As part of our yearlong engagement with the elements of Commerce, we present a gathering of projects creating alternative paths within our current economic system. The Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op will sell Autonomous Zapatista Coffee with the goal of building a partnership between ‘Brooklyn Torches’, a Brooklyn alternative currency that builds community and another alternative currency, Digital Material Sunflower. Mary Jeys will be selling Brooklyn Torches. In addition, the Coffee Co-op’s artist-in-residence Gabriela Ceja will draw portraits of visitors while offering coffee and conversation about work and alienation as part of her Workers Utopia project. Lastly, the Arts & Labor’s Alternative Economies Working Group will make available its 2015 edition of the NYC Alternative Resource Guide listing  alternatives for education, housing, childcare and more. Join us for an afternoon of radical fun, radical coffee and radical ideas! 

The Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op is a project developed by Fran Ilich that offers organic coffee sourced locally in Chiapas, Mexico from Zapatista autonomous farms. Its goal is to connect social movements and geographical regions – Chiapas and New York City – and to create a horizontal financial flow between social movements. A cup of coffee can be traded for any alternative currency, barter, or time deposits (as well, as voluntary money donations). Proceeds are used to buy more coffee from the autonomous Zapatista Municipalities. Fran Ilich’s project has received an inaugural ABOG Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art from A Blade of Grass.