The music of Willie Murphy was an integral element of the Minneapolis West Bank scene in the 1970s. Willie as well as his bandmate John Beach were big co-op supporters—so it was a natural fit to incorporate their songs into the soundtrack of the film.

After many years of work, we are proud to announce that The Co-op Wars will premiere as part of the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival! The film will be available for viewing online by ticket holders May 14-23.

As 2021 dawns, we are filled with hope and trepidation for our country. As a dangerous administration ends, a COVID-19 vaccine is rolled out, and ongoing efforts at racial justice gain traction, we can see real hope that brighter days are in our future. But the lies and hate mongering that led to the recent insurrection at our nation’s capital will have long-lasting effects that are difficult to contemplate.

Radical Roots is now The Co-op Wars! We’re proud to share the news about our awesome new editor, story editor, composer, animator and legendary narrator.

Food Co-ops have a history of supporting product boycotts as a way to encourage social justice in the food system. But as they grow, co-ops can become more hesitant to endanger relationships with major suppliers and remove popular products. PCC Natural Markets, the largest natural food cooperative in the US, has been facing picketers for several months after refusing to honor the boycott of Driscoll’s berries...

Did you know that Minnesota is the #1 state for sheer number of cooperatives (at 1023)? Well, that number may increase as the city of Minneapolis (118 co-ops here!), following the lead of cities like New York and Madison, has decided to invest in further cooperative development.

Three Twin Cities food co-ops are considering merging into one, evoking memories of the last big proposed co-op consolidation in town.  In 1993, five co-ops (The Wedge, Seward, Mississippi Market, Lakewinds, and River Market) considered a merger that would have created a single co-op with 4000 members (huge at the time)...

On Saturday, February 13, Roberta and Lynette Malles will be presenting “Co-op Warriors Honored: Revisiting the Co-op Wars of 1975-76,” a free workshop that seeks to better understand the Co-op Wars and to heal the wounds and broken relationships that persist from the conflict...

We are in the midst of a new wave of co-op startups. Across the country, people are organizing themselves to meet their needs, perhaps most frequently for employment and for food...

In her interview for Radical Roots, Mississippi Market General Manager Gail Graham told us that “from the beginning co-ops have been about social change.” When it comes to the natural food co-ops of the Twin Cities, she should know...

“If you came out of college in the Nineties you wanted to get a job in the tech industry. People now come out of college and want to start a food truck."

Organic farmer (and artist and musician and organizer) Audrey Arner used to be a vegetarian. Now days she and her husband Richard Handeen have around ninety head of cattle at Moonstone Farm in Western Minnesota.

In addition to interviewing Dean Zimmerman, co-op pioneer, one-time CO-member, and Freedom Summer activist, we also talked to his son, Klaus. At the time we interviewed him, the next-generation Zimmerman was farming with Stone’s Throw Urban Farm...

Making Radical Roots, we’ve focused on the vibrant youth culture that created the natural food co-ops in the 1970s, but also wanted to know how youth are involved in co-ops today. Luckily, we know Emily Lippold Cheney, who has dedicated herself to engaging young people in cooperatives from the very local level to the biggest international stages.

One name we kept hearing and reading while doing research for Radical Roots was Kris Olsen. Kris was a dedicated co-op activist who popped up all over our story: befriending Moe Burton while helping out the Bryant-Central Co-op, being physically thrown out of Seward Co-op by the CO (they needed a bunch of guys - Kris was very tall!)...

Recently, three co-op activists created Cooperative Principal as a new way for people to build the cooperative economy, grow their assets and have fun in the process. We interviewed Cooperative Principal partner Joe Riemann about it...

“We … assume that our food system is healthy and fair and just and is operating to protect us, and what I began to find out was that that was less true than I could have possibly ever imagined.”

A couple of Washington, D.C., policy-writers developed new careers for themselves in the early 1990s when they published a book outlining a repeating cycle of American history and generational archetypes since 1584 (GENERATIONS: The History of America’s Future).  William Strauss and Neil Howe argued that there are four generational archetypes that recur based on the cycle of history they are born into...

While the 1960s are generally thought of as the political awakening of the Baby Boomer generation, the 1970s weren’t exactly a historical snooze.  Many of the people who started the Twin Cities food co-ops had been involved in 60s activism, and they continued this work, either within the co-ops or alongside them.  But organic and local were not the powerhouse bywords then that they are today...

In this excerpt from our interview with Seward Co-op General Manager Sean Doyle for Radical Roots, Sean talks about his inspirational encounter with the Mondragon Corporation in Spain. Mondragon is a federation of hundreds of worker-owned cooperatives and is Spain’s 10th-largest business group

In this interview for Radical Roots from 2013, ex-Cooperative Organization (CO) member Lynette Malles reflects on the divisions within the Twin Cities Occupy movement that resemble those in the early co-op movement, and how Occupy Homes flirted with the techniques that did so much damage when practiced by the CO...

How do intelligent, well-intentioned people become loyal members of a cult that damages its own members and undermines the radical community it claims to want to lead? 

In our interview of Riverside/New Riverside Cafe collective member Ken Logsdon for Radical Roots, he relates to us the great renovation of 1983. As he tells it, the process was fraught with misfortune and almost led to the Cafe closing.

In this video, former Riverside Cafe collective member Mary Alice Smalls reminisces about the evolution of the food served at the cafe. The cafe began with an emphasis on vegetarianism and affordability, and then changed with the community’s greater awareness of the value of local and organic food and the plight of farmworkers...

“These were awesome people… People with different ideas about life… people that just knew they would never fit in, but they wanted to have a place to gather and they wanted a community place.” - Eve MacLeish