They talk about improving working conditions, providing themselves with medical insurance, even sprucing up the office. More than anything else, they are engaged in taking control of their own lives. Profits will be used to pay decent, competitive wages and benefits and to support, through cash or product donations, people who promote similar ideas. This not what is radical about a collective. Black Bear is not a dotcom start-up with speculative investors pounding on the door.
Workers live communally.
They barter for fresh vegetables with fellow vendors at Soulard Farmers Market. Bohnert rides a bicycle to work. Collective members mainly come from middle-class, white suburban backgrounds. Sweet's father is a psychiatrist. His mother is a professor.