Kevin for Oryana Board of Directors

VOTE FOR KEVIN

Hi, I’m Kevin Summers, a former Oryana grocery worker running for the Oryana Board of Directors to bring the co-op back into alignment with its radical mission and highlight the day-to-day realities of hourly workers at Oryana. My campaign focuses on worker representation and profit-sharing, truly healthy buildings and workplaces, radical transparency in sourcing and food additives, and resisting the push to turn Oryana into just another node in a virtual chain of corporate co-ops. This page links to my full platform, press release, candidate statement, resignation letter, biography, résumé, and projects so you can learn more about me and my positions. Don’t forget to play The Grocery Game, a self-guided in-store scavenger hunt meant to help start a critical dialogue. 

*DOWNLOAD THE GROCERY GAME HERE*

Platform

Worker Representation 

Reinstate the right for employees to serve on the Board and establish a permanent worker seat on the Board. Without worker representation cooperative governance is incomplete. Spreadsheets, data, and managers’ reports will never adequately represent working conditions for hourly workers. This means questioning the Board’s reliance on Policy Governance. 

Hands-On Board 

The Policy Governance model and the idea that the Board can simply govern the CEO is problematic. It accepts hierarchical notions of leadership. It assumes the CEO and managers can adequately communicate worker concerns and interests. The Board needs to be actively engaged in the Oryana community. That includes knowing and directly communicating with hourly workers. Oryana does not exist in the boardroom or as a collection of policies. It emerges from the daily interactions between employees, member-owners, suppliers, and customers.   

Profit-Sharing and Fair Wages

When profits exceed projections, a portion of those profits should be shared immediately with the workers who helped create them. Record profits and below-projected wages is not success; that is exploitation and evidence of a structural imbalance between management and labor. Hourly workers are not an expense or liability to be minimized, they are a resource to be invested in. As we have seen, profits fall with decreasing worker morale. 

Wage Transparency

Public disclosure of all wages and salaries of managers, leadership, and the CEO. Public disclosure of the proprietary formula used for determining wages and raises. Minimally, information about average wages should be disaggregated before it is shared with the public. Publishing an average wage that includes both highly paid managers and lower-paid hourly workers is deceptive. 

Audit Merchandise 

We must disrupt dishonest and unhealthy corporate sales tactics with honest communication and education. This means we must commit to full transparency in sourcing, ingredients, and corporate affiliations. Disclose PFAS content in bottled water. Publicly interrogate the ingredient lists of all products. Go further than federal regulations when it comes to harmful ingredients like erythritol. The co-op should educate members, not help national brands manipulate them. 

Oryana shoppers should know that Kashi is owned by Kellogg, Yogi Tea and Tazo are owned by Unilever, Muir Glen is owned by General Mills, Garden of Life is owned by Nestlé, Applegate is owned by Hormel Foods, and Gardein is owned by Conagra. The co-op should also look at all the lifestyle items and tchotchkes we sell. They may be profitable but we don’t need to be selling ceramic chickens made in China that are not dishwasher safe. That is definitely not radical.

Equity

Oryana does a great job talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. We fly a flag. But that public-facing commitment is not always reflected in the co-op’s treatment of the multiracial working class. Real equity is material equity. That means paying all workers a living wage and radically decreasing the wage spread, the difference in pay between the highest and lowest paid workers. The co-op also needs to consider its track record with certain marginalized groups, particularly women of color, and ask why so many members of marginalized communities are fired or leave on bad terms. 

Distance Oryana from Outside Influence

Push back against the quiet consolidation of co-ops by National Co+op Grocers (NCG) and Columinate, which are creating a “virtual chain” of standardized co-ops dependent on massive suppliers like UNFI. Oryana must retain local autonomy, local relationships, and cooperative integrity in order to not become another node in a national network. Make the invisible hand of UNFI and NCG more visible. 

Healthy Buildings

Oryana has worked to improve building energy efficiency and focuses on sustainability. However, creating a truly healthy building is not yet a priority. Break rooms and bathrooms are poorly ventilated, dust and particulate matter are not well controlled, and Oryana West relies on high-bay daylight-balanced LED lights. These lights may be efficient, but the blue light they emit is linked to negative health effects for humans and even accelerates the greening of potatoes.

A radically healthy co-op would take building health more seriously. I want Oryana to conduct a healthy building audit using an accepted standard such as the WELL Building Standard or the Living Building Challenge and shift toward lighting, ventilation, and cleaning practices that support both human biology and food quality. 

Stop Getting High on Our Own Supply 

Oryana is not a utopian food co-op. Oryana is now a boutique grocery store that uses a membership model, sells local produce, stocks local grocery items, and carries out a social mission. That’s all good, but that is not a radical project. We say “cooperation is radical,” but we operate like many other local retail grocery businesses. Costco composts its food waste and pays its workers good wages. Walmart funds after-school cooking programs for at-risk youth. Tom’s and Edson Farms sell local grocery items. In 2025, the Oleson Foundation awarded over $1.3 million in grant funds to more than 70 nonprofit organizations. In comparison, Oryana donated $142,770 in 2024. 

If we were truly radical we would: 

Share profits when they exceed projections.

Pay workers a living wage before paying consultants to polish our image.

Measure success not by the appearance of virtue, but by the material conditions of the people who work here, shop here, and live in this community including the unhoused.

Understand that cooperation isn’t a brand, it’s a practice.

Call out the corporate food conglomerates and distributors who own smaller brands and add harmful ingredients to our food. 

Make corporate interests and polite society uncomfortable instead of cozying up to them. 

If we were truly radical we wouldn’t need to say so; people would feel it in our wake.

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Social Media Campaign

You can watch all the relevant "Vote for Kevin" stories I've posted to Instagram here. 

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Q & A

Q:

Kevin, is this a serious campaign or some kind of deeply unserious game?

A:

This is only a deeply unserious game in the sense that all life is a deeply unserious game. 

"Vote for Kevin" is a legitimate campaign for a Board seat at Oryana Community Co-op. It's also a consciousness-raising public artwork that uses low-cost and easily accessible tools for agitprop, activism, and agitation. 

There is a website. There is a game. There are stickers that have been turned into buttons. The campaign spreads across multiple social media platforms. Some of it is instigated by me. Some of it is organic. Relationships and casual conversations are also part of this artwork.  

The point is to draw attention to the ways the market, capitalism, classism, corporate influence, power, etc. hurt our community. These forces hurt businesses, workers, arts, and culture. Traverse City loves to hide the truth behind aesthetic screens. At the Traverse City State Hospital they used to say "beauty is therapy."  I don't necessarily agree with that. I think graphic ugliness, in the sense of revealing everything and showing the whole truth, is more therapeutic. 

I was lucky enough to have some of the most radical and inspirational teachers growing up. From middle school to college they shared progressive ideas, opened so many doors that polite self-censorship would have kept closed, expanded my idea of what art is, and made the idea of challenging a world that wants to control people and grind them down an obvious course of action. Some of them are still here in my corner, liking my most unhinged social media posts and showing up to events. Some have passed but I think about them more than ever. It's clear to me that so many people did not get that message. They were quite literally sold something else. And that breaks my heart.

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Read more detailed information about me and my positions here: 

Campaign Materials - Kevin Summers

Read more about Oryana and the current Board of Directors here:

Board of Directors - Oryana 

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“It tells of a golden spaceship that came from the stars; in it came a woman, whose name was Oryana, to fulfill the task of becoming the Great Mother of the earth. Oryana had only four fingers, which were webbed. Great Mother Oryana gave birth to seventy earth children, then she returned to the stars.”

Erich Von Daniken, Chariots of the Gods