About the group 

Cenzontle Language Justice Cooperative is based in Western North Carolina, with a strong commitment to staying local, and keeping their worker-owners based within their community, despite the fact that the cooperative, like so many others, can (and does!) also take on a wide range of national and international clients virtually. As of February, 2023, Cenzontle has four members, with two employees on the path to membership. Over the years, some worker-owners have left, and new ones have joined, but most of the worker-owners that have left the cooperative remain on as part of the group’s wide network of freelance contractors. 

Through their three areas of work, interpretation, translation, and capacity-building, Cenzontle serves a variety of local clients including a number of nonprofits as well as the City of Asheville and Buncombe County. The cooperative considers itself a “values-first” entity and invested significant labor in creating an operating agreement handbook to codify its structures and principles, which any worker-owner can propose changes to. For maximum flexibility and protection for worker-owners without work status, the cooperative is registered as an LLC, and the cooperative principles by which they organize the group are laid out in the operating agreement. 

In terms of organization of the cooperative, the group has a steward, which is functionally similar to a general manager and each work area has a coordinator. Among the recent lessons the cooperative has integrated into their practice is a need to better support and resource the people who hold the role of coordinator. Previously, people who held the role of coordinator still worked as translators and/or interpreters. Now, the co-op has brought someone in to dedicate themselves solely to that role. Patty explains that “every time we tried a new system it was to try and address burnout.” Cenzontle has also piloted a new membership system in which there are two classes of worker-owners. Operational members commit to working at least 20 hours a week with the co-op, are able to have a regular schedule, work in the office and access employee benefits. Governance members are people who still want to be involved in the co-op, work regularly as a member, and get priority over contractors for jobs, but who cannot commit as much time to building and running the cooperative. 

How it all got started

Cenzontle was born in 2017, in the wake of President Trump’s election, in an effort to create viable employment options for people in the community who were either undocumented or at risk of losing their status under the new administration. A cooperative also offered the opportunity to better organize the language justice work that was already happening locally. 

Cenzontle was made possible by the deep legacies of language justice in Western North Carolina. The group locates themselves in the legacy of Roberto Tijerina and Alice Johnson, who built up the Highlander Research and Education Center’s multilingual capacity-building program in the early 2000s, the former Wayside Center for Popular Education in Virginia, and Asheville’s Center for Participatory Change (CPC). Ada Volkmer and Andrea Golden were both trained as language justice workers through Highlander and went on to lead the language justice circle at CPC. Current worker-owner and Cenzontle steward, Monse, became involved with language justice work through CPC and went on to co-found Cenzontle with Andrea. 

In many ways, Cenzontle took up the mantle of CPC’s language justice work and has gradually taken over some of its functions, like providing regular interpreter training workshops for community members, and establishing a mentorship program to support emerging language justice workers. 

Co-op Ecosystem of Western North Carolina

Cenzontle is bolstered by and contributes to a particularly robust cooperative ecosystem within Western North Carolina. CPC has historically helped develop co-ops and at the time that Cenzontle was founded, there was already a burgeoning resident-owned mobile home cooperative in the area. So, the decision to form a cooperative was also a decision to contribute to building the local solidarity economy. 

In addition to being a member of the U.S. Federation of Worker-Owned Cooperatives, Cenzontle is a member of the Worker-Owned Cooperative Network of PODER Emma Community Ownership, an organization focused on building community power and supporting co-op development in the Emma community/neighborhood. Through both networks, Cenzontle receives support and guidance such as evaluation tools, skills trainings, access to employee benefits, and non-extractive loans from Seed Commons. 

There is abundant cross-pollination amongst the cooperatives in their network. Cenzontle co-founder Andrea Golden co-founded PODER Emma, Monse is also a resident owner of a housing cooperative, and Cenzontle’s business coaches and bookkeepers are both from the PODER Emma network. The cooperative’s offices are in a building owned by a real estate cooperative from the network as well. 

Because of this deep interconnection between cooperatives and local organizing, many of Cenzontle’s clients are also within this ecosystem, and the multilingual spaces that the group facilitates have been key to local community wins. Cenzontle is committed to remaining interwoven with this local community of struggle and support - offering and receiving solidarity in turn.