On this episode of On Contact with Chris Hedges, Kali Akuno, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Cooperation Jackson, discusses the radical transformation of Jackson, Mississippi through capitalism and the socialist alternative, Cooperation Jackson.

“When the bubble bursts we will need a network of worker cooperatives and people’s assemblies to sustain us.” -Kali Akuno

Review of the Jackson Rising book by Richard Moser, Black Agenda Report.

Jackson Rising is the most important book I have read in a long time. Organizers are going to love it. If you wonder what democracy might look like in our time — here it is. -Richard Moser

Left Out, a podcast produced by Paul Sliker, Michael Palmieri, and Dante Dallavalle, creates in-depth conversations with the most interesting political thinkers, heterodox economists, and organizers on the Left.

In this episode, we sat down with Kali Akuno — the co-founder and co-directer of Cooperation Jackson. We discuss the emerging network of worker-owned cooperatives and the people behind it building an alternative, solidarity-based economy inside the majority-black and impoverished city of Jackson, Mississippi.

Part 2 of a Democracy Now! conversation with Kali Akuno, the co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, a network of worker cooperatives in Jackson, Mississippi. He is a longtime organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. His new book is titled Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi. Part 1 can be viewed here.

Eminent Black liberation movement historian Robin D. G. Kelley's thoughts on the recent high-profile controversy between Dr. Cornel West and Ta-Nehisi Coates, in light of the movement in Jackson, Mississippi.

In July 2017, 34 year old Chokwe Antar Lumumba was sworn in as Mayor of Jackson Mississippi.  He soon announced that the city was going to be “the most radical city on the planet.”  This was not an idle boast because Jackson Mississippi, of all places, is where one of the country’s most radical experiments in social and economic transformation is happening.  

For years, people in Jackson have been organizing to build and sustain community power.  They created Cooperation Jackson to take concrete steps to make human rights a reality for all by changing their democratic process and their economy.

Their goal is self-determination for people of African descent, particularly the Black working class.  The vehicle is the building of a solidarity economy in Jackson Mississippi on a democratic economic base.   The long range plan is to participate in a radical transformation of the entire state of Mississippi and ultimately the radical democratic and economic transformation of the United States itself.

For brandon king of Cooperation Jackson's Freedom Farms, growing food is a form of activism.

king, who spells his name in all lowercase letters, moved to Jackson from New York City nearly four years ago to join a local movement grounded in economic justice and given life with the 2013 mayoral election of Chokwe Lumumba, the late father of the current mayor.

king hadn't farmed before, but in a time of transformation for the capital city, Jackson was like a blank canvas. Especially west Jackson, where the cooperative is headquartered and where grocery stores are few and far between.

The broad mission of Cooperation Jackson is to advance the development of economic democracy in Jackson, Miss., by building a solidarity economy anchored by a network of cooperatives and other types of worker-owned and democratically self-managed enterprises.

The organization’s four-part approach for building in Jackson involves developing a co-op incubator, an education center, and financial institutions. It has recently launched its Sustainable Communities Initiative, which involves the development of an “eco-village” housing cooperative, a community land trust and a community development corporation. The initiative provides the stable foundation for the development of child care, urban farming, construction and recycling cooperatives.

Some of the project’s other goals involve the creation of a fabrication laboratory (fab lab), called the Center for Community Production, that functions as a training center and digital fabrication factory. This is a part of Cooperation Jackson’s Community Production Initiative, which hopes to establish a flourishing production economy based on new and innovative technology like 3D printing. Cooperation Jackson is always busy working on a number of projects in the Jackson area that all feed into each other.

Jackson is the largest city in Mississippi. Surrounded by prosperous white suburbs, it is more than 80 percent Black and overwhelmingly working-class. “If you are making $10 an hour here you are doing damn good,” says Kali Akuno, who for 20 years has been a driving force in Cooperation Jackson, a community organizing hub intent on radically changing business as usual in Mississippi’s capital city and creating a model for local movements in the United States and around the world.

The movement for Black self-determination that Akuno helps to lead has roots in Mississippi that date back to the 1970s. After decades of base building work by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) and others, radical lawyer Chokwe Lumumba was elected mayor of Jackson in 2013 only to die less than eight months into his first term in office.