Putting Black Power to Emergency Use

For a few years now, Kali Akuno has been on the receiving end of a fair amount of skepticism as to why Cooperation Jackson, the black empowerment and democracy collective he helped form in the middle of the “hood” in West Jackson, Mississippi, needed 3-D printers in its fabrication lab.

“This is why,” he tells The Progressive, referencing the debacle of President Donald Trump’s “misleadership” of the pandemic.

“COVID deaths are disproportionately spiking in Black + Brown communities. Why? Because the chronic toll of redlining, environmental racism, wealth gap, etc. ARE underlying health conditions. Inequality is a comorbidity.”

How is it, Akuno wonders, that the productive capacity of the United States was not immediately deployed to manufacture necessary medical and protective equipment, especially for health care workers on the front lines of patient care?

Into the breach—modestly, but significantly—steps Cooperation Jackson, a cooperative network of groups in Mississippi’s capital city, which is 81 percent African American. Having determined that masks are key to stemming community spread of COVID-19, it has created a model of mask-making production.

Kali Akuno wearing a hand-sewn mask fabricated in Cooperation Jackson's "fab lab" by the Community Production Cooperative. Akuno, who has asthma, is a co-founder of Cooperation Jackson. Photo by Lorraine Williams

“We were clearly warned about the potency of the virus by comrades in Milan and Naples,” Akuno says. “They cautioned us not to begin mutual aid work without safety protections,” to reduce the otherwise high risk of infection.

The virus has proven particularly deadly to people coping with diabetes and respiratory ailments, both of which are prevalent in the neighborhood where Cooperation Jackson’s cooperative businesses and community spaces are situated.

Mississippi has the third highest rate of diabetes in the nation, with more than 218,000 residents coping with the condition. It has led the nation in asthma deaths per capita, with fifty-one such deaths in 2018. Nonetheless, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves waited until April 1 to issue the state’s stay-at-home order.

On April 2, The Clarion-Ledger reported that the state’s chief health officer was unwilling to disclose “how many ventilators the state has, which nursing homes have coronavirus outbreaks, and the number of infected health care workers” because he didn’t want people to “freak out.”

The same newspaper reported on April 6 that Governor Reeves expects hospitals to be “most strained” around April 18. The Mississippi Department of Health reports no deaths yet in Hinds County, where Jackson is located.

Jim Craig, a senior deputy with the department, admitted that racial disparities in rates of infection and death exist but “did not know why COVID-19 appears to be disproportionately affecting black Misissippians.”

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laid the blame generally at government policies in a tweet she published on April 3.

“COVID deaths are disproportionately spiking in Black + Brown communities. Why? Because the chronic toll of redlining, environmental racism, wealth gap, etc. ARE underlying health conditions. Inequality is a comorbidity.”

Akuno has watched the situation in New Orleans, which has seen a mortality rate from COVID-19 that’s three times that of New York City, with serious dread. “We know what’s happening there is headed our way because of family ties and sharing a border between Louisiana and Mississippi, with a lot of going back and forth,” he says.

Kwame Braxton, co-anchor of the Community Production Cooperative, demonstrating the latest model of the 3D print masks being produced by for the Mask Challenge. Photo by Abrianni Perry

In response, the collective’s Community Production Cooperative is turning out as many 3-D printed and hand-sewn masks in its “fab lab” as it can, getting faster with practice. The printed masks take about two hours to make, and with an assembly line approach (while still practicing physical distancing), the sewn masks, which previously took an hour and a half to make, now take about forty-five minutes.

The collective plans to post videos to teach others how to make them, modeling the DIY culture—which is a core part of the black radical tradition—that Akuno believes will be much more needed in the future.

“We know public institutions don’t really work for us,” Akuno says, “not in this country. Despite our efforts to change that, we don’t often benefit from the broader societal gains. If you don’t have money, you don’t have access to anything. But when the broader society fails you, when you’re left to [the mercy] of market dynamics in an era where there is no employment, how can we ensure that we will survive?”

Cooperation Jackson is betting on its own community production capacity, knowing that if West Jackson can come together to take care of a pressing material need (making masks and distributing them equitably), it could soon take on a broader role in Mississippi’s democracy, specifically inside a solidarity economy.

The vision it struggles for, as outlined in The Jackson Kush Plan, involves making some pretty serious demands to solve human needs.

The collective, which adheres to the Mondragon Principles of Cooperation, has been giving the masks to community members at cost and to medical personnel for free to show that it’s possible to meet human needs without exploiting others.

“We want to get people to question the system. We’re building what we can to fight like hell,” Akuno says, “because the socialist revolution is not going to happen by itself.”

Word of the masks is spreading, which Akuno says has been “a bit overwhelming” but also a good problem to have. It’s been a challenge to raise funds to scale up production, given the range of competing needs in the pandemic. It takes a certain doggedness to insist on supporting those who are building an alternative future beyond the present crisis.

Members of the Freedom Farms Cooperative wearing masks and social distancing before getting to work in the garden beds. Photo by Sacajawea “Saki” Hall

Part of that future—perhaps the best part—could organically flow, Akuno believes, from the mask-making project.

“As readers of The Progressive know, we have many jobless and unsheltered people who are part of our West Jackson community. Imagine if we could teach some of them new skills utilizing our equipment at our facilities. This could potentially transform that,” he says. “Maybe not for all of them, but for some it could be pretty remarkable. And that’s what we’re aiming for.”