Worker Cooperatives - Islands within a Sea of Capitalism

Worker Cooperatives - Islands within a Sea of Capitalism

This episode of the Upstream podcast features our Director, Kali Akuno, discussing our ambitious initiative, modeled in many respects after Mondragon in the Basque Country, which is featured in the podcast, and notes our aim to eventually become the Mondragon of North America. It also situates Cooperation Jackson as part of the same trans-local organizing movement that inspired formations like Cooperation Richmond, Cooperation Buffalo, etc.

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Jackson Convergence Report: The First Ecosocialist International Takes Root and Makes Routes on Turtle Island

Jackson Convergence Report: The First Ecosocialist International Takes Root and Makes Routes on Turtle Island

This report by Quincy Saul highlights the on going development of the EcoSocialist International. The first North American Convergence of the EcoSocialist International was held in Jackson, MS Friday, April 20th through Sunday, April 22nd. Cooperation Jackson is a founding member of the EcoSocialist International and was host to this convergence.

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People's Cities: A Summit

People's Cities: A Summit

Will cities save us? In the last decades we have witnessed a resurgent interest in cities, accompanied by a great deal of urban optimism, even in the face of the exclusion and inequalities of our cities. Cities have become a privileged target of investment, as professionals and elites have rediscovered urban cores as desirable locations. At the same time, cities have become a veritable laboratory for new technologies in transportation and infrastructure, ones that promise to be more sustainable and resilient. And most recently, urban progressivism has captured the imagination of many large cities, like New York, Barcelona, London, and Los Angeles, and smaller ones, like Jackson, MS, and Berkeley, CA. Such places have played important roles in advancing innovative progressive policies, but also as symbolic beachheads holding up socially just principles in the face of global tides of conservative and reactionary politics playing out at the national level. And yet a number of questions remain about the viability of progressive strategies at the local level. Cooperation Jackson’s Director, Kali Akuno, was featured on this panel discussion.

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Leave No Worker Behind

Leave No Worker Behind

This article focuses on the “Just Transition” movement, which is broadly defined climate justice movement that focuses on building a regenerative, post-capitalist economy and society that centers on the needs of workers and oppressed peoples and communities in balance with the needs of the Earth and its ecosystems. It also focuses on the Just Transition Assembly hosted by Cooperation Jackson and held in Jackson, MS in February 2018. This article appeared in the Earth Island Journal and was written by Samantha M. Harvey.

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Reconstructing Economic Development for People and the Planet: Stories of Economic Democracy from Jackson to PR to the Bronx

Reconstructing Economic Development for People and the Planet: Stories of Economic Democracy from Jackson to PR to the Bronx

For the first time in decades, cities round the country are advancing progressive innovations and solutions to too-long-sustained poverty and inequality. In New York City worker cooperatives, participatory budgeting, and community land trusts are on the policy platform of the City Council’s progressive caucus and elected officials in the democratic party are pushing legislation for employee and worker ownership at the state and federal levels. With greater visibility and support from the public sector some believe that these pilots and experiments for neighborhoods to drive wealth creation and capture and create equitable economic opportunities can reach into broad-based and mainstream policy.

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Learning from Jackson: Building a Solidarity Economy in Boston

Learning from Jackson: Building a Solidarity Economy in Boston

Cooperation Jackson Director, engages the Solidarity Economy Initiative - SEI and its allies in Boston, Massachusetts about the lessons from the organizing initiative to implement the Jackson-Kush Plan and how they might apply in Boston.

The dialogue centered on the insights from Cooperation Jackson's recent book, "Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi."

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Community Production Cooperative wins Workers Lab 2018 Innovation Fund Award

Community Production Cooperative wins Workers Lab 2018 Innovation Fund Award

Our emerging Community Production Cooperative (CPC), was one of three winners of the 2018 The Workers Lab Innovators Award. The Workers Lab asked innovators to address one of three key areas: improvements to workforce development; building worker power; and responding to job automation. After an unprecedented response from 334 organizations in 13 countries and 34 U.S. states, the CPC, along with The Hood Incubator, and Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, won this critical award.

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Mississippi, USA: An Interview with Kali Akuno by Cat Brooks on KPFA's UpFront

Mississippi, USA: An Interview with Kali Akuno by Cat Brooks on KPFA's UpFront

On This episode of UpFront Cat Brooks Interviews Kali Akuno, Executive Director of Cooperation Jackson, about the Jackson Kush Plan, the vision and mission of Cooperation Jackson. They also discuss the book: Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi.

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Jackson Rising: At Last, a Real Strategic Plan

Jackson Rising: At Last, a Real Strategic Plan

“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

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