The legal cannabis industry is new and fertile ground for cooperative organizing, offering both opportunities and challenges. In 2024, we launched the Cannabis Co-ops Peer Network, creating space for members to build shared analysis and strategy to address inequities in the emerging sector.
In 2024, over 200 cooperators attended USFWC Peer Network meetings and gatherings, like the Cannabis Co-ops Peer Network. This peer network quickly became one of our most active, as cannabis co-ops recognized the value of confronting common challenges together. Co-ops exchanged skills, experiences and inspiration while developing cooperative projects aimed at creating community-based, economically just cannabis enterprises.
In October 2024, the peer network hosted a national webinar, Making Cannabis Cooperative: community ownership and racial justice in the cannabis industry, featuring founders and worker-members from across the country who shared their cooperative-building projects to create community-based and economically-just cannabis markets at local and statewide levels. By fostering peer connection and coordination, the USFWC is helping these cooperatives better position themselves to shape the emerging cannabis sector in ways that generate community wealth and address the prison industrial complex.
If you want to get involved in the creation or support of cannabis cooperatives, join the Peer Network’s next meeting on our events calendar.
