Becoming an Activist Part 3: deCleyre Co-op

2025-10-12

Note: This is part 3 in a series that I started in early February 2025 but never finished.
- Part 1: Becoming an activist
- Part 2: The Memphis Social Ecology Project

deCleyre was meant to be a full-time activist co-op. It was really just a carry-over of our first shared housing experiment, Douglass House. The difference is that we were purchasing this house and would own it as a co-op whereas Douglass House was rented and much smaller. The larger house would allow for more people, more activity. Also, it had a much larger yard and as we owned it we could do as we pleased with that yard.

Our vision was to be a place where daily life expenses were shared and thus freed up time for folks to live life, which, for a group of young activists, meant living a life of activism. I like to describe it as a beehive because I think it’s the perfect description minus the queen bee. We acted as bees in our community, moving between people, homes, projects, businesses and every space between. We pollinated, collected and dispersed. Busy bees.

We ran deCleyre as we ran many of our projects which is to say, as a fully democratic cooperative or collective. We co-owned it and we self managed it as as workers might manage a co-op business. We regular house meetings, sometimes weekly, sometimes just twice a month. We regularly shared meals and discussion of house affairs was a regular occurance at meals or just sitting on the porch together. Many of the projects had started at the previous house and carried over but here’s a list to sort of provide an overview of the kinds of projects we were creating. Many if not most of these would still be valuable today as a part of building in many communities which is why I’m sharing them! Some were fairly specific to our time, needs and location but even so served a purpose that is still often a need today.

Food-not-Bombs: Collecting food from businesses, sometimes even out of dumpsters (because it was still perfect food that should not have been thrown away). We would cook in our kitchen then deliver once a week at the same location. We ate the meals with the houseless folks we shared it with.
A mid-south RiotGrrl gathering we helped organize and host. A gathering for by and for young feminist punk rockers from the mid-south. Lots of zine exchanging, discussion of health issues and health activism, self-defense, clinic escorting, and networking for future traveling/organizing.
Several community gardens. Our own large front yard was turned into a garden and this was followed by others. These were an always ongoing project that would pop-up, develop and sometimes end, sometimes not.
A regional micro-radio conference to carry on the work of Free Radio Memphis and the larger micro-radio movement. There were others that followed. We traveled to Philly to participate in their conference.
The launch of a bike co-op
The launch of a media co-op
Ongoing support of the food co-op
Hosting of monthly community potlucks. This was one of the best things we did in terms of community building. There’s nothing quite like folks getting together to fill a house with good food and conversation. Often times accompanied by music, mini-dance parties, small campfires well into the morning hours.
Protests of all kinds. This was never ending ranging from local protests of the Iraq war and economic sactions against Iraq to anti-racist protests to environmental related protests to support of political prisoners like Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu Jamal and others.
Support of local labor picket lines.
Constant flyering, distribution of literature, creation of literature and street art.
Zine and book library, tabling at local events and punk shows.
Safe space hostel for traveling activists/train-hopping punk kids. We hosted two groups from Antioch college that were a part of an environmental racism summer program… we hosted them two summers as they worked in Memphis with the local environmental orgs working in the black community where the most toxic of shit was happening. Elon Musk has located his nastyass AI shit in those same neighborhoods in Memphis today so the same fight is ongoing. During the 5-6 years I was there we hosted Pastors for Peace once or twice. They would drive a couple of busses across the country gathering supplies and speaking about Cuba and other issues. Then at the end of their tour would take the supplies to Cuba, breaking the law by breaking the economic blockade.

Some of these travelers often stayed long enough to be residents of the house and some did actually go through the process of joining and staying. I once tried to tally the number of folks that lived there off and on during the years I lived there and those that travelled through… it was something like 45 residents and easily 300+ that stayed while they traveled through. There were 8-14 people living in the house at any given time… it was a big house but we were crammed in tight sometimes.

And a last note, we traveled fairly often to attend/support protests, gatherings, conferences in other cities, towns: NYC, Philly, New Orleans, DC, Chicago, Chattanooga, Portland.

The shared housing was key because it meant we shared expenses. We all worked to pay the bills but mostly part time jobs. Cycling and a couple of used cars for transport. Some were students too. Though it can sometimes be difficult I would always recommend such shared housing for folks. It was a beautiful experience even with the difficulties. And it was of great benefit to creating the life space for activism.

But nothing we did was rocket science. The goal was community activism, as much as possible, in as many forms as possible. A lot of experimentation, a lot of failure. But constant effort. And a lot of fun and celebration mixed into it all… that’s what the potlucks and punk rock shows were for… oh, and just the random crazy fun stuff that hosting travelers always brought to our door. That was 25 years ago but I remeber it fondly as a time when I was able to co-create and share what felt like a fully human experience in which the participants acted together in a desire to create and build better, more just and democratic world. We only ever got a glimpse of that world but through desire and effort we did get to glimpse it. And it was beautiful.

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