Alumni Profile: Margo Dalal

“I wanted my lens to be on people. That’s why I chose social work and followed the community organizing track at the School of Social Work.”

—Margo Dalal, MSW ‘18

HOW DO WE CREATE A DEMOCRATIC ECONOMY?

Margo Dalal, MSW ’18, believes that worker-owned cooperatives will make Detroit a more resilient city and free it from reliance on large corporations.

The worker-owned cooperative model is prevalent in today’s tech, science, professional services and retail industries, but it works well for decentralized industries, such as home health care, home cleaning and child care, where backend functions like scheduling and marketing can be shared by member-owners. “These industries have many immigrant workers,” Dalal says. “These workers can find a place in cooperatives without being exploited.”

Before coming to the School of Social Work, Dalal had cofounded a nonprofit, the Detroit Community Wealth Fund, which finances cooperatives and gives non-extractive loans. After she graduated, she returned there full time.

“I applied my social work skills to marginalized folks who were entrepreneurs,” Dalal explains, “in order to help them accomplish their business goals, be self-sufficient and develop sustainable worker-owned cooperatives to benefit the whole community.”

In worker-owned cooperatives, each worker is also a business owner, sharing the profits and participating in decisions about its future. Community members identify unmet needs, such as inadequate internet access, then start a business to solve the problem—for example, a utility cooperative that distributes shared internet connections. “Cooperatives are locally rooted, and their profits remain at the local level,” Dalal says. “They facilitate a solidarity economy in which we support ourselves and each other. “In Detroit, we’ve seen what it looks like when corporate entities drive the economy. Cheaper opportunities arise out of state or out of the country, and capitalism follows. So rather than rely on corporations that come from outside the community, we build the skills and talents of people already working and living here.”

Dalal is a business person and a social justice advocate. “I wanted to work with cooperatives, but I didn’t want to get an MBA,” she says. “I wanted my lens to be people. That’s why I chose social work and followed the community organizing track at the School of Social Work.”

Dalal sees herself in Detroit for some time to come. “We have environmental and social emergencies,” she says. “We have to create better systems, right now.” Cooperatives help communities by adding jobs, meeting community needs and reinvesting locally. For Dalal, this is a clear path forward for neighborhoods grappling with economic development.

Dalal herself has just cofounded a cooperative called Public Thrift in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. “We are reimagining what a thrift store can be,” Dalal says, “locally owned and worker owned, unlike the Salvation Army or Goodwill, which are global and don’t pay very well.”

Looking to the future, Dalal asks: “How do we increase worker ownership? How do we create a democratic economy? How can coops be tools for wealth building, especially in Black and brown communities, often the most marginalized, and their businesses the least likely to be financed?”

With her commitment and determination and with an MSW in hand, Margo Dalal is certain to find—certain to help create—the answers to those questions.