Credit unions, class, race, and place in New York City

Using diverse economies and relational poverty insights, we examine the place-making practices of the cooperatively owned and democratically structured financial institutions - credit unions. In the U.S., they represent the rarely recognized but widely spread local banking systems that prioritize interests of communities over profit-maximization for outside investors. Their mission to a large degree aligns with anti-poverty and anti-racist social justice struggles and with the ethics of "solidarity" economy, a growing international movement. Our research begins a geographic inquiry into distinct non-capitalist place-making practices of credit unions while also acknowledging that they are a heterogeneous group themselves. In particular, we link their impact on place to commitment to community development and inclusion of low-income and minority populations which signal their resistance to racial capitalism and global finance. These practices are visible in special designations as lowincome, minority, and community development institutions. We find that credit unions in the underserved communities address multiple forms of marginalization, as evident in overlapping designations, with the least amount of resources at their disposal. The non-designated credit unions, accounting for significant cooperative finance membership and resources in New York City, are mainly linked to employment and are more distant from social justice struggles. They eventually spatialize the benefits of solidarity finance in the better off neighborhoods in which their members live. At another level, however, these credit unions scale up solidarity finance and divert significant assets from capitalist circulation to social reproduction and solidarity realms. These findings emphasize the important differences between credit unions that matter for social transformation towards the solidarity economy.