We learn a lot about progressive social change—issues, obstacles, and pathways—by reflecting on the experiences of notable, public figures. A portrait worth studying is Chokwe Lumumba, the Progressive icon who passed away unexpectedly earlier this year. A lifelong champion of human dignity and rights, the final station in Lumumba’s multifaceted life was municipal leadership as mayor of Jackson, Mississippi.
Read MoreGiven the rich working-class history of the food movement, it’s bizarre how heavily associated it’s become with upper and middle class white liberals. Since Reconstruction and even before, poor and working people — many in communities of color — have organized self-help programs, credit unions, food cooperatives and land banks as matters of both survival and resistance.
Civil rights leaders like Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer cut their teeth in the cooperative movement, while cooperative and mutual aid programs provided the necessary economic backing for everything from the Knights of Labor to the Montgomery bus boycott. The Black Panthers also carried out expansive economic self-sufficiency programs that provided not only free breakfasts and groceries, but also ambulances and dental care.
Read MoreWith a median household income of just over $37,000, Mississippi is the poorest state in the United States. A powerhouse organization promoting economic justice, Cooperation Jackson was born of a need to transform the state, in particular its capital and largest city, Jackson. Cooperation Jackson is a network of interconnected yet independent institutions including an incubator and training center, a cooperative bank, and a federation of established cooperatives. Together, they're exploring the potential of cooperatives to transform local communities.
Read MoreThe worker cooperative model, in which a business is owned and controlled by its members, is rarely taught in U.S. business schools, but it is gaining a reputation as a way for social service agencies and city councils to provide jobs for workers marooned by the current economy.
“There just aren’t enough jobs for all the people who need and want them,” says Jessica Gordon Nembhard, associate professor of community justice and social economic development at New York’s John Jay College, and author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. “Worker cooperatives address that niche.”
Read More"Power without Pollution. Communities United for a Just Transition."
That is the theme of an international gathering that kicked off Wednesday in Richmond, California, bringing together of hundreds of people on the front-lines in the fight against environmental destruction and social inequality to tackle the ambitious question: how do we build an economy that works for people and the planet?
Read MoreJuly 14, 2014
The Real News Network discusses with Project Equity founder Hilary Abell and Cooperation Jackson organizer Kali Akuno about whether worker cooperatives are the answer to getting New Yorkers out of poverty. (Video)
Read MoreIn the face of growing economic inequity, people around the country are coming together to reimagine and rebuild their economies and communities based on the values of equity, democracy, cooperation, self-determination and sustainability. From worker cooperatives to community land trusts, participatory budgeting to community gardens, people are finding creative solutions to the economic challenges they face, while strengthening their communities, building political power, and sustaining the environment.
Read MoreInstead of simply appealing to local leaders for support, some activists have sought to build both political and economic power by building electoral campaigns around the issue of cooperative development. No city had secured greater local support for co-ops than Jackson, Miss., a majority African-American municipality where human rights attorney and longtime black radical activist Chokwe Lumumba was elected mayor last year on a platform that included the use of public spending to promote cooperative enterprises. But following Lumumba’s sudden death in February, the movement that brought him to office has been left struggling to implement the vision it had forged.
Read MoreThere has been a growing buzz about what kind of economy we need in order to address wealth inequality, environmental unsustainability and lack of democracy. Clearly, many desire something new and dramatically different.
Perhaps this buzz around what many supporters call a “New Economy” will grow into a powerful social movement — one that we desperately need to transform the current economy. But whether it does so or not will depend critically on its color (or lack thereof).
Read MoreOn Monday, June 23, 2014, a group of over 50 Jewish social justice leaders, including Rabbis and veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, released a letter (accessible at JewsForJackson.org) in support of Black-led efforts to create a democratic cooperative economy in the South. These leaders call upon the broader Jewish community to act in its legacy to support Blacks in the South today.
The letter launches the “Jews Standing with the South” campaign, 50 years after Mississippi Freedom Summer. The goal is to raise funds for Cooperation Jackson and the Southern Grassroots Economies Project, two organizations modeling the creation of financial mechanisms that do not profit off of inflicting harm upon oppressed communities, but instead explicitly serve their interests.
Read MoreThere has been a growing buzz about what kind of economy we need in order to address wealth inequality, environmental unsustainability and lack of democracy. Clearly, many desire something new and dramatically different.
Perhaps this buzz around what many supporters call a “New Economy” will grow into a powerful social movement — one that we desperately need to transform the current economy. But whether it does so or not will depend critically on its color (or lack thereof).
Fortunately, we don’t have to look hard to find examples of communities of color both now and in the past that have advanced economic principles of fairness, sustainability and democracy.
Read MoreOn Tuesday, June 3, a panel of activists and researchers at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s offices in Midtown discussed the challenges of building a network of worker-owned cooperative businesses in Jackson as a means of revitalizing the city’s impoverished minority neighborhoods.
Read MoreThe Malcolm X Grassroots Movement hosted the conference in Jackson, Mississippi, for activists organizing for economic democracy, and also honored the legacy of activist and late Mayor of Jackson Chokwe Lumumba.
Laura Flanders, GRITtv
Although Jackson, Mississippi has experienced a purge of the industry that once formed its economic backbone, many Jacksonians think that cooperative and solidarity economics could be the antidote that puts the economy back on track. A few weeks ago, the GRITtv team went to Jackson to document this conversation as it unfolded.
The Jackson Rising: New Economies Conference explored the possibility of making Jackson, Mississippi a center and example of economic democracy by building strong cooperatives and other forms of worker owned enterprises and financial institutions that will create jobs with dignity, stability, living wages, and quality benefits. The primary objective of the Conference was to educate and mobilize the people of Jackson to meet the economic and sustainability needs of our community.
The Real News Network interviews Kali Akuno: Despite electoral defeat, grassroots movement in Jackson, Mississippi will continue the fight for just economic development.'
The Jackson Rising: New Economies Conference explored the possibility of making Jackson, Mississippi a center and example of economic democracy by building strong cooperatives and other forms of worker owned enterprises and financial institutions that will create jobs with dignity, stability, living wages, and quality benefits. The primary objective of the Conference was to educate and mobilize the people of Jackson to meet the economic and sustainability needs of our community.
Attorney and Jackson mayoral candidate Chokwe Antar Lumumba addresses the Jackson Rising: New Economies conference. Credit: Rosa Luxemburg-NYC/Flickr
The Jackson Rising Organizing Committee and Cooperation Jackson sincerely thank you for helping to make the New Economies Conference a total success. You, along with more than 500 other participants, helped to secure the legacy of the Lumumba administration and establish a solid foundation for the development of Cooperation Jackson as a vehicle to build economic democracy in Jackson.
Through your participation we were able to make some major strides towards the accomplishment of all of our primary goals:
We exceeded our goal of having more than 500 registered participants.
We exceeded our goal of constructing an active database of well over 1,000 local, regional, national, and international contacts.
We were able to start the process of training over 100 Jacksonians in the basics of cooperatives and how to start them.
We successfully had a public launch of Cooperation Jackson.
And with your ongoing solidarity and support, we will create a solid national and international network to support Cooperation Jackson and the movement for economic democracy in our city and region.
The next concrete step in the Jackson Rising journey is building Cooperation Jackson. This means transforming the organizing collective that helped facilitate the New Economies Conference into a fully-fledged cooperative network.
We aim to do this by creating a local federation of worker owned and self-managed cooperatives that build and leverage the skills of the under- and unemployed sectors of Jackson that are currently being excluded or dislocated from the work place and their homes and communities. Cooperation Jackson seeks to replace the current economic system of exploitation, exclusion and destruction of communities and the environment with a successful alternative. An alternative built on equity, cooperation, worker democracy, and environmental sustainability to provide meaningful work, eliminate racial inequity in income and wealth, and build community wealth. Building on this, we aim to turn the increasing number of people active in a local democratic economy into a grassroots political force to advance the initiative to build a true democracy, based on direct participation and economic democracy.
Our short-term 1-year workplan and goals for 2014 – 2015 include:
Consolidating the operational basis of Cooperation Jackson by securing enough resources to hire administrative, organizing, and specialty staff, purchasing a office and training facility, and purchasing several abandoned buildings and vacant lots to establish various cooperatives
Securing adequate training for all of the members of Cooperation Jackson to enable them to recruit and train hundreds of Jacksonians in how to start cooperatives, be good cooperators, and run successful cooperative enterprises to further develop our network and build the movements overall infrastructure
Developing our Incubator to support the development of our first and future cooperatives by facilitating investment relationships, coordinating member trainings, providing bookkeeping and accounting services, and legal services and counsel
Coordinating an on-going grassroots economic series based on the education and trainings needs identified through extensive outreach before the Jackson Rising Conference and during its many forums and workshop sessions
Launch 6 worker cooperatives – Recycling, Construction, Urban Farming, Temp/Day Laborer, Child Care, and Arts and Culture – by June 2015
There are 3 general ways you can help build and strengthen our work:
Advocates: We need solid advocates who will promote our work and seek to build connections between us and cooperatives, social movements, donors, and progressive financers throughout the United States and the world, in full respect to our principles and our fundamental rule of engagement – which is that in the end we have to represent ourselves in all decision making endeavors pertaining to us.
Partners: We need to establish mutually beneficial partnerships that will aid us in helping to educate and train our members, provide us with various types of technical assistance, ongoing publicity and media support, and most importantly trade and other forms of economic exchange.
Donors: We need ongoing donations and gift capital to support our general administrative operations, ongoing organizing and education work, member training and development, business planning, and start-up funds for the various cooperative enterprises. You can donate to Cooperation Jackson by donating either to our LLC or our non-profit (please identify which one you are choosing to contribute to for tax purposes) by writing a check to Cooperation Jackson and mailing it to P.O. Box 1932, Jackson, MS 39215.
To stay abreast of ongoing developments with Cooperation Jackson and the ongoing Jackson Rising education initiative continue to follow www.CooperationJackson.org. For inquirers and more detailed information please contact CooperationJackson@gmail.com.
You can also write P.O. Box 1932, Jackson, MS 39215 or call 601.208.0090.
Together, with your solidarity and support, we will make Jackson Rise through Cooperative Enterprise!
Building a solidarity economy in Jackson, Mississippi anchored by a network of cooperatives and other worker-owned and democratically self-managed enterprises.
