Compositionists are committed to social justice in classrooms, in academia, and in our communities, but we must also respond creatively and strategically to the structural consequences of precarity capitalism, even more urgently so in the wake of Covid-19. Precarity has shaped both composition studies’ and community literacy’s histories, and compositionists have often had little choice but to develop entrepreneurial responses to austere conditions. In this article, we advocate owning up to this history so that we can more intentionally direct entrepreneurial practices toward social justice, noting that people across numerous communities have worked along these lines for some time. Justice-oriented entrepreneurship is especially relevant for community literacy practitioners. To contextualize this argument, we examine how scholars in community literacy and technical and professional communication have conceptualized entrepreneurship as an analytically useful frame and/or employed entrepreneurial practices themselves. We then unpack the work and values of justice entrepreneurship, highlighting traditions of communalist Black entrepreneurs who have fought for economic and political self-determination. Next, we offer a model of justice entrepreneurship practiced by Youth Enrichment Services, a Pittsburgh-based non-profit that has demonstrated community-responsive, entrepreneurial flexibility in confronting Covid. We conclude by considering the future of justice entrepreneurship in a society simultaneously trending toward further crises of precarity and, contradictorily, new opportunities for progressive experimentation.

Our invitation is to think about composing as inclusive of written texts, multimodal webtexts, and all the things writing and rhetoric folks would normally be asked to help students improve in creating. But for this experience, we don't want to stop there. We want you to also think about composing other things. Think about films. Think about dance choreography. Think about baking pies. Think about music. How do humans learn to compose these things? How can a visualization aid in learning these things?

Basic writing students' photo essays demonstrate that the multimodal composition process affords opportunities to participate in engaging conversations about writing. The authors argue that the incorporation of multimodal assignments in the basic writing classroom promotes both digital and print literacies while fostering awareness of students' own writing processes.