East Side Freedom Library, Ramsey County Historical Society, and University of Minnesota Press invite you to the next session of “History Revealed”

Grocery Activism: The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota

A conversation with author Craig Upright, Associate Professor of Sociology, Winona State University

Thursday, June 4, 2020, 7pm

Grocery Activism looks back to the 1970s, when the mission of cooperative grocery stores shifted from political activism to the promotion of natural and organic foods. The story of the fraught relationship of these new-wave organizations to the organic food industry is an instructive case study in the history of activists intervening in capitalist markets to promote social change.

Focusing on Minnesota, a state with both a long history of cooperative projects, this book explores how two movements—promoting cooperative enterprise and sustainable agriculture—came together in the particular historical moment of the 1960s-1970s. This book shows how members of this fraternity of organizations supported one another in their mutual quest to maintain fiscal solvency, promote better food-purchasing habits, support sustainable agricultural practices, and extol the virtues of cooperative enterprise.

It also raises questions which are particularly relevant in this historical moment, when the COVID-19 pandemic has people asking, in new and critical ways, about the relationships between human beings and our environment. Please join author Craig Upright in conversation with ESFL’s Co-Executive Director Peter Rachleff as they explore these and related questions.

This event will premiere on ESFL’s Facebook page!

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