Welcome to the Remix, as we take our latest spin around the economy. This column involves an interview with Kali Akuno, cofounder of Cooperation Jackson—an effort that is now entering its eleventh year and whose members aim to ultimately build the equivalent of the Mondragón system of worker cooperatives in the Black South.
In our conversation, Akuno talks about the role of history, the importance of public policy, and the value of resilience in movement work. Akuno situates Cooperation Jackson, founded in 2014, in the context of the long civil rights movement and the century-plus history of Black cooperatives (as Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard has written about in Collective Courage.) Akuno cites Black co-op grocery organizers in Memphis in the 1890s and recalls that many lost their lives due to lynchings. He also emphasizes the role of cooperatives and Black nationalism in his family history—and how his own mother made ends meet through a community-supported agriculture group.
As for public policy, Akuno emphasizes that Cooperation Jackson was part of a broader political strategy known as the Jackson-Kush Plan. In June 2013, Jackson organizers shocked the outside world when Chockwe Lumumba, a Black nationalist lawyer, was elected Mayor on a platform to bring the solidarity economy to Jackson. Not only that but the city council was largely supportive. Originally, the idea of Cooperation Jackson was to be a community partner that could help implement this vision, anchored by what was expected initially to be a $6 million loan fund.
Tragically, Lumumba died in office of a heart attack in February 2014—on the exact day that the loan fund was expected to receive final city council authorization—and the coalition that supported the solidarity economy building effort fell apart. In the wake of these developments, Cooperation Jackson pivoted. It had to stretch far fewer resources to—over the course of 10 years—develop what today is a growing community land trust and an emerging network of neighborhood-based cooperatives.
It's been a long and winding road. But Akuno is optimistic. This year, he says, Cooperation Jackson hopes to form a business center, a print shop, and a grocery store, among other enterprises. The group also has ambitious plans to create an eco-village and to finally raise that multi-million-dollar loan fund to expand operations that they had originally hoped to launch with city backing a decade ago.
As you read this article, I encourage you to reflect on the struggle to build an economy rooted in racial justice and solidarity. Until the next Remix column, I remain,
Your Remix Man:
Steve Dubb
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