Hey, listen: Weâre not gonna get anywhere with this âsocialismâ stuff unless we can establish solidarity networks that provide real, tangible aid. And I do mean âtangibleâ in the sense of âyou can fill up a box with it.â
Back in the old-timey days, when we didnât have things like a minimum wage or government assistance, folks didnât think twice about paying union dues every month out of their meager paychecks. And in those days, when it was a regular, everyday occurrence for union people to get beat up or outright murdered for their union-ing, the unions still managed to win a lot of their fights. Reason for all that? The bigger part of them union dues I mentioned *went into a strike fund*.
Time on a picket line means time off the clock. And as for me, in this economy, if I go a week without a check, my family donât eat. I go two weeks without a check, and weâre homeless. And themâs the brakes.
In my community we started a co-op in order to, in part, purchase things with mass buying power (i.e. we can get things at wholesale if we order enough of them, so we can, for example, eat organic food for about what conventional costs a lot of the time.) But we also set aside a little money each time we order, and that money helps pay for donation boxes⌠and the social network we created when we created the co-op means that if someone has a crisis, someone else probably has the answer. âThis family just lost their job and canât afford to buy presents for their kidsâ may get a response of âHere are presents for every single family memberâ or it might end up with finding a job for the people looking for work, or both, because the co-op membership is diverse and represents a lot of people who are otherwise very connected in the community. When a part of town is out of power, itâs usually possible to find a co-op member who can run for ice or bring a meal, or offer use of a washer/dryer for the evening. We had one year where we were making donation meal boxes for a holiday, found out on the last delivery about a family in severe need, talked about it in the co-op group and ended up showing up at their house with not only a meal, but enough dry goods, paper towels, toilet paper, etc. for a month, plus a credit with the co-op for fresh fruits and veggies. I cannot overstate the power of networking in your community. This one started out in a natural parenting group, but quickly spread beyond that, from college students to retirees. Itâs like a small town, only more open-minded. We started with about 20-30 families. There are now hundreds of people involved. I had a trans kid land with me at one point and asked if anyone had size whatever clothes and within a few hours we had a box on my porch, within a couple days we had a bunch of things he needed. The co-op keeps a lending library of tools and weirdly specific kitchen devices like an Ăbleskiver pan, a food dehydrator, a capsule maker and a carpet cleaner. The kinds of things people need once or twice a year, but might not have the room to store. We periodically do a buy of sensory toys and sensory bin supplies, for example, because we have a lot of autistic members and parents of autistic kids. I have bought socks from the co-op that were purple with unicorns farting rainbows on them. We recently got in Black History flashcards and weâve done a lot of Black Lives Matter and Hate Has No Home lawn signs. Pretty much if people want it and we can find it at wholesale, the co-op will order it. It even spawned a side-business (more than one, actually, but this is the relevant one) of an online app for co-op managing, called http://managemy.coop so that other communities could take advantage of our experience and start out with an easier tool than the google spreadsheets we started out with. Anyway⌠if you want to network within your community, this is a really, really good way of connecting with a broad cross-section of people.
