The Workers Cooperative Transforming Equity in the Deep South
We love this Jackson, Mississippi organization and its bold plan to address cycles of poverty in its city by building a transformative solidarity economy. With deep roots in struggles for self-determination and economic justice movements of the Black South, Cooperation Jackson pulls from the rich inspiration of historic cooperatives like civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm Cooperative and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund.
Cooperation Jackson envisions a future for Jackson where low income does not bar people from access to good food, health, or quality of life, and where communities with a history of disenfranchisement exercise their self-determined rights to improve their lives.
Jackson’s population is about 80% Black. About one-fifth of residents are “food insecure” – they lack access to the quality of food and type of nutrition necessary for an average person to maintain good health. Jackson’s working class faces chronic unemployment, unsurvivable wages, and barriers to healthcare, housing, and workers rights. Cooperation Jackson’s goal is to change the underlying structure that causes and reinforces these critical gaps.
The idea of a “solidarity economy” is that businesses empower their workers, share social responsibility, and cooperate towards the equity and total health of each individual and the community. The economy works in such a way as to permit the thriving of all its citizens, not just a select few. Through a network of co-ops and worker-owned businesses, the community’s laborers would be employed in work that they themselves manage or make decisions in and which dignifies them and empowers them towards the transformation of their own lives and environment.
Cooperation Jackson’s part in helping to alleviate the city’s current hunger issue is its developing Freedom Farms, an urban farming cooperative that grows watermelon, squash, cabbage, tomatoes, kale and other fruits and vegetables. Freedom Farms is one part of the group’s ecosystem of planned cooperatives that address the community’s wealth, health, and stability. A waste management and recycling cooperative, housing cooperative, child care cooperative, and arts and culture cooperative are also in the works.
Working with progressive institutions from across the country, Cooperation Jackson’s goal is to become a radical model for other cities and communities that want to create better lives for their working class citizens.
ACTION:
Does your city or community have a cooperative? Consider joining one to learn more about sustainable economics in practice, while also accessing important resources for you and your family.
Image: of co-founder and co-director Kali Akuno; via Cooperation Jackson.
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The last Census of Agriculture in 2012 revealed that Black farmers currently make up 1.4 percent of all U.S. farmers. This small but resilient percentage is now in the midst of a resurgence. Black farmers are taking the steps necessary to make sure they are counted in the food system, and organizations like the New York-based Black Urban Growers provide critical community support and resources.
In 1920, African-American farmers owned 15.6 million acres of land. But by 1999, there were only 2 million acres and the figure was dropping. The number of African-Americans working in farming dwindled from 926,000 in 1910 to 18,000 by the end of that century. Black farmers have had an uphill struggle throughout American history, fighting discrimination as they tried to get the resources they needed to work, grow, and maintain their land.
Black Urban Growers (BUGS) is a network of volunteers that builds community support for both urban and rural farmers of African descent. BUGS brings vital tidbits to the conversation about food and farm issues and the relationships between current food systems and the health and economic security of Black communities.
BUGS’ first annual Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference was held in November 2010 where members gathered to co-create solutions. The last conference in 2016 treated attendees with walking tours through Harlem’s community gardens and hosted key workshops and panels spanning many critical topics such as farm policy, building community self-reliance, youth in farming, representing LBGTQ farmers, food justice advocacy, and growing methodologies.
The conferences are a space where Black farmers can maintain visibility and support for one another as they build movements that are critical for envisioning community health and food sovereignty.
ACTIONS:
Connect with BUGS to begin networking, learning, and growing, and to stay tuned for more about the 2017 conference and other news and information that impacts Black farmers!
Image: “Sowing, ca. 1940-1942.″ Artist: William H. Johnson. Via Flickr by americanartmuseum.
Picture the Homeless is a “citywide, multiracial, bilingual organization” representing its member base of homeless people living in shelters, on the streets, and in other public places. Based in New York, the organization works to secure the civil and human rights of the city’s homeless.
PTH also expands awareness of how homelessness intersects with other structures of violence, such as disadvantages that affect people of color and LGBTQ people and gentrification which displaces low income communities with rising rents.
The year 2016 was filled with many achievements for the organization and its members. They:
Presented their Housing Not Warehousing Act proposal before the New York City Council’s Housing & Buildings Committee, which lays out options for the city to divert its funding from unsafe shelters to viable living environments that are within the city’s budget.
Connected “dozens of street homeless people with transitional or permanent housing, treatment, and other services.”
Brought legal action against the NYPD for violating the Community Safety Act by “forcing homeless people in Harlem to ‘move along’ when they have not violated any laws but are simply present on streets, sidewalks and in other public spaces.”
Built solidarity with Sing Sing prisoners who donated their now outlawed prison hoodies to PTH, for people out in the cold who needed them.
Launched the Gaining Ground Pilot Program in collaboration with nonprofit housing developers, “which uses the community land trust model to save taxpayers money at the same time as it develops housing, incubates small businesses, creates jobs, and slows down displacement from gentrification.”
Continued to nurture the East Harlem/El Barrio Community Land Trust, which PTH helped incubate. The community land trust is developing a plan for a mutual housing association with city-owned buildings in East Harlem that are considered at-risk.
Celebrated the fact that “For the first time, the journalists covering homelessness at every major New York City newspaper routinely include the voices of actual homeless people – not just ivory-tower experts and professional advocates – in their coverage of these issues.”
ACTIONS:
Help support and expand the visibility of PTH’s work by:
Asking for a PTH speaker to do a presentation for your school or house of worship.
Volunteer with PTH to help with fundraising, outreach, or communications.
If you are currently or were formerly homeless, become a member!
If you’d like to support PTH financially, make a donation.
Image: “Rally at the Manhattan Institute.” Via Flickr by hollow sidewalks.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: What Does Climate Have to Do With Ferguson?
We came across a persuasive essay in 2015, by climate justice advocate, Deirdre Smith, articulating why the climate movement should stand with Ferguson. It underscores why climate action is also about social action.
“Understanding interdependence and connectedness...” Smith writes, “is in part the result of my experience of growing up black in America, and growing up in New Mexico, a place ravaged by climate impacts.”
Events like the Cochabamba water war in Bolivia and Katrina in New Orleans, Smith says, “are not just about the hurricane or the drought...It is the institutional neglect of vulnerable communities in crisis…And it's also about what happened before: how black and brown communities have ended up with coal refineries, tar sands, and gas wells in their backyards in the first place.”
The killing of Michael Brown, the lack of accountability for his death, the treatment of his body are echoed in the way black bodies have been treated throughout American history and is definitely reflected in the way Black communities experience climate chaos. Although climate change affects everyone, a history of racial injustice means that people of color are automatically more vulnerable to disaster and the unconscionable state response that may follow.
The fight for the climate is “not simply with the carbon in the sky, but with the powers on the ground,” says Smith. And the more we recognize the connections between social injustice and environmental disaster, the more “people power” we could muster if we stood in solidarity across movements.
ACTIONS:
We can learn a lot from the organizing models used by environmental justice groups who are working deeply in movements led by people of color and low-income communities. Explore these examples: Movement Generation (a justice and ecology project), WE ACT (mobilizing low-income communities and people of color around environmental health and protection), Gulf South Rising (inclusive group raising awareness about how climate change is impacting land and communities in the Gulf South region), and the Our Power Campaign/Climate Justice Alliance.
