Our logo draws inspiration from Banksy’s rats:

“They exist without permission. They are hated, hunted, and persecuted. They exist in quiet desperation amongst the filth. And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilizations to their knees.”

Rats are among the most reviled creatures in our cities, yet they perform a quiet ecological service. They consume the mountain of food waste we fail to compost; without them we’d drown in the stench of our own unmanaged consumerism. Their populations rise and fall with the care — or neglect — we show our built environment. They are a mirror for how seriously we take stewardship of the material world around us.

Rootwork Commons repurposes that symbolism. Like the vacant land we tend, the rat is something unwanted, dismissed, or blamed — until it is understood for the benefit it can bring. By giving the rat a voice and a task, the logo asserts that despite institutional neglect, power can be reclaimed through collective stewardship of neighborhood land. We can claim stake in our cities by caring for them ourselves.

In the image, the rat braids together the roots of a plant and a mushroom. It becomes a worker — linking species, tending relationships, demonstrating that ecosystems can be made whole and beautiful through intentional, dignified labor.

The “root work” in the logo is literal, but the name also honors Rootwork: an ancestral blend of Indigenous American, African American, and European folk practices and healing traditions. As a distinctly American lineage, Rootwork represents generations of people drawing power from the soil, from memory, and from cultural inheritance. Our project channels that ancestry as we reach into our historical soils with restorative intention.

May we use every power in our lineage — ecological, cultural, and communal — to grow a world where all living beings can thrive.