The Build and Fight Formula Education Series

Part One: Introduction, the Argument

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

“The Build and Fight Formula is both an argument and a proposed methodology on how to build eco-socialism from below, meaning through the self-organized activities and institutions of the working class and oppressed people.”

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Just two weeks in power, the new Trump administration has already led a horrifying whirlwind of attacks on immigrants, transgender people, tribal nations, people of color, and women. Government institutions are being dismantled. Make no mistake, these shock-and-awe actions are designed to keep people in fear and paralyzed as a fascistic presidency stages what is being called an administrative coup.

Our guests today, David Cobb and Kali Akuno, are among the few who saw this moment coming years ago, and have never stopped organizing against the fascist threat. In their work, including the creation of the People’s Network for Land and Liberation, they take a programmatic approach to overcoming fear through clear analysis and direct action. They aim not only to resist, but to build real infrastructure to keep people safe, meet basic needs, and cultivate the idea and practice of political and economic democracy on a mass scale.

As the Italian antifascist and theorist Antonio Gramsci said, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.” For David and Kali, as well as for our guest host Meleiza Figueroa, the way through is not only fighting the monsters, but bringing that new world into being. We’ll spend the hour with our guests discussing the nature of this current historical conjuncture, and what they have been doing to prepare the people for this very moment.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Over the weekend of February 1st and 2nd, Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. Mexico’s tariffs are set to go into effect on March 1; China’s and Canada’s are set for tonight. All countries have threatened retaliatory actions in response. What does all this mean?

Hear a take on this question from Kali Akuno in dialogue with Thandisizwe Chimurenga on Rootwork.

Monday, February 3, 2025

Interview by Firoze Manji of Daraja Press

Conducted Sunday, January 26, 2025

Kali describes a more effective and organized Trump regime implementing policies that are creating significant contradictions and challenges, particularly around immigration and labor. He highlights how deportations and anti-immigrant policies are already impacting food production and elderly care. Kali argues that Trump is attempting to reset the terms of the global empire and reshape American society, potentially moving towards more authoritarian governance. He warns of increased militarization of police and the empowerment of right-wing militias. However, Kali also sees opportunities emerging from these crises. He emphasizes the growth of mutual aid networks and community-based solutions, particularly around food production and distribution. He advocates for expanding these efforts, suggesting slogans like "every yard a farm, every garage a factory" to encourage local production. The conversation touches on the potential for civil conflict given widespread gun ownership, with Kali cautioning that right-wing groups have already been well-trained with arms and firepower. Progressive forces will never match their military might, nor should they do so. Overall, while acknowledging the serious challenges ahead, Kali emphasizes the importance of building alternative systems and solidarity networks to meet community needs in the face of systemic crises.

Learning from ‘La Revolución Bolivariana’: A Conversation with Kali Akuno

An in-depth discussion on how the Bolivarian Revolution inspired the Mississippi-based project Cooperation Jackson.

Cira Pascual Marquina

November 22, 2024

Disrupt the Chaos: Build and Fight Formula Kick Off

Kali Akuno and Rosa Clemente kicked off the first Build and Fight Formula kick off on Tuesday, October 29th, 2024.

Kali and Rosa will be doing a dialogue series about the Build and Fight Formula, which is a transformative dual power strategy being developed by Cooperation Jackson. Kali is in the process of writing a book on this strategy and aims to publish it in 2026 via Pluto Press. The dialogue series will be the 1st Tuesday of every month on Disrupt the Chaos and all of its platforms.

Kali Akuno interviewed by revolutionary Catalanian journalist, Jesus Rodriguez for the Catalan journal, Directa.

The interview was conducted on Wednesday, October 23rd. And published on Friday, October 25, 2025.

Kali Akuno, Cooperation Jackson Executive Director, speaking on Catalonia Television, 3CAT MES 324. This program was aired live on Tuesday, October 22, 2024. 

The Transformative Potential of a Union-Coop Alliance

he following is an audio excerpt and transcript from a point raised by Kali Akuno from our webinar “Remaking the Economy: Escaping Corporate Capture.”

Disrupt the Chaos: Interview with Kali Akuno

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Check out the first Disrupt the Chaos show with Rosa Clemente featuring Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson. And be on the lookout for a monthly feature of Kali on Disrupt the Chaos the first Tuesday of every month as he breaks down the Build and Fight Formula being developed and promoted by Cooperation Jackson.

Build, Fight, Transform: Building a Regenerative Economy through the practices of Solidarity, Decolonization and Degrowth

Thursday, September 19, 2024

The Tishman Center hosted our Senior Fellow, Kali Akuno, for a ‘lunch and learn’ on campus. Akuno is an organizer, educator, and writer for human rights and social justice. He is also the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Cooperation Jackson, an emerging network of worker cooperatives and supporting institutions. Kali shares his ideas on building participatory democracy from the grassroots level and altering the commodity form of production to regenerate social relations. He also engages in dialogue with attendees on Check out his upcoming book, The Build and Fight Formula and his recent book, “Jackson Rising Redux: Lessons on Building the Future in the Present.

Remaking the Economy: Escaping Corporate Capture

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

What is “corporate capture” and how can people escape its effects—in our politics, our culture, our daily life, and in the nonprofit sector? How do people, in short, build an actual everyday politics and economics of liberation?

This was the organizing question for the summer 2024 issue of Nonprofit Quarterly. To addresses this question and expand upon their contributions, three authors from NPQ’s summer economic justice magazine will explore the concept of corporate capture and how movement-based groups can build viable escape routes to advance economic justice.

Participating in the webinar conversation are the following people:

Kali Akuno is the cofounder and executive director of Cooperation Jackson, based in Jackson, Mississippi.

Hannah Appel is cofounder of the Debt Collective, a professor of anthropology, and associate director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, based in Los Angeles, California.

Arlene Martinez is deputy executive director of Good Jobs First, based in Washington, DC.

Sara Myklebust is research director for Bargaining for the Common Good, based at Georgetown University's Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor in Washington, DC.

This article is from Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine’s summer 2024 issue, “Escaping Corporate Capture.” Written by Kali Akuno, Executive Director of Cooperation Jackson

The fundamental premise of the Build and Fight Formula is that we must abandon our deficit-based perspective of scale and pivot to a perspective of bounty—one that appreciates the value of a multitude of autonomous organizing projects.

Land Back and Liberated Zones: Building Power and Reworking Relations through Community Land Trusts

Dialogue with Kali Akuno and Ethan Miller

In late February of this year, Kali Akuno from Cooperation Jackson and Ethan Miller from Land in Common took part in a public conversation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. With over 200 students, faculty, and community members in attendance, Kali and Ethan shared with each other and the audience the history and politics of their organizations, the relationship between place-based and global politics, and the role of community land trusts and solidarity economies as part of a process of decommodification.

The association of organizations K.AL.O Attica "Coordination" invited Kali Akuno from Cooperation Jackson to speaker at two events in Athens, Greece. The first event was Monday, July 1st in the garden of the Immigrants' Shelter, Tsamadou 15, Athens entitled " From self-management of work in the self-organization of life”. The second public event was Sunday, July 7th at the 25th Anti-Racist Festival of Athens, entitled " Why self-management? Experiences of solidarity economy from our own nearby America .'

The reason for this invitation is obvious: Cooperation Jackson, in which Kali participates, is a powerful example of connecting the Solidarity Economy with social movements, in a region plagued by the consequences of both capitalist management and systemic racism.

In the interview that follows and which he gave to Syntonismus, he talks about everything: the rise of the extreme right, the Social Solidarity Economy as a weapon for workers and marginalized social strata, but also the immediate need for its deeper politicization.

Mold, July 8, 2024

Interview by Jaime Tyberg with Kali Akuno

I first met Kali Akuno in 2018 — the same year that the “Deep Adaptation” paper was published1. Despite a lack of wider circulation, the paper went viral in climate movement circles. For many of us, the paper validated our years-long campaign to declare the current era as the sixth mass extinction, while also urging us to abandon our standard way of life and form alternative ones. Kali’s work with Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi takes this urging to the task. As detailed in his latest book, Jackson Rising Redux2, building the future in the present demands new designs, new formulas, and a new definition of how to be human. Catching up with Kali six years after, I believe we are closer to the future than we think.

The Marc Steiner Show: Racism and Jackson’s water crisis

Jackson, Mississippi, remains gripped in an ongoing water crisis. The task of distributing water to local residents has been largely taken up by community organizations like Cooperation Jackson and Operation Good. Organizer, writer, and educator Kali Akuno joins The Marc Steiner Show to explain how the current crisis is a reflection of capitalism's failures and decades of institutional racism. Though Jackson today is more than 80% Black, this is a recent demographic development created by white flight and capital flight from the city. The state's prolonged neglect of Jackson's infrastructure is a consequence of an entrenched far-right politics in Mississippi's public institutions. And what's happening currently in Jackson is a sign of things to come around the country. To fight back, Akuno emphasizes the need to build mass movements and grassroots networks capable of exercising real political power.

A few scenes from our second Really, Really Free Market, which was held on Saturday, June 15, 2024.

The objective of the Really, Really Free Market is to create a culture and process of mutual exchange, that is exchanging the goods and services we need to both sustain ourselves and improve the quality of life in our community without monetary exchange. But, through negotiated exchange through barter, trade, and mutual credit systems.

This second Really, Really Free Market was a critical success. The word is spreading and the model and practice of mutual exchange is gradually taking hold. The next phase is getting more people to produce items to directly exchange, rather than merely donate things they are no longer using. It's going to be a struggle, that will take some time, but it's a struggle worth engaging. "Every yard a farm, every garage a factory". This is where we're heading.

“Ujamaa, Ubuntu, and New Pan Africanisms: The Future of World Peace Conference” Conference

Saki Hall and Kali Akuno spoke on a plenary on Friday, May 24th entitled “Community Movement Builders Bridge Building”. Additional speakers included Edget Betru, from Community Movement Builders, and Shannon Jones, from the People’s Senate Northeast/Spirit of Mandela Coalition.