Solidarity Economics: Strategies for Building New Economies From the Bottom-Up and the Inside-Out

The term “solidarity economy” names a grassroots form of cooperative economics that is working throughout the world to connect thousands of local alternatives together to create large-scale, viable, and creative networks of resistance to the profit-centered economy. The author believes that the concept of “solidarity economy” offers the movements in the U.S. a powerful, connective tool with which to link together—horizontally and autonomously—many of the alternative practices of cooperation, mutual aid, reciprocity, and generosity that already exist. Such ongoing connections can form the basis for larger, long-term movements that cultivate spaces of hope and freedom and de-link our lives and communities from the economy of Empire.