Are you fed up with a capitalist system that caves to fascism? Feeling burnout keeping up with the many boycott days scheduled in this apocalyptic hellscape? Not sure where to turn when, time and again, all your favorite companies and shopping brands bend the knee to an unnamable orange menace you can't seem to stop talking about?
While Power Map is primarily a political magazine offering the freshest takes in Democratic Socialism, we also, like nearly everyone else on the planet, shop. But how do we shop in the hellscape that is late techno-fascist capitalism?
Do Boycotts Work? Yes, but…
The first thing that may come to your mind is a boycott! Don’t give your hard earned money to these evil companies. Bleed ‘em dry. While boycotts absolutely do work, they have to be organized and prolonged. That’s really difficult! Amazon has over 310 million active users every year. That’s a lot of people to organize! Successful boycotts, like MLK’s legendary Montgomery Bus Boycott involved intense organization just to boycott a bus system in a single mid-sized city! So yes, boycotts work, but only if they’re insanely well organized and targeted. A few thousand people saying they won’t shop at Amazon just isn’t going to cut it.
A supplemental option to help your sanity might be “buycotting”: that is, actively buying from companies that benefit society. How could such a company exist within capitalism, you say? Easy: they’re called worker cooperatives.
What is a Worker Cooperative?
There are many types of “coops” – and housing coops or food coops probably come to mind first. A worker coop is similar: it is collectively owned and operated, but specifically by its employees, instead of a board of investors. In practice, this means it's the workers at large who are responsible for the direction of the company and collectively share in its profits.
This might sound like a socialist utopia far out of reach, but worker coops are more prevalent than you might think – in fact, you might buy their products already and not even know it. Actively supporting these companies will help keep them in operation and encourage their growth and competitiveness as alternatives to capitalism. Acts of solidarity can be as simple as buying worker coop product from your local grocery store, or as difficult as moving your whole digital and financial life in a different direction.
Below, you'll find a list of handy “good” businesses – mostly worker owned, some with other alternative models that center workers or customers rather than profit and power-hungry shareholders. And this isn't an exhaustive list – there are so many more coops to be found!
A Socialist Breakfast
Start off the day right with a nice, guilt-free, worker-supporting bowl of oatmeal courtesy of the familiar Bob's Red Mill. According to their website, they have been 100% employee-owned since 2020 (transitioning via an Employee Stock Option Program [ESOP] that founder Bob Moore began in 2010). Pair it with a delicious cup of coffee provided by fair trade and worker owned Equal Exchange (they also sell chocolate bars, hot chocolate, tea, and olive oil that are all quite good!)
If you are a baker then King Arthur Flour needs no introduction. They sell the greatest flour bar none and their website has some damn good recipes. They have also been employee-owned since 2004. Yes they’re more expensive than some of the alternatives, but if you want quality and want to support an employee owned business then the extra cost is worth it!
Out On the Town
Grab a beer at queer-run Boyfriend Coop in Brooklyn. Or, if you prefer your service capitalist and your beer socialist, head to George Keeley’s on the Upper West Side and down a worker-owner-brewed Switchback. In the West Village? Enjoy a cocktail and a taco at Donna, NYC’s first worker-owned cocktail bar.
News and Art
No NY Times article could compare to the humorous snark you'll encounter reading Hell Gate, which covers all things New York City. In DC you can get your news from the 51st. Some of the best tech reporting comes from 404 Media, a coop founded by former Motherboard tech reporters. And maybe the most exciting coop media project of them all, Defector Media, which started out as a news website founded by former Deadspin journalists and is now well on its way to becoming a Cooperative Empire (is that thing?), producing news, commentary, and podcasts, including smash hit Normal Gossip.
And for your music and streaming needs, consider some adventurous options: Mirlo, a worker-owned streaming platform where you'll find some extremely cool indie music, combines subscription-based services and crowdfunding to support musicians on the platform. You can find excellent documentary work like Brett Story and Stephen Maing’s Union or the popular “Second Thought” on worker-owned Means TV, or help get worker-centered Indy movies made at Denver-based Truce Studios.
Big Moves
Are you ready to really stick it to the capitalist system with some major life changes? Switch to Proton Mail to keep your online data out of the hands of big tech. Owned mostly by the nonprofit Proton Foundation as well as Proton employees, Proton provides end-to-end encryption to keep your data safe, offers VPNs to obscure your location from prying corporate eyes, and has pretty good phone backup storage and online Drive options – a pretty solid alternative to Google, if you don't mind a simpler set of online tools.
Ready to leave your bank? Move your money to a credit union! …Okay, credit unions aren't worker cooperatives, but they are member-owned nonprofits, so as a member you hypothetically have more of a say in how they behave as a company. I'm a big fan of USAlliance – they have a great mobile banking app, a handy map of surcharge free ATMs throughout the U.S. (don't forget to order a debit card!!), and offer an incomparable 3.40% APY on your savings account. That means if you're lucky enough to keep, say, $100,000 in the bank, you could have an extra $300+ a month to help pay your bills (imagine, doing the noble thing AND making more money from it?? Wow!!)
Want to explore even more options? You can search on the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives site for more US-based registered worker coops local to you that provide anything from cleaning services to dog walking to, yes, lumber!
Helping the World and You
Navigating our late-stage capitalist world that emboldens fascism and pointless bloodshed often feels like an impossible task. But even taking the baby steps to embolden an alternative economic system as a personal supplement to activities like campaigning and organizing can go a long way to create systemic shifts. And if it helps you feel less subservient to the megacorporate state and staves off the burnout that feeling of hopelessness can bring, that in itself is a huge step forward!