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But worker cooperatives, no matter how successful they might be, cannot be seen as an end in themselves when they are located with a capitalist economy. In the best circumstances, the forestry worker cooperatives of the Northwest may provide examples of something more vital -- of how people who organize in cooperative and egalitarian ways can reach out to more oppressed and exploited people around then and demonstrate a viable alternative to traditional work organizations.

— Worker Cooperatives in America by Robert Jackall, Henry M. Levin

Technically, we no longer allow slavery. But for agribusiness to maintain its current profits while selling food so cheap, somebody still has to harvest the crop for meager wages. Somebody who's not in a position to complain.

— Multispecies Cities by Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Taiyo Fujii, Shweta Taneja

In the dominant US context, making a home typically means eradicating other species. This is why conservation groups are so concerned about development. More houses mean less wildlife. And yet this isn't a necessary correlation. The tropical forest of the Maya lowlands is a richly biodiverse ecosystem, teeming with rare and endemic species. But it's also very much a human creation-managed for generations with fire and other tools to create an ecosystem in which more than 95 percent of the dominant tree species have utility for humans. For Mayan people, making a home for themselves has also meant making a home for their fellow species, including those that pollinate their crops. eat their pests, and enrich their soil.

— Healing Grounds by Liz Carlisle

When Guzman first visited her family farm in Mexico as a nine-year-old girl, she arrived during the harvest. Over the course of her childhood in the Central Valley, Guzman had learned what to expect from harvest time. Long hours apart from her parents. The exhaustion on their faces when they came home, struggling to marshal the energy to play with her. That godawful smell of rotting vegetables on their clothes. But the harvest in El Pedregal was completely different. Whole families participated together, helping one another and their neighbors in a somewhat raucous ritual that made the long hours feel more like a party than a slog of a workday. Physical labor was interspersed with food, laughter, conversation, and music, as well as profound expressions of gratitude for the bounty of the earth-in which all those involved would share.

This, Guzman realized, is what farming looked like when it wasn't wage work for an oppressed few but an entire community's way of life.

— Healing Grounds by Liz Carlisle