Background on the Project:
a.k.a. Vox Pop Dox:
December 2024 Update:
The new Vox Pop Business Plan done, check it out.
We are courting investors at the friends-and-family level. Contact us to discuss.
Our future valuation is set. We show in this valuation document that Vox Pop LLC will be worth at least $2.4 MM in about five years.
Older, Historical Dox from Vox Pop:
2009 • Slide Deck Presentation on Vox Pop
2006 • MiniPlan - 2 pp. Micro Biz Plan on Vox Pop
History of Vox Pop:
From 2004 to 2009, Vox Pop was a legendary NYC coffeehouse that created space for a mass movement of grassroots social change, new movements, new books and newspaper publications, and a ton of public events. So many people have asked the founders to start it up again.
In 2024, we declare that the best is yet to come.
Vox Pop Axioms:
We Believe:
Violence is outdated. Higher consciousness is the ultimate tool for change.
Everything is possible. The great figures of history are just a baseline that each of us can surpass. We each have the radical change-making power in us.
The more educated people become, the more people shift to the left.
Higher consciousness develops as society progresses. Old religions die and new forms of higher consciousness evolve.
More Thoughts from Sander Hicks, the Founder:
Vox Pop was more than just a coffeehouse, more than a “brand.” It was alive. It was a community center and a political incubator. It was a consciousness-raiser. It was a space of shared struggle and rambunctious open mics. It also had the best coffee in New York: fair trade, robust, fruit-forward, organic coffee from Ethiopia and Peru and points beyond.
Now, 20 years after the original Vox Pop opened, we have worked hard on improving on the model. The new version will practice the politics and philosophy of non-violence, drawing from the lineage of Jesus, Buddha, and Dr. Martin Luther King. As beacons of inspiration and spirituality, those figures incite us to create spaces for community care and thoughtful contemplation.
Funny enough, all three of those figures also practiced a politics rooted in love of the People, emancipation from violence and war, imperialism and racial antagonism. All three pointed to the empowerment of everyday individuals as radical agents of change.
Vox Pop 2024 will be a worker-owned cooperative, both giving back to the community while also pursuing viable and equitable models of economic development for collective prosperity. Cooperatives are a means of bridging the gap between the capitalist class and the working class.
In our era of gentrification and real estate speculation, we want to be more than just another cookie cutter coffee brand. We have always been about action. Vox Pop is about dreaming big and getting to work.
We envision community education, jobs training and legal clinics, space for activists and idealists, discussion, debates, and radical politics. And we’ll still make the kind of coffee that makes you feel unstoppable. Meanwhile, we spread the ideas that actually do make you unstoppable.
Application to Vox Pop Cooperative
It’s 2024 and we aim to make the re-launch of Vox Pop as a worker-owned cooperative. We aim to open up in Opportunity Zones, and create a coffeehouse business that creates positive social change in the community.
The six question application is below. It would be great if you could first review some of the history of the project.
To apply to be a worker-owner at Vox Pop:
Please answer six questions in about 25-100 words per each answer.