More than a Market, It’s a Movement—A Community Realizing Its Power to Self-Determination Through Action Research

This paper explores amaha’s experience as a co-organizer of a community-driven process from which the Gem City Market—a community/worker-owned cooperative grocery store in Dayton, Ohio—emerged. Using a simple action research (AR) explanatory model co-developed by Alfredo, we show how by getting people involved in addressing issues that affect their everyday lives, participatory methods can help increase community ownership, hope, and power. This is a story of a community beginning to realize its power through participatory knowing and action and also a reminder that the outcome is just another starting point to leverage for continued community mobilization and change. Our purposes in doing so are to honor the community-driven process behind the Gem City story, and, now that people believe change is possible, to learn from that process so that we may continue to develop local agriculture, increase housing accessibility, and build a local just economy shaped by the community and resilient to the ups and downs of the broader economy. Note to the reader : To center the Gem City Market story as experienced by amaha, we have written the paper primarily in his first-person voice. Alfredo’s contributions have been to help weave that experience together with participatory action research ideas and practices that the two have engaged in together since late 2021. Building on Steve Kroeger’s storyboarding processes (see Kroeger et al., this special issue), we have also provided a cartoon version of the story at the beginning of the paper to provide an overview of the overall story.