About.

And that’s not to say we don’t look. We take job training courses and obtain certifications. Scour the “help wanted” ads. Ask our friends and relatives. Build relationships with prison re-entry agencies and social justice organizations. Take jobs that have no future. Remain in jobs where employers take advantage of our situation. Why? 

Scholar James Forman, Jr. has noted that “in the era of mass incarceration, poor African Americans are not given the option of great schools, community investment, and job training.” Instead, society gives them over-policing and prisons. 

The system ensnares an ever-growing spectrum of our friends, family, neighbors, and even children. It disproportionately impacts Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color. As a system shaped during the enslavement of Africans, the carceral state creates scapegoats rather than confronting the root causes of complex social problems.

The cycle of violence feeds itself. Of the hundreds of thousands of people released from prisons each year, the majority end up returning. 

Jobs with Justice.

Our focus is on creating intergenerational wealth. It’s not just about creating jobs, but “jobs with justice” and collective ownership. All people deserve careers where they can find dignity, democracy, and a living wage. 

Inspired by the cooperatives that incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated people have created all around the world, our grassroots organization is helping formerly incarcerated people in Rhode Island to find or create worker-owned cooperative employment opportunities.

Building Movements.

We know that we can’t do it alone. 

Since our founding, we have worked with a broad coalition of allies and partners. 

We are a founding member of the Rhode Island Cannabis Justice Coalition. We believe that repairing the harms of the War on Drugs requires broad and transformative changes to our society. Our dedication to creating worker-owned dispensaries run by and for those harmed by the War on Drugs is part of that process. 

We have worked closely with the immigrant worker center Fuerza Laboral to conduct our pilot project and develop our organization. We work closely with Roots2Empower, whose founder, Tarshire Battle, was working on cooperatives for formerly incarcerated people long before Break the Cycle was founded. We have benefited greatly from the support of the Cooperative Development Initiative, Common Healing, the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, the Kola Nut Collaborative, Reentry Campus Program, Cooperation for Worker Ownership and Power (COWOP), and Direct Action for Rights and Equality.

We need lasting change to our society, and we can only do it be creating cooperative ecosystems in our communities.

Programs.

We are developing strategies and programs to build more and better cooperative efforts. Stay tuned: we have big things in the works. Enter your email below and we’ll keep you in the loop.