August 2023 Fundraising Appeal: Phase Two Development Completion
Completing Construction on the Ida B. Wells Plaza and other properties of the Fannie Lou Hamer Community Land Trust
Help Cooperation Jackson take the next step in our evolution. We are on the cusp of making a qualitative advance in our work, but we need your help to get there. Since our inception, we have tried our best to start our cooperatives as debt free as possible. To this point in our history, we have largely been able to acquire the property holdings of our community land trust and support our various cooperatives on a debt free basis by mobilizing resources drawn the various savings initiatives of our founders, dues from our members, ongoing support from our sustainers, strategic grants from progressive philanthropies, and the investment of major donors who share our vision.
We would like to see this trajectory through the completion of phase two of our development, which will enable our main hub and all of our cooperative units to remain debt free moving into the third phase of our collective development. This will enable us to further build and fortify a market protected ecosystem that will provide us with some competitive advantages in our quest to overcome the ruthlessness of the capitalist system, and replace it with a more cooperative and ecologically regenerative one. With your help, we will be in position to continue to serve as one of the largest and most strategic radical, Black led, land-based, solidarity economy initiatives in the United States.
So, what do we need help with? We need to raise $600,000 by October 31st to complete the foundational renovations at the Ida B. Wells Plaza, which is the largest holding in the Fannie Lou Hamer Community Land Trust, and several of our property holdings, including the Community Production Center. With these resources we be able to:
Complete the foundational renovations for the People’s Grocery, which will allow the members of this cooperative to complete their business planning, preliminary build out with the Community Production Cooperative, and autonomous resource procurement.
Complete the foundational renovations for Cisa Farms, which is our emerging medicinal cannabis cooperative. This will enable this initiative to remain as autonomous as possible in a market facing increasing consolidation and corporatization.
Complete the buildout for the Eversville Design and Printing Cooperative. This will enable this cooperative to provide the full range of its services and engage in the full range of its community programming activities by the start of 2024.
Install a new roof on the Community Production Center, that will enable it to become more secure and energy efficient.
If we are able to secure these funds and complete this work, this will mark the completion of our second phase of development. The first phase of work, spanning roughly from May 2014 when we launched, till roughly May 2018, focused on a) acquiring as much land as as possible in West Jackson to incorporate into a community land trust and take it off the speculative market to ensure permanently affordability for our cooperatives and community residents and b) establishing a network of interrelated and interdependent cooperatives to serve as foundational anchors for social and solidarity economy we are aiming to build in Jackson and the Kush District.
The second phase of the work, which started in the summer of 2018, and was extended due to the COVID pandemic, focused on a) launching a second class of cooperatives, to expand on the productive capacities of our foundational cooperatives and provide more services to our community - the primary one being the Community Production Cooperative, b) establishing a network of supporting solidarity institutions and practices, like a time bank and alternative currency, to develop the internal resources within our community and improve the overall quality of life, and c) rehabilitating and redeveloping the existing housing and commercial infrastructures that exist on the Fannie Lou Hamer Community Land Trust.
Over the course of the last two years, we have made tremendous strides toward the rehabilitation of all of our facilities. And we are now in the process of developing our own community inclusive currency (CIC) in partnership with Grassroots Economics. If we are able to raise the $600,000 we need and complete the foundational work on the Ida B Wells Plaza, we will be able to create a full set of institutional anchors for our currency application - particularly through the comprehensive operations of the People’s Grocery during phase three of our growth, ensure that the second class of cooperatives will all possess the physical space that they need to grow and thrive, and critically enable the expansion of the social and solidarity economy in Jackson.
The third phase of our work, which we are eagerly looking forward to over the course of the next several years, will entail the rollout of a number of cooperatives that are likely to employ dozens of people, we project on average over 20 per cooperative in arenas like the grocery store, recycling operations, cannabis production and retail, food processing, housing construction, and more.
As you can see, we have some major plans in the works in Jackson to further fulfill the vision of the Jackson-Kush Plan. But, we need your help to see them through to fruition. Please donate as generously as you can and spread the word to your family, friends, cooperators and comrades and encourage them to support us in this strategic pursuit.
You can donate at https://cooperationjackson.org/donate. Please designate “2023 Construction Support” in the designation.
You can also write a check to “Cooperation Jackson”, please designate “2023 Construction Support” or “CLT” in the check note. Please mail to Cooperation Jackson P.O. Box 1932 Jackson, MS 39215.
If you wish, you can also donate by sending a check or money order made out to Cooperation Jackson. Please include in the memo February Fund Drive and mail to P.O. Box 1932, Jackson, MS 39215.
