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Council recognizes cooperative enterprises and declares support for International Year of Cooperatives
Summary
Providence City Council passed a resolution recognizing cooperative enterprises and 2025 as the International Year of Cooperatives, naming local co‑ops and encouraging city support for cooperative economic development.
The Providence City Council passed a resolution recognizing the contributions of cooperative enterprises, including worker cooperatives, and encouraged city support for cooperative economic development.
The clerk read the resolution, which cites U.N. action and Rhode Island law recognizing worker cooperatives (chapter 6 of title 7 of the Rhode Island General Laws). The resolution names local examples such as White Electric Coffee and Heartleaf Books and directs that copies be transmitted to Mayor Brett P. Smiley, the city's Director of Economic Development Edwin Carr, the lieutenant governor's office and the Rhode Island Worker Cooperative Alliance.
Councilman Sanchez urged colleagues to support the resolution and framed it as meaningful local support for smaller, worker‑owned businesses in the face of consolidation by larger corporations. "This is a very small, but, in my opinion, meaningful, resolution to celebrate and uplift, all the amazing, worker co ops, here in the state of Rhode Island," he said. The clerk announced the voice vote result: 11 ayes, 3 absent; the matter was approved.
