MEDIA COVERAGE

ALL THINGS CO-OP PODCAST
August 16, 2022
The Co-op Wars
As Erik and the ATC guys dissect the film and its implications, they touch on the role of traditional politics, the limits of "third-worldism" in the first world, the mainstreaming of co-ops, the potential influence of COINTELPRO, and much more…

AM950: THE PROGRESSIVE VOICE OF MINNESOTA
February 5, 2022
Food Freedom Radio
We’re grateful to be telling the story of how the co-ops got started. It’s a very inspirational story, even a little magical, and also with some drama…

MOTHER JONES
January 18, 2022
When Communists and Hippies Fought Over Wheatgerm and Wonder Bread in Minneapolis
A vicious internecine conflict between Maoist revolutionaries and Hippies, the Co-Op Wars threatened to tear the movement apart just as it was blooming…

RACKET
December 3, 2021
When Communists Ran the Co-ops
When Erik Esse started researching the history of the North Country Co-op in 2006, he hadn’t expected to learn about so many fistfights, steel pipes, and car bombs…

WGN’S OUTSIDE THE LOOP RADIO
November 6, 2021
Episode #786: Co-op Wars, Afghan Refugee Youth Struggles, and the Secret History of the Jamestown Massacre
Mike Stephen talks to Erik Esse, the producer of a new documentary about the internal divisions in the co-op movement called The Co-op Wars…

MINNESOTA WOMEN’S PRESS
October 27, 2021
Minnesota’s History of Co-ops
The movement, according to a new documentary about the local “Co-op Wars,” launched from the work of People’s Pantry, based in a Georgeville farm community in Stearns County. It was created as a way to provide healthier food that came from and was provided to individuals…

DEMOCRATIC LEFT
September 2, 2021
The Minnesota Co-op Wars: Lessons in Organizing Gone Wrong
A new documentary, The Co-op Wars , tells a story of conflict in the Minneapolis-St. Paul food co-ops and counterculture… precipitated by a group of community activists (my comrades in the Coop Organization or CO) who took over the People’s Warehouse in Minneapolis in 1975…

CO-OP NEWS
June 5, 2021
The Co-op Wars: Documenting the fall and rise of Minnesota’s flower power co-ops
The souring of the hippy dream as the idealistic 1960s gave way to the embittered ’70s is a familiar tale, but here is an absorbing co-operative variation on the theme, set among the warring factions of Minnesota’s grocery co-ops…

TWINCITIES.COM/PIONEER PRESS
May 15, 2021
New documentary looks at the booming ’70s Twin Cities food co-op scene — and how it almost fell apart
At its core, the new documentary “The Co-op Wars” tells the story about a group of people who unite in defiance, push for the common good, grow and diversify and ultimately discover not everyone has the same idea of what’s actually good…

HOMETOWNSOURCE.COM/SUN THISWEEK
May 24, 2021
Short Redhead Reel Reviews for the week of May 21
Peter Coyote narrates Deacon Warner’s educational, inspirational, thought-provoking, 58-minute documentary about the rise of dozens of customer- and employee-owned grocery co-ops, which started with The People’s Pantry, in the Twin Cities during the 1960s and 1970s…