About
What is the Solidarity Economy?
The solidarity economy is a global movement to build an equitable and sustainable economy that prioritizes people and the planet over profit and endless growth. It is a post-capitalist framework rooted in principles of mutualism, cooperation, democracy, equity, shared prosperity, sustainability, and pluralism rather than exploitation and extraction.
The Solidarity Economy is both a normative vision for alternative political, economic and social systems that meet human and ecological needs, and an assemblage of values-driven practices operating at multiple scales and geographies- such as worker cooperatives, community land trusts, mutual aid networks, public banking, participatory budgeting, and people’s assemblies- to build more democratic, equitable, just, and sustainable societies.
The Solidarity Economy Research, Policy & Law Project is committed to supporting the solidarity economy ecosystem through research, advocacy, technical expertise, critical analysis, and community engagement. We work to support the expanding network of worker cooperatives, community land trusts, limited equity housing cooperatives, food sovereignty projects, community ownership models, and other initiatives resisting all forms of oppression and injustice in Chicagoland and beyond.
Our Team
Director, Solidarity Economy Research, Policy & Law Project
Stacey Sutton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois Chicago, and the Director of the Solidarity Economy Research, Policy & Law Project. Through her work at SERPL, she aims to advance interdisciplinary research, critical analysis, and enabling policies; foster education, training and technical assistance; and illuminate the transformative potential of cooperative economies at the intersection of social movements and prefigurative politics.
Prof. Sutton’s scholarship, teaching, and community engagement efforts center two interrelated frameworks: advancing “cooperative cities,” focusing on economic democracy, solidarity economies, cooperative ownership, democratic decision-making, and prefiguration; and second, critiquing “punitive cities” or place-based policies and institutional practices that reproduce spatial, racial, and gendered inequities. Their current research initiative, Building Real Black Utopias, is a multi-city exploration of Black-centered solidarity economy ecosystems in the U.S., focusing on their infrastructures, ideologies, and practices.
Our team
Director, Community Enterprise & Solidarity Economy Law Clinic
Renee Hatcher is a human rights and community development lawyer. She is an Assistant Professor of Law and the Director of the Community Enterprise & Solidarity Economy Clinic at UIC Law School.
Professor Hatcher was recently named a Solidarity Economy Law Fellow with the Ujimi Project in Boston. She has previously served as Co-Director of the Chicago Community Wealth Building Ecosystem, a member of the City of Chicago’s Community Wealth Building Advisory Committee, board member of the New Economy Coalition and a member of the current administration’s Economic Vitality and Equity transition team.
Prior to joining UIC Law School, Hatcher taught in the Community Development Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law and served a post-doctoral appointment at the University of Texas-Austin’s Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis.