. The vision for a more cooperative and equitable Philadelphia area is not theoretical: people are using co-ops to build wealth and power in communities throughout our region.
|
2018. Yet as 2017 winds down, I invite you to continue engaging with PACA. We have a couple of more events you can attend, including a CLI workshop on strategic thinking tomorrow, Wed. Nov. 29th and a tour of the PHL Assembled exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Sat. Dec. 2nd. Let us know if you can make it!