My foray into the cooperative movement began when I was a student at Indiana University doing campaign-based activism. Along with my fellow activists, I focused on putting a stop to things like the buy-out of the university-owned bookstores on campus by Barnes and Noble and the high costs of rental housing in near our campus. After learning about the cooperative model — in which the users of an organization’s products or services own and control the organization — our focus shifted to presenting cooperative solutions to these issues.