A green utopia deep in Mississippi? This guy has a game plan

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A green utopia deep in Mississippi? This guy has a game plan

Jackson, Miss.: Not exactly the eco-capital of the world. The city’s wastewater disposal has the attention of the EPA, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant is a big fracking supporter, there’s no glass recycling within city limits … and so on. But longtime organizer Kali Akuno has a vision: He and 100-plus volunteers want to turn the hardscrabble city of roughly 170,000 into a marvel of sustainability and social justice.

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People's Summit in Lima Envisions Bottom-Up Movement for Global Climate Justice

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People's Summit in Lima Envisions Bottom-Up Movement for Global Climate Justice

The "People's Summit on Climate Change" is hosted by grassroots organizations and networks—including the Workers General Confederation of Peru, Andean Coordinator of Indigenous organizations, and Workers Autonomous Central of Peru.

It constitutes an alternative to the ongoing United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, also in Lima, where government representatives and corporate leaders are holding the latest in a series of UN talks.

"We, the social movements and the progressive forces of civil society are beginning to seriously prepare ourselves for the protracted struggle to defend the people and the planet and create a just transition from the extractive and exploitative economy to a democratic economy that aligns us with the natural processes of the earth," Kali Akuno, from the Mississippi-based organization Cooperation Jackson, told Common Dreams from Lima.

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Activists Want City Human Rights Commission

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Activists Want City Human Rights Commission

In the aftermath of a string of extrajudicial killings, including Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York, advocates in Jackson want to charter a commission to protect and facilitate more equitable social relations.

A partnership between the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Cooperation Jackson, which emphasizes cooperatives, the campaign's organizers want to continue the vision of late Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba. When Lumumba was a city councilman, he introduced a human rights proclamation and successfully pushed for an anti-racial profiling ordinance. As mayor, Lumumba wanted to implement a human-rights commission, but he died eight months into his term.

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Chokwe Lumumba Center Opens with Ferguson Talk

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Chokwe Lumumba Center Opens with Ferguson Talk

Nine months after Chokwe Lumumba's death while serving as Jackson mayor, a community center has opened and been named in his honor. Cooperation Jackson, an organization formed after Lumumba's death to promote the late mayor's vision of a grassroots solidarity economy, purchased the building at 939 West Capitol St. that formerly housed a daycare center.

Last night, the Chokwe Lumumba Center for Economic Democracy and Development opened to the public with its first public event: a town hall meeting about protests in Ferguson, Mo., sparked by the police killing of 18-year-old Mike Brown in August.

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With UN Climate Summit Opening, Marchers Rallied Around the World

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With UN Climate Summit Opening, Marchers Rallied Around the World

Some 2,000 demonstrations were staged in 150 countries on Sunday, including in major cities such as London, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos, and Bogotá.

At the outset of the march in New York City, organizers said the crowd stretched along Central Park West from 60th Street all the way to 93rd Street. People gathered in groups, including those designated for young people, physicians, Native Americans, scientists, domestic workers, immigrants and religious groups.

“It’s stupendous. I’m 60 and I haven’t seen anything like this since the March on Washington,” said Iya’Falola Omobola, a community activist from Jackson, Mississippi. She attended the historic civil rights march as a child in 1963.

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Lessons from Lumumba and King about Progressive Change

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Lessons from Lumumba and King about Progressive Change

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.

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Why we need a farmer-led food movement

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Why we need a farmer-led food movement

Given 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.

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How Cooperation Jackson is Transforming the Poorest State in the U.S.

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How Cooperation Jackson is Transforming the Poorest State in the U.S.

With 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.

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A Co-op State of Mind

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A Co-op State of Mind

The 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.”

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From Front-Lines of Climate Crisis, Gathering Calls for 'New Economy'

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From Front-Lines of Climate Crisis, Gathering Calls for 'New Economy'

"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?

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Just Economies: creative approaches to building & strengthening just and democratic economies

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Just Economies: creative approaches to building & strengthening just and democratic economies

An interview with Cooperation Jackson organizer Tongo Eisen-Martin, July 10, 2014

In 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.

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Worker-Owners Cheer Creation of $1.2 Million Co-op Development Fund in NYC

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Worker-Owners Cheer Creation of $1.2 Million Co-op Development Fund in NYC

Instead 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.

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What’s the Role of Race in the New Economy Movement?

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What’s the Role of Race in the New Economy Movement?

There 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).

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Jewish Civil Rights Leaders of the Past and Social Justice Leaders of the Present and Future Stand with Jackson and the South in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of Mississippi Freedom Summer

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Jewish Civil Rights Leaders of the Past and Social Justice Leaders of the Present and Future Stand with Jackson and the South in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of Mississippi Freedom Summer

On 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.

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What’s the Role of Race in the New Economy Movement?

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What’s the Role of Race in the New Economy Movement?

There 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.

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