I Got 5 On It.
In 2022 Rhode Island passed the Rhode Island Cannabis Act. This made cannabis legal for adult use and mandated that a cannabis retailer license will be awarded to one social equity applicant and one worker cooperative per zone. There will be four licenses per geographic zone which means that half of the licenses are meant to create racial and economic justice within the cannabis industry in Rhode Island. A total of 12 licenses are specifically reserved for social equity applicants and worker cooperatives. The Rhode Island Cannabis Coalition was created to begin organizing citizens to take advantage of this new law. The coalition incubates worker cooperatives giving business owners the tools to navigate cannabis regulations and provide training and resources for them to be successful. At the time this article is written there haven’t been any licenses yet awarded by the state.
Co-op Rhody is a grassroots coalition of worker-entrepreneurs and organizers from local groups such as UFCW Local 328, Reclaim RI, and Break the Cycle Cooperative Hub. It also includes national cooperative and industry specialists who share a commitment to the vision of a worker-owned economy in Rhode Island. We had a conversation with Co-op Rhody members Andre Dev, David-Allen “Bear” Sumner Sr., and Emma Karnes discussing their journeys into the worker cooperative movement, the complexities of implementing social equity in the cannabis industry, and the need for hope that is strategic and withstanding.
The War on Drugs, a policy led by the United States federal government to prohibit illegal drug use in America, targeted Black communities with a disproportionate amount of arrests and sentences. While the trend to legalize cannabis is sweeping the country, many of the businesses benefitting from these new laws are not owned by the people historically targeted for selling cannabis. In fact, 80-90% of the industry is run by white-owners who are making money fulfilling the same need that many Black men are sitting in jail for to this day. Co-op Rhody seeks to turn these dynamics on their head by incubating worker cooperatives and owners that have been historically disenfranchised. “We are really concentrating on the generational wealth aspect of the opportunity itself. As we all know cannabis is a billion dollar industry and as we all know that a lot of people of color are excluded from this industry. So this is the big push to make it equitable.” says Karnes, a union organizer with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 328.
Co-op Rhody, with the help of the Rhode Island Cannabis Act, is developing a new approach to legalizing cannabis that is attempting to ensure racial and economic justice. Even more importantly, worker cooperatives give a chance for some of the wealth to transfer to formerly incarcerated people and people of color. A radical approach that they hope the rest of the country follows. Emma talked about how UFCW was pivotal to their win. “They are to date the only organization that has invested anything financially in this project. UFCW has been a leader of co-op development as a labor union for over a decade. One of very few labor unions in this country who are thinking about worker ownership as a strategy, and in terms of passing this legislation in other states, I think UCFW had a lot to do with that and I suggest getting in touch with your local union to help make that connection.”
Co-op Rhody is set up like a traditional non profit in many ways. There is a board of nine people, including two worker owners, Emma Karnes, the organizer, and six other advisors and supporters of the project. They follow traditional voting protocols for simplicity but hope to have this structure evolve as the organization evolves. ”Honestly, that’s not the long term goal of things, but the board meetings are open to everybody, and everything is 100% transparent and available, the budget, the meeting minutes, the everything. We have a Slack channel where everything is shared.” They are finding many of the hang-ups that occur in entrepreneurship still apply in the context of a worker cooperative. “ This all applies to entrepreneurship in general. The stuff that is really good organizationally, for when you’re just starting the business or organizing the original capital may have nothing to do with the governance structure that works when the place is actually open,” says Dev, an entrepreneurial advisor to the group.
The biggest question I had once learning about the legislation passed in Rhode Island is how were they able to get legislators to pass such radical language in the law. Emma told me the close relationship between legislators and its citizens had a lot to do with it. “Rhode Island, being such a small state, worked really well…Providence, like the state government, kind of feels like a city government… It just feels very accessible, like you run into your legislators more often, because there’s fewer of them, there’s peer review, just more like brushing up and accessibility to the power here.”
While Co-op Rhody has named formerly incarcerated and people of color as their base, the challenges that people of color experience to create businesses are still present even when trying to use a worker-cooperative model. Sumner, a long time community organizer and Rhode Island native said,“Organizing a community that has suffered in such a way is so hard to do…I have not been received like I thought I would be. People don’t call me, stop me on the street, see me, inbox me… So we’re trying to bring it to them. We do have right now four prospective stores that are organizing in the space out of the six core stores. So we are making some headway in that direction, but it has been hard organizing.”
The challenges go beyond just getting people involved. Even when people are interested there is the challenge of training them. “Cannabis workers are much more likely to be people of color than certainly the owners. Part of our goal is to train people to work in this industry. But if we’re just looking for people who have previous cannabis experience, that’s going to end up being a very white group. So that is definitely one of the challenges too. You don’t want to exclude people, especially not people with experience, but you just have to be deliberate about including people who have been excluded and there’s definitely no right answer to it.” says Dev. He goes on to say that it should be a point of reflection for other states purporting to want to have similar justice in the cannabis industry. “If they really want to put their money where their mouth is and make sure that the places that open are actually reflective of the people who are harmed by the war on drugs, you need to think about all this stuff.”
The group is inspired by Mondragon and Co-op Cincy as north stars. When asked about why they chose the union co-op model Emma talked about the numerous advantages of union membership that arise from the solidarity of economies of scale. These include access to healthcare and 401(k) benefits, apprenticeship training programs, and enhanced political influence. Additionally, union contracts offer safeguards for non-owner employees, as not every worker in a cooperative is an owner and, therefore, may not share the same rights and protections within their workplace. “We believe that union co-ops are the gold standard for social equity because they combine the benefits of worker ownership (financial ownership, democratic governance) with the benefits of union membership.”
Even though the group started in 2023 they are already learning things that may not be obvious to the larger worker cooperative movement and how it intersects with the cannabis industry. The group is connecting with coop developers around them and learning a lot about the limitations of worker coop developers working within the cannabis industry. “It’s really important to keep the stuff that touches cannabis separate legally from the stuff that doesn’t. Institutions like nonprofits can’t do anything that directly touches cannabis. So a lot of the early business development, like applying for a license, securing real estate, can’t be done with nonprofit funds. And you need to find ways to get people who want to help an ability to so that’s why we have Co-op Rhody as something separate from the for profit arm.” says Dev.
When the group was asked about something that they thought they knew about the cooperative movement or the cannabis industry that they’ve changed their mind about since organizing they said something all worker cooperatives should consider before embarking on business ownership. “I thought that we were gonna succeed within a year, and so not only are we not going to succeed within a year, but we’re never going to be done. Even if everything we want to see happens happens, and we get six co-ops and they’re full of people who need this opportunity, we still have to work year after year after year, and that’s only six stores like we have a whole freaking world to organize.” Co-op Rhody reminds us that the reward for work is more work and we have a whole world to organize.
If you are in Rhode Island and want to get involved you can visit their website and instagram to get in touch with the events they are doing and where they could use assistance.