our roots

We are a nonprofit cooperative movement-based bookstore and social center located in West Philadelphia with roots in independent book publishing, education, community media and journalism, and organizing.

OUR Mission

Making Worlds is a nonprofit cooperative bookstore and social center that promotes collective knowledge, skills, and visions of liberation from our communities. By distributing literature and other resources, as well as fostering a vibrant cultural programming space, we aim to strengthen neighborhood and Philadelphia grassroots organizing for people to care and support each other and make worlds of liberation possible. Through diverse political and cultural education initiatives, we promote learning from each other and the intersecting histories and futures of community organizing and movement building of Indigenous, Black, and Brown people and others resisting oppression worldwide. 

Our vision

We are committed to building an inspiring space for all who embody and share the principles of a better world built through grassroots, community-powered movement building. 

We are a community space that centers intersectional, disability, trans, gender nonconforming, and sex-worker affirming feminisms and supports liberatory social movements. We aim to support and build powerful movements within our neighborhoods and communities facing displacement, deportation, and incarceration due to the ongoing violence of settler colonialism and imperialism and collectively resist gentrification, ethnic cleansing, border control, prisons, neoliberalism, genocide, and fascism within a world imperiled by capitalist-driven climate catastrophe and militarization. 

We center a commitment to building good relations with each other and the world around us. We welcome and encourage you, members of our community, to shape our growth and programming efforts.

We envision a liberated Philadelphia that builds on the revolutionary history of the city and organizes towards a just city. We believe that deepening our commitments to abolition and decolonization can position the communities of West Philadelphia and the city around us to challenge exploitation and oppression and participate in creating a resilient society that is equitable, cooperative, and free. With inspiring literature and visionary programming, we are deepening our political education, cultural consciousness, and interconnections now so we can learn to thrive in the ecological and political landscapes of our collective future.