In a new opinion piece for City & State, the Mutualist Society founder Sara Horowitz responds to a proposal by Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani to spend $60 million on government-run grocery stores by offering a more community-centered, sustainable alternative: food cooperatives.
Investing a fraction of that budget—just $6 million—into developing a network of food co-ops across the city would not only address food insecurity, but also strengthen civic life, Horowitz writes.
“At a moment when so many Americans feel alienated from politics and distrustful of institutions, the humble act of governing a local co-op could rebuild civic confidence from the ground up,” she writes.
Rather than relying on government bureaucracy or market forces alone, food co-ops offer a third approach that “marries local initiative with modest public support,” she writes. “And New York already has credibility here. The Park Slope Food Co-op, founded in 1973, has endured for half a century.” In other sectors, co-op projects like Amalgamated Houses in the Bronx prove the cooperative business model can be a durable solution to real problems.