PATHS Initiatives

Designed for Chicago-based Black grassroots organizers, activists, and artists building power in Black communities, the Black Abolitionist Solidarity Economy (BASE) Fellowship is a 12-session program that takes place over 6 months. The first cohort started in June 2022 with 16 founding fellows.

The BASE Fellowship embraces a vision of Black liberation, Black joy, and Black love that is rooted in self-determination, community ownership, community wellness, collective stewardship, and ecological sustainability. The BASE Fellowship endeavors to strengthen and expand the Black abolitionist solidarity economy in Chicago by 1) grounding Black organizers in solidarity economy principles, practices and strategies in ways that align with and enhance their existing work and 2) developing a Black-centered cooperative development pedagogy which uses multiple ways of learning to deepen our understanding of the solidarity economy, technical requirements, and resources that underpin cooperative development and sustainability.

Liberation Landing is a movement building space in Back of the Yards that provides the resources that survivors of police violence and abolitionists need to heal, thrive, and build our beautiful vision for the world. We provide community organizing space, co-working space, collectively governed housing, gardens and healing outdoor space, and cooperative workplaces that create access to meaningful, dignified work

Over the course of the next year, we will connect existing and developing work to expand our communities’ capacity for liberatory labor, make space for healing, and establish revolutionary infrastructure on our campus. Liberation Landing will prioritize intersecting focuses including abolitionist resistance to carceral violence and militarism rooted in reparation, justice centered opposition to environmental racism and building up solidarity economies. We are harnessing resources to support communal self-governance and invest in a housing development and a worker cooperative. This effort will concentrate on building internal capacity to sustain the maintenance of the campus buildings long term and create a foundation to engage the repair needs of our extended communities and neighborhood.