The hopeful project of the Bol Cooperative
At a moment where people are struggling with pandemic isolation, the vision shared by worker-owned cooperatives is more compelling than ever — can we be part of a system that nurtures community support and solidarity, rather than individualistic greed and exploitation? That’s where the Bol Cooperative project comes in, as an endeavor to imagine other possibilities for what it means to be in community with others.
According to co-founders Zaineb Majoka and Mubbashir Rizvi, Bol hopes to be the District’s newest worker-owned cafe, bookstore, and community space — following a rich history of worker-owned cooperatives in the city and across the country. But Bol co-op faces various challenges in their attempt to launch — they need to secure funds, find a location, and establish the mechanisms for a workplace democracy. The structural factors they face illuminate just how difficult this process can be, and why co-ops are so scarce in today’s American society.
Rizvi and Majoka both mention Red Emma’s in Baltimore as an institution that inspired them to try to establish Bol, citing the cooperative’s values of economic democracy and racial equity. As a worker cooperative since 2004, everyone who is part of the Red Emma’s collective owns an equal share of the business, and takes part in the consensus-based decision making process for the business. This “radical” project hosts events to support local organizing and activism as well as classes and workshops to educate and empower the Baltimore community.
D.C. is no stranger to cooperatives — from the Takoma Park Silver Spring Food Co-op to housing co-ops all over the city. But the history of cooperatives in D.C. go far beyond the present-day, as far back as 1880. Cooperatives were an initial form of “home rule from below,” even in the time when the city was governed directly by Congress. Though the District had no legal structure for establishing cooperatives (which effectively forced cooperatives to incorporate in another state), they were still popular, particularly among Black communities, who hoped the model would distribute economic wealth and create a new kind of society grounded in equity.
In the aftermath of the Great Depression, cooperatives took hold in the District through grocery stores, a gas station, and even a cooperatively-owned cab company — the largest of its kind. In 1938, the Washington Bookshop, also called The Bookshop or Bookshop Association, formed as a cooperative that sold books and phonograph records at discounted markup, and also functioned as a social club, art gallery, and lecture hall. It became the Washington Cooperative Bookshop in 1941 after D.C. officially passed legislation to provide a legal structure for cooperatives.
Bol follows in the example set by Red Emma’s and the Washington Cooperative Bookshop — not just a bookshop, but also an alternative space in the city. According to Majoka, who has a long history of organizing in D.C., while there are plenty of event spaces that cater to think tanks and big-money associations, it can be hard for grassroots groups to secure event space in the city. The hope, then, is that Bol will fill a necessary gap by establishing a space in which grassroots groups can easily host events or conversations. Majoka says, “the concept behind Bol being an event space is not just that we will be organizing events. I want others to be part of it — to take ownership of it and organize their events and be part of this community or create their own community.”
This notion of community grounds the mission of the cooperative. Rizvi talks about the importance of setting a model of “economic vitality where the surplus goes back locally rather than where it goes away from the neighborhood.” Bol hopes to form connections with local places of worship and communities wherever they land, so that the workers come directly from the community that the bookstore is serving. In that way, they hope to create a system in which any surplus or profit stays “within the zip code or community.”
There are several hurdles to making this happen — mainly a permanent location and the funding needed to secure it. They’re hoping that the D.C. community can help them in that effort. Upon launch, their GoFundMe page raised nearly $15,000 from their own networks — money that has been useful for establishing pop-ups at Creative Grounds cafe. However, those funds were not enough to help find a space or hire workers, and Rizvi and Majoka are especially cautious of bringing people on while the future of the project remains unclear. Rizvi is hopeful that they can bring in the money they need from small donations as well as grant funding from the D.C. government. It won’t be easy — that kind of small dollar fundraising requires heavy marketing efforts, and the process of applying for a D.C. grant has been “obscure.” Still, they continue to press forward. (Red Emma’s itself found a new, “forever” home in 2021.)
All these challenges face any small business. But the additional difficulty of launching Bol — and what could make it special — extends into the nitty gritty of everyday operations. To stay true to their values as a worker-owned cooperative, both Majoka and Rizvi realize that they must set up mechanisms for equal decision-making and inclusion of all workers — something Majoka says is “easier said than done.” They’ve had some help in their initial planning process, taking part in a cooperative academy from UMBC’s Professor Ron Hantz, and receiving pro-bono guidance and best practices from Parag Khandhar.
So far, they’ve established a business model and manifesto that aims to prioritize democratic decision making and equity, but Majoka acknowledges that they still have “a long way to go.”
Though the Bol project was conceptualized before COVID-19 entered the picture, the pandemic has made the need for cooperative enterprises all the more pressing. Through mutual aid and other community building efforts, people are increasingly turning towards systems that sustain support networks and allow for solidarity. According to Rizvi, “the pandemic made us even more committed to this model, because we saw the types of inequality rise… We thought that especially we should do things differently after the pandemic and perhaps, if it could be a viable model, then it might inspire others to follow suit.”
The name “Bol” means to speak in Urdu and Hindi, and the Bol Cooperative hopes to set an example that speaks volumes. Rizvi says the name was inspired by the idea that freedom is inherently connected to one’s being able to speak, taken from a line in a poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Bol would be no typical bookstore — it disseminates knowledge, builds up support networks, and ultimately, allows community members to speak and act more freely. The Cooperative hopes “to be bold in how we think about economic possibilities or creating an economic vitality in ways that works for the people, not uses up people for other things,” Rizvi says. “I would love for people to think of Bol as a place where they can come to help build alternatives.”
