Labor

Chicago’s Cafe YO! Combines Youth Jobs, Activism, and Caffeine

Kari Lydersen / In THESE TIMESMarch 23, 2012

Chicagoan David Meyers was never one for a 9-to-5 job that didn’t let him express his creativity and desire for radical social change. So seven years ago, Meyers founded a one-man fair trade organic coffee roasting and distribution outfit called Resistance Coffee. The labels on his bags of coffee usually bear information about an ongoing social justice struggle or a cryptic image like a McMansion with a slash through it, or an alternate name like Kropotkin Koffee.

Learning about coffee on the fly, Meyers roasts fair trade beans from around the world in small roasters stashed in garages around Chicago, and sells them to individual buyers and coffee shops, often as fundraisers for local groups. (Full disclosure: David is a friend of mine.)

This spontaneous and DIY spirit also characterizes Café YO!, a new venture Meyers helped launch in January, which trains urban youth in roasting and marketing fair trade coffee, and ideally will allow them to visit and connect with independent coffee growers around the world.

In April, the first three teen members of Cafe YO! will begin roasting coffee and creating custom artistic labels for the coffee bags, working three days a week for $10 an hour. While the pay isn’t high, given the group’s lack of financing, Meyers told me that the idea is to ​“plant the seed” of do-it-yourself entrepreneurship in kids from low-income, beleaguered neighborhoods like Humboldt Park, Cafe YO!‘s first outpost thanks to collaboration with the Puerto Rican Cultural Center.

Meyers noted that many youth in these neighborhoods have natural business and networking skills, but find only limited options like fast food joints, the military or the drug trade in which to use their talents. He hopes Cafe YO! can provide another outlet. Meyers told me:

There aren’t jobs out there for young people now, so what a lot of them are doing is just making their own jobs. The hipsters are doing this all over the place (with artistic micro-enterprises)… We’re trying to cross the race, class and gender divide, taking the business skills some kids have from their daily lives and incubating the idea that they can do something else.

The teens will spend one day a week roasting coffee, one day on designing the custom labels and one day on marketing. While coffee roasting is in and of itself a skill, Meyers sees it as perhaps more important as a symbol. He told me:

Roasting creates this weird space where you get really creative. Roasting one day a week might sound like a little thing, but it’s actually a big thing, it’s doing something that creates wealth and value, it’s making something happen just by the will to do it. When you combine the culture, politics and economics (of the project), you can go from the idea that people who are making something are exploited to them being empowered.

Once it gets off the ground, the idea is for Café YO to also raise money for causes, with one of the first being the Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera, one of 13 Puerto Rican independentistas arrested in the early 1980s who received inordinately long sentences after refusing to acknowledge the U.S. court system. Eleven of the prisoners had their sentences commuted by then-President Clinton in 1999; another was paroled in 2010, so only Lopez Rivera remains behind bars.

While the first participants are from Humboldt Park, the goal is for Cafe YO! to ultimately serve as an umbrella group for youth in different locations to start their own small coffee businesses. Meyers said that after a 10-week pilot period, they will evaluate whether the Humboldt Park youth might spin off their own business. Additionally, the urban bike collective Ciclo Urbano in Humboldt Park has partnered with Cafe YO! to deliver coffee orders.

Meyers and the other Cafe YO! founders — Jane Moccia and Eric Burton — are in the early stages of fundraising to send youth to meet with coffee growers in places like Puerto Rico and Nicaragua. Meyers said he has been talking wiith labor unions, among other groups.

Last year Meyers and other members of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center visited coffee growers in the highlands of Puerto Rico, an experience he said ​“opened doors to thinking more broadly about the world and what you can do in it.” He calls these types of connections ​“globalization from below,” as described on Café YO’s website:

Globalization from below. We do this within a new economic model that runs on equitable labor partnerships, makes the smallest possible carbon footprint, and works with youth who are developing the tools to create their own livelihoods and campaigning for change and justice along the way. We honor social life and action; we are greed abolitionists; and we take solidarity seriously…

Confederated, caffeinated, and free of sluggishness; we are promoting horizontal expansion, determined by the interests of project participants. The goal? To end the line artificially dividing wealth from the majority of the people of this earth. To put people before profit. To energize new and inspired realities. Hmm, what else? Oh yeah, to serve up some kick-ass coffee.

Cafe YO! initially will share a roaster with Café Chicago, run by workers at the Latino Union workers center, who are roasting and selling coffee with the ultimate goal of opening a café for day laborers waiting for work. Meyers also helped launch Cafe Chicago, which like Cafe YO!, has close ties to Puerto Rico. As I wrote for Area Chicago last year:

Norberto Gonzalez, 46, came to Chicago from Puerto Rico a year ago with no job or place to stay. Someone told him about the Albany Park Workers Center. He didn’t get any work his first day there, and considered ​“not wasting my time” by going back. But he did, and now he says the workers center ​“put clothes on my back, put a roof over my head. That’s why I want to give back and help create opportunities for other people.”

Cafe Chicago Hits the Ground Running, Stumbling, and Flying. All at the Same Time.

Cafe Chicago has hit the ground, running, stumbling, and flying. All at the same time.

First, the ground. We are creating a reality where the immigrant day laborers who are involved in Cafe Chicago can one day take it on fully, themselves, with the proper training. Personally, I did not know how much work this would be, but we are all committed to the idea, and the transfer is taking huge amounts of energy and time. That said, our cooperative members are taking on responsibilities as they can, and though it would have been easier to start a fair trade organic coffee company that funds social change and run by experienced outsiders, we really are maintaining a vision that we believe will prove to be where the deeper transformation happens, economic, social, and really, spiritual. Putting the workers in the drivers' seat.

We've had events at the Workers Center where 75 people showed up from all round Chicago, eager to learn about our work, wanting to take the ideas back to their communities, listening and singing along with the singer songwriters we've brought in to document our work in musical form. And it is here that we now realize, we've sparked a bona fide grassroots movement. From below. Pretty intense.

The cooperative has four regular members, and a dozen other day laborers involved in various ways, less regularly.

We've gotten huge name recognition in Chicago, while selling maybe 80-100 lbs of coffee per week (tiny!). We are working out so many glitches that come up with our language barriers, people's previous lack of experience of taking responsibility and ownership, lack of experience with business ....

But we seem to hit on the right methods slowly, and are good at bringing in outside support (for example, our college professor friend who is working on our Business Plan with us, has provided an amazing clarifying and focusing of our mission and our business). So, hitting the ground's proven to have quite a few stumbles, but we are learning to walk.

It helps to have a damn good rich and chocolatey coffee, from La FEM in the highlands of Nicaragua. At La FEM, the women who participate in the cooperative not only grow these magical beans but teach and learn construction and other building skills essential to further survival and thriving.

Our name recognition is coming through word of mouth; and a lot of writing skills put to good use in social media; the sway of the Latino Union and of the Chicago Coffee Confederation in different and complementary arenas; it's a real nice mish mash.

We have very good networks with almost all segments of Chicago's arts, radical, immigrant, worker, and progressive communities and our organizations. Our media work has exceeded all expectations, and is where we are flying: an article in internationally-read Latin American Herald Tribune; ChicagoUnionNews.com did a piece that put us in front of Chicago's unions (and national ones as well); and a piece on ABC7 News during primetime, probably the biggest visual media in Chicago, where we performed quite quite well. The New York Times will be around soon, it's the first media avenue I've begun to actively pursue.

All that said, we are now aware that we are not only a part of a large-scale economic seachange, but a leading voice. A tugboat. And we are keeping in mind, because we've sparked so many imaginations and tapped into a model of grasping and taking the reins of self-determination, that we can assist others in creating similar endeavors. Whether in coffee or other essentials. We hope to work with some of the other organizations in the National Day Labor Organizing Network, to establish ten more Cafe ______'s in different cities, by the end of 2013. They've been calling us, watching us, supporting us.

Locally, we've identified other niches where projects like worker-owned Cafe Chicago would have wide open space for success (such as a fair trade organic tortilleria), and rather than thinking we can do this too, will start working with others so that they can begin the process. Expanding horizontally, as the Chicago Coffee Confederation has, rather than vertically.

There's a lot more that could be said, but I wanted to let you know where we're at, and again thank you for your support, that support has proven to be vital to our sense that yes, we can do this, and others think so too.

So Thanks! And happy holidays to you ...

David

Cafe YO! - Made by Artists: Made by Youth: Making Community and a New Economy.

It started seven years ago.

Loss of employment led a guy to start roasting 100% fair trade organic green coffee beans in a friend's garage. Then selling it, bartering it, trading it for sandwiches and shoes and shelter, making a living while also raising funds for social change efforts ranging from the Chicago Women’s Health Center to Radios Populares to the Latino Union to West Town Bikes.
This endeavor became known as Resistance Coffee, and maybe you’ve seen it on the shelf at Newleaf Natural Grocery in Rogers Park.
Over two years ago, this quirky success morphed – not by growing into a larger, vertical, vertigo-producing corporation, mind you, but horizontally.
Two other fellas took up the original model, roasting on homemade equipment (BBQ grills! Propane! Dilapidated Garages! A field in Michigan!) with little or no investment, and now have parallel micro-endeavors, Grinderman Coffee (grindermancoffee.com), and Miscellaneous Treats. This trio call themselves the Chicago Coffee Confederation. This trio have gone on to bring in serious creative energy, artists of all kinds to assist with graphics, writing, artwork, web design, and even music related to social change and … coffee.
Last year, two of these roasters, David Meyers of Resistance Coffee and Michael McSherry of Grinderman, started working closely with the Latino Union in the creation of a larger project, called Café Chicago (CafeChicago.org). Café Chicago has grown into the city’s first immigrant-run worker-owned cooperative coffee roaster, toasting up fair trade organic beans grown by the women of La FEM cooperative, funding the immigrant rights work of the Latino Union (latinounion.org). Day laborers who've stood on corners braving bitter cold and extreme heat and boredom waiting for jobs to turn up, are now taking on all aspects of a coffee-roasting business. Not for profit, but for people and community.
Now the gang are up to something yet again.
The next phase of this movement, which is largely about growing community, economic justice, and the leveraging of resources and talents for people and the environment not profit, is youth-focused.
It’s a coffee venture.
It's Café YO!.

Café YO! Youth Organizing, Youth Occupying. The economy and the community.
The idea taking shape is the creation of a city-wide, youth-oriented coffee company. Fair trade? Check. Organic? Of course. Workers make the decisions? Mais oui. The workers and the creators this time - with the generous support and talents of a burgeoning group of adult artists, writers, musicians, activists, organizers who meet weekly at the Hideout's fantastic Bread and Soup gatherings – are youth. From across the city, we are coming together to not only roast, package, sell, and distribute this amazing coffee, but also to travel to countries of origin to establish relationships with coffee growers from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, and African countries.
Café YO! is also developing a citywide band of youth and adult musicians – bringing economics and creativity together in new ways. Another piece of the puzzle. Probably another story.
Café YO! is now making connections with teens around the city on street corners and through rad schools, and developing fundraising materials – a public relations packet, if you will. Funding will be forthcoming from various unions in Chicago and across the country, as well as from generous individuals of all stripes.
Consider supporting Cafe YO!. Your first reward? Making possible the very first stage of the very first youth-run, community-based fair trade organic coffee company in the country. In the world.
Your second reward? One day soon, drinking the coffee they bring.

ABC7 Chicago: Cafe Chicago promotes sustainably, job training

 Cafe Chicago promotes sustainability, 

job training

By ABC7

Friday, December 9, 2011

December 9, 2011 (CHICAGO)

The Latino Union is known for fighting for the rights of immigrants and specifically rallying for fair working conditions for day laborers. Now, the group is trying to move into sustainability for themselves and for the land.

Coffee beans are more than just a precursor to a morning jolt. They may be the seeds of economic independence.

"A lot of workers in the Latino Union needed work, but also needed a different sort of way of creating dignity," David Meyers, Chicago Coffee Confederation, said.

The Latino Union and the group of small batch coffee roasters known as the Chicago Coffee Federation is entering the coffee business with Cafe Chicago; the proceeds benefit the nonprofit Latino Union.

"A lot of people start really cool coffee companies that are fair trade and organic to fund social change and that's what we do, too. But we put the workers directly into the driver's seat," Meyers said.

The company is training day laborers who ordinarily work construction jobs to learn the coffee business. They are roasting, packaging and even marketing the product. The product is one they say they are proud to sell.

"We chose coffee from Nicaragua because Nicaragua has one of the best," Norberto Gonzalez, Cafe Chicago, said. "It's premium coffee. It's Arabica bean and it's actually from the higher mountains and it's shade coffee... The fertilizer has no chemicals. We use the skin from the bean as the fertilizer."

The local group has partnered farming cooperative in South America to grow the beans and guarantees the workers are paid a fair wage.

"Not only do we help a cooperative called La Fem farmers, female farmers in Nicaragua and their families, but also it's like the circle of life. It comes back to our workers here at Latino Union and we help their families," Marisol Willis, Cafe Chicago, said.

The packaging is made from recycled paper and is lined with a plant-based material. Cafe Chicago coffee is available in several area stores, and online at cafechicago.org.

Lessons from Immigrant Workers: Occupying the Hood, Transforming the Economy - Illinois Humanities

 Lessons from Immigrant Workers: Occupying the Hood, Transforming the Economy

Day laborers in Albany Park have been occupying the only spaces open to them in the area for years while searching for work: street corners. Meanwhile, the coffee roasters of the Chicago Coffee Confederation have been occupying unused spaces like empty garages and backyards for close to a decade in order to bring great tasting fair trade organic coffee to the people while supporting the work of organizations like the Latino Union. The coming together of these two forces in Cafe Chicago is paving a new road towards economic self-determination and transformation.

Join us for this special Café Society conversation with members of the Albany Park Workers Center that promises to be heavy on dialogue and refreshments! Plus, Ami Saraiya and Anna Soltys will perform their original song “Sweet Chariot” inspired by and about day laborers.

Cafe Chicago coffee beans, by the pound, will be available for purchase for your holiday pleasure.

Reservations are required, reserve your spot here.

From “Brewing Justice at Café Chicago” by Kari Lydersen

“Waiting long hours on street corners for jobs, often in freezing weather, Chicago day laborers drink a lot of coffee. Now they will also be roasting and selling it. And rather than the watered-down McDonald’s or Aldi’s coffee they often drink, it will be organic fair trade coffee sold at sliding scale prices to make it affordable for people from all walks of life. This is Café Chicago, a new worker-owned cooperative under the auspices of the Latino Union and the Albany Park Workers Center. The project has been in the works for more than a year, and on May 1 will be selling its first bags of coffee….At a meeting in late March, said Café Chicago worker-owner Marisol Willis, 42, ‘We all came together as one, the energy was amazing. Everyone had their different skills and things they could offer. When you work together, everyone benefits. If we just keep that attitude, there’s no question of anything but success.’”

Questions for Consideration

When should people occupy a space? What can we learn from day laborers in Albany Park on occupying spaces in a healthy sustainable way? How can those involved in similar struggles develop horizontal relationships with other groups? How can alliances like these sustain a movement?

Want to learn more?

• Day Laborer at Heart (film from Albany Park Workers’ Center)
• Chicago as a Fair Trade City
• An Office for Day Laborers Waiting on the Corner
• Dark Roast, With a Whiff of Anarchy featuring David Meyers

Free and open to the public. For more information please call 312.422.5580.

If you need a sign interpreter or require other arrangements to fully participate, please call 312.422.5580. For parking locations near the facility, please visit ChicagoParkingMap.com.

https://old.ilhumanities.org/events/lessons-from-immigrant-workers-occupying-the-hood-transforming-the-economy/

Feed the People, Feed the Revolution: This Year at On-the-Fly Farm

 

on-the-fly farm

The Chicory Center's On-the-Fly Farm is an organic farming project with 

the values and practice of solidarity and liberation at its core. The Chicory 

Center works towards creating a more just food system, and with a 

subscription to  On-the-Fly Farm's community-supported agriculture project, 

you support an organic farmer, contribute to the growth of sustainable 

farming, get weekly deliveries of fresh produce, and also support 

grassroots organizing in Chicago and in Southwest Michigan. On-the-Fly 

is now looking for new subscribers for the 2011 growing season.

On-the-Fly Farm grows a variety of vegetables (kale, potatoes, tomatoes, 
several different beans, strawberries, winter squashes, zucchinis, 

cucumbers, pac choi, salad mixes, radishes, turnips, garlic, eggplant, peppers, 

onions, sugar and snow peas, dill, oregano, basil).  We’re also committed to 

developing relationships with other small farmers nearby, so from time to time we

 add free-range eggs, fruit, pickles, or other produce we don’t grow ourselves to

 your weekly bags.  We are also continuing our partnership with Earth First Farm

 to bring you organic apples near the end of the season. Our fairly traded, organic 

Resistance Coffee, grown by the women of La FEM cooperative in Nicaragua, 

will also be part your weekly bag several times throughout the summer. 

Subscriptions cost $400.  For this you'll receive at least 15 deliveries of fresh

 produce over a period of 18 weeks beginning in the middle to end of June.

 Current drop-offs include Humboldt Park, Rogers Park, Evanston, and Logan

 Square, with other area drop-offs possible as well.  Home delivery is available for an extra $50.

This year, On-the-Fly Farm will be growing veggies for New Leaf Natural Grocery 

in Chicago; and perhaps participating in the new DIY McKinley Park market that our

 fellow farmers with Foxglove Farm started two years ago.

Indie Coffee Roasting Slowly Waking Up Chicago (pub. Gapers Block)

 

Indie Coffee Roasting Slowly Waking Up Chicago

By Lindsay Muscato

Coffee roaster Michael McSherry ushers me through his Wicker Park apartment, across the backyard and through the side door of a dim garage. Soaring classical music blares from a plastic radio. David Meyers, McSherry's comrade in DIY roasting, smiles and watches over two flame-filled grills under a shower of what looks like ashy confetti. The two share McSherry's ramshackle garage space -- which reminds me either of an old-timey blacksmith's shop or a cheerful, deliciously coffee-scented hell.

When I first learned about DIY roasting, I instantly wanted to try it, even though I couldn't articulate the appeal: Why huddle over jerry-rigged propane grills in cold, smoky garages? Why not just go to the supermarket or a big local roaster like Intelligentsia or Metropolis? My friend Rich Park, co-owner of the Ch'Ava cafe in Uptown, pinpointed the allure of the craft: "They're hackers," he said. "They're the MacGyvers of coffee." Micro-roasting means constantly improvising, creating new machinery where there's none on the market or none for your budget. It means drinking lots and lots of test coffee and fine-tuning your ear to hear how beans are faring on machines without high-tech sensors.

As fellow roaster Jesse Diaz of Star Lounge Coffee Bar says, "All we have is our passion and our palate."

Want to join the ranks of Chicago's coffee hackers? Here's how to get started.

1) Be cool with heat.
Micro-roasters vary in scale and skill but they all use heat. It's possible to roast green coffee beans on a stovetop cast-iron skillet, though billowing smoke may spook the neighbors. The roasters I spoke with either used modified grills or, in the case of Star Lounge and Lakeview-based Asado Coffee Company, run cafes that also house small gas-fired drum roasting operations.

For McSherry, a few minor fires were all part of the learning curve. He roasts on a propane grill with a rotisserie spit outfitted with a steel mesh canister that hold the beans and rotates over the flame. Beans can fall from the canister if it's not closed properly, and if beans are left in the grill too long, beware of meltdown. McSherry quickly learned not to leave the grill unattended: "Probably two fires I've had were just 'cause I was getting a snack or something."

To avoid over-roasting, mind the crack. Beans start green, When heated they start to crackle, or crack, at specific intervals that alert the savvy roaster to the state of the bean as they turn more and more brown. There's a fine line between French roast and a piece of charcoal. Once roasted, beans need to be cooled and have the chaff removed somehow. For garage roasters, this can be a basic tabletop fan like the one covering Meyers with flecks of chaff.

McSherry lifts a plastic bucket. "I keep this water here, just in case of emergencies."

But since those initial fires, he hasn't needed it. Meyers looks over and says with a friendly laugh, "Is that what that's for? I always wondered."

2) Make friends.
McSherry and Meyers joined forces to form the Chicago Coffee Confederation, a loose alliance of three like-minded indie roasters. The third member, AREA magazine founder Daniel Tucker, roasts in an alley near his Logan Square apartment.

Tucker says: "Everyone on my block is obsessed with my roasting. I keep the garage door rolled up. I get hilarious questions, like are 'you roasting popcorn?' I understand their confusion because they're like, 'what the hell is he doing?'"

Case in point -- when I visit Meyers and McSherry roasting, an elderly man in a cap and overcoat shuffles up to the garage door and pokes his head in. Meyers chats with him for a while. When the man shuffles off again, Meyers muses, "We should start serving coffee out here."

3) Don't quit your day job. Or, quit your day job.
Micro-roasting is a social, connected craft that won't necessarily generate big bucks. Chicago Coffee Confederation members sell one pound for about $13 or $10 for three or more, including delivery. McSherry and Tucker delivery by bike, Meyers sometimes drives. Each bag is labeled with the region it's from and the date roasted.

They mostly sell to friends and acquaintances, aware that they're operating without business licenses, and all rely on other gigs and trades. McSherry, for example, runs a house-painting business and plays in several local bands. Tucker usually roasts one day per month to subsidize his writing projects. He delivers about thirty pounds a month via bike.

Still it's possible to spin roasting into a full-time gig. Meyers is working with the Latino Union to spearhead Cafe Chicago, a project that will ultimately allow immigrant workers to own and run a small roasting operation and a cafe. The group got a $20,000 grant last week, enough seed money for a jump start.

Asado founder Kevin Ashtari decided to open a full-blown company after roasting for years on his backyard grill, though even now he believes in staying relatively micro. "We're sticking with small batch roasting," he says. "That's the level of attention to detail that these kind of cups require."

Star Lounge has a cafe and about 25 wholesale accounts for its Dark Matter label and continues to grow.

4) Craft what you need. Embrace the Systeme D.
When I asked McSherry if he could roast without access to electricity, his first thought was: "I guess you could get an exercise bike that could power a roaster and blow off the chaff with the fan on the front. I could rig something like that up."

Diaz at Star Lounge wants to craft new collaborations. He's mulling long-term plans to form a buyer's cooperative that will make it easier for small coffee roasters to stay in the black and avoid misleading, marketing-driven labeling of beans.

Rich Park at Ch'Ava says: "That's the coffee community. In cooking we call that the Systeme D. It's like, for chefs, if you run out of onions, you use shallots. Throw in a little of this and a little of that. Improvise. Modify. Get yourself out of trouble."

Wikipedia tells me that in France the Systeme D is shorthand for thinking fast and getting things done outside traditional means: "The verb se débrouiller means 'to untangle.' The verb se démerder means 'to get yourself out of shit'. ... It has the connotation of getting around the system, managing to accomplish, or breaking the rules."

This may be the best way to describe the thread that unites the roasters I met -- in many senses. They're improvising their way towards their own vision of a better future - alone, but together. Diaz is fiercely interested in starting a coffee farm in Mexico that's truly fair for workers and says that all information should be free -- he says he'll teach roasting to anyone who walks through the door of Star Lounge. Meyers wants to "reconfigure work" and find new paths for collective enterprise through ventures like Cafe Chicago.

Meyers hopes that someday there will be a roaster on every block, loosely confederated and highly caffeinated.

He says: "Ultimately anything you do in a confederation is going to come easier.... Even Michael and I working together makes it all feel less 'lone wolf'. It changes your face, makes you much more relaxed. That's why I love hanging out with Jesse [Diaz]. He doesn't have that competitive thing at all... It's all happening not with corporate funding or governmental support, not with an intellectual elite telling people what to do. It's regular people coming up with ideas. " Try finding that on a supermarket shelf.