USFWC Co-op Clinic Training Manager Maureen Darras attended the South Central U.S. Cooperative Support Ecosystem Convening. Below, she shares reflections from the regional partnership:
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Texas Rural Cooperative Center (TRCC), with funding support from the Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF), invited cooperative organizers hailing from Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Louisiana to gather for two days in June. We met at the Dandelion House, an emerging wellness cooperative supported by the City of Austin’s innovative Co-op Coaching and Training Program. Among us were worker-owners from Sustainability Solutions Group & Jason Weiner P.C.; past and present executive directors of the Austin Cooperative Business Association (ACBA); a founding member of producer coop AgriUnity; past and present members of housing cooperatives and collectives; a Loan Officer from Shared Capital Cooperative; Project Stewards from Seed Commons; and staff from the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Cooperation New Orleans, and the USFWC.
“Hold your horses,” you may be wondering, “what do those states have in common, besides touching Texas?”
In 2025, with funding from the US Department of Agriculture Rural Cooperative Development Grant, TRCC expanded its service area to include New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, states that do not have rural co-op development centers of their own. In partnership with CDF, they are focused on building an ecosystem strategy for this unique region. To that end, TRCC Director Annelies Lottmann brought us together to begin the process. Expertly facilitated by Tracy McIntyre, Executive Director of Montana Cooperative Development Center (a member of the Montana Council of Cooperatives), we mapped connections across this stretch of land:
This region’s Black history, present, and future is vast and rich.
Texas’ Black population is the largest of all states and territories in the United States. Black Wall Street, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, was one of the most prosperous Black communities in the country. In New Mexico, Blackdom has been described by Dr. Timothy E. Nelson as “a product of a frontier space and the extension of a Borderlands network of Black people, places, and schemes.”
Today, AgriUnity provides support for Black ranchers seeking to preserve and fortify their lands to secure lasting family legacies.
Photo by Jacqueline Figg
This region transforms systemic pressures into safe havens of economic autonomy.
While communities in this region navigate federal immigration pressures and climate displacement, local leaders are shifting the focus from passive survival to systemic economic power. In the borderlands of the Rio Grande Valley, Blanca Delgado, Cooperative Development Specialist at TRCC, leads bilingual business incubation designed for immigrant women who have long been anchored in the region. Rather than focusing on crisis relief, Delgado’s work empowers these women to scale their informal side-hustles into sustainable, formalized business structures. By developing a specialized, trauma-informed curriculum that addresses the financial anxieties caused by systemic barriers, her methodology restores true “Founder Identity,” resulting in a 100% cohort retention rate and a 72% increase in financial confidence among local women entrepreneurs.
Tamah Yisrael, Education & Outreach Coordinator at the Cooperation New Orleans Loan Fund, noted that Hurricane Katrina displaced many people from Louisiana to Austin, particularly cultural workers and artists.
Oriole Tucker, Executive Director of the ACBA, shared that Austin has one of the most prominent queer and trans populations in the United States — many housing coops provide safe places for queer people to live, and provide the training for residents to become cooperative developers.
Tea station at Dandelion House, an emerging wellness cooperative in Austin, TX
This region builds on many cultures of cooperation, and is full of leaders.
Cooperatives have been active in New Orleans for over 100 years; visibility increased as mutual aid and cooperation drove the rebuilding of the city after Hurricane Katrina and carried the community through the pandemic.
Weird & Well Counseling recently opened as the only worker-owned cooperative in Arkansas at the moment (but we haven’t forgotten you, Bread & Roses Cooperative).
Oklahoma is full of coops across industries, between long standing businesses like Opolis, Fertile Ground, and Flora Bodega, and newcomers like All Rise!
In New Mexico, the ARTZ Cooperative is the only Pueblo artist owned and operated cooperative in the state; 505OMATIC celebrated 1 year as a worker-owned independent civic media co-op; and a shared services cooperative owned by childcare providers is developing following Olé’s historic win of universal childcare statewide.
Across all our states, rural electric cooperatives are governed by the people: Texas Electric Cooperatives; New Mexico Rural Electric Cooperatives; Oklahoma Association of Electric Cooperatives; Arkansas Electric Cooperatives; and the Association of Louisiana Electric Cooperatives. Tracy McIntyre shared that the USDA Rural Cooperative Development Loan and Grant program provides utility companies (broadband and electric) a pass through loan program – or will work with a community they serve to set up a revolving loan fund (RLF). The co-op applying for the funds is responsible throughout the life of the project (and beyond, if it’s an RLF).
“It’s starting to sound like Principle Two steppin’…”
Yes, Cooperative Principle 2 (Democratic Member Control) and Cooperative Principle 6 (Cooperation among Cooperatives) are alive and well. Our gathering committed to using our access to institutions and resources to support a solidarity economy, encompassing many types of democratic management: housing coops, worker-owned coops, consumer coops, producer coops, secondary coops, and the myriad ways that neighbors already practice cooperation.
