Red Emma's, a worker cooperative bookstore and cafe funded by Seed Commons network member the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy, was featured in the New York Times along with its founding worker-owner and Seed Commons co-director Kate Khatib.

Red Emma’s, a worker-owned bookstore and cafe that opened in Baltimore two decades ago, emerged from the “anti-globalization” movement in the late 1990s, which fought against free-trade policies and economic inequality, said Kate Khatib, one of its founders.

Protesters disrupted corporate summits around the world, culminating in the 1999 shutdown of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. These demonstrations were “effective but ephemeral,” Khatib said. Some of the organizers decided to create “an institution with an infrastructural component”: Red Emma’s, named after Emma Goldman, a labor organizer, was the result.

In a two-story building the workers bought in 2021, the cooperative hosts community programming and a core education program, the Baltimore Free School, with self-guided seminars and book clubs on topics like the climate crisis and prison abolition. Local organizers also use the downstairs cafe and event space to get petitions signed and hold meetings.

“We wanted to create an open space for people to share the work they’re doing and figure out ways to cross-pollinate,” Khatib said.

Read the article: "The Rise of Bookstores With a Social Mission: The pandemic fueled a boom in social justice movements and indie bookstores. The two come together in these worker-owned shops." (Claire Wang, The New York Times, June 10th 2024)