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THIS LAND IS CO-OP LAND  
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Amie Stager
September 24, 2024
In These Times
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_ A hundred years ago, radical Finnish immigrants founded a
cooperatively-owned park to escape political repression on
Minnesota’s Iron Range. It’s still “a workingman’s
paradise.” _

The 240-acre Mesaba Co-op Park, which is neither privately nor
governmentally owned, is considered the epicenter of the Minnesota
FarmerLabor Party., Image via Creative Commons // In These Times

 

I’m standing on the dock, watching sunlight reflect off the waves,
when the sound of a bell calls my attention to the Finnish dance hall
towering over the lakeshore. The _mojakka_—a Finnish beef
soup — is ready. I head to the dining room with the dozens of
other people who have gathered here at Mesaba Co-op Park for the
annual midsummer festival, a weekend of live music, talent shows,
maypole dancing and meals.

The park consists of more than 240 acres of land, including
a spring-fed lake. Such places are usually owned and administered by
a government or kept as private retreats by companies or rich people.
Mesaba, in contrast, is neither privately nor government-owned, but
collectively owned by members of a cooperative who foster
relationships with each other and the land outside of corporate or
government structures.

Co-op members call it ​“a workingman’s paradise.”

Mesaba is neither privately nor government-owned, but collectively
owned by members of a cooperative who foster relationships with each
other and the land outside of corporate or government structures.

Located on Minnesota’s Iron Range — so named for the iron
mines that dominate the landscape and local economy— Mesaba is
a living monument to the region’s history of radical working-class
struggle and community. It was founded by Finnish immigrants who
brought their political traditions of collectivism, socialism and
union organizing to the Midwest with them. The Iron Range saw its
first widespread labor strike in 1907 after the Western Federation
of Miners came in and organized 14 locals
[[link removed]]. In 1916, as wages stagnated
and the cost of living rose, the miners went on a wildcat strike that
was met with violent repression from police and company guards. 

Because of their prominent role in the strikes, many Finnish miners
were blacklisted from the mines and faced anti-Finnish discrimination
in many public spaces, according to an article by historian
Arnold Alanen. 

They decided they needed a place to gather where they would ​“no
longer be at the mercy of others,” as a park history pamphlet puts
it. The Mesaba Range Co-operative Federation began to look for land
that could accommodate festivals, campgrounds and a children’s
camp. 

In 1929, the group bought the park’s original 160 acres from
a lumber company for $2,000.

Any Finnish-American organization was invited to join the cooperative,
and by 1930 some 40 organizations owned shares. Early in the
park’s history, the annual midsummer celebration was called
the ​“Festival of Struggle.” 
 

The park is also considered an epicenter of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor
Party (which is why I was there; I joined the Farmer-Labor Education
Committee in 2023). In July 1936, almost 10,000 people came to
Mesaba Co-op Park — in what would turn out to be one of the
largest political gatherings in the history of the Iron Range at that
time — to hear speeches from Farmer-Labor Party political
candidates
[[link removed]] Elmer
Benson and John T. Bernard. The Farmer-Labor Party was part of
a movement that spanned rural and urban areas in Minnesota to fight
corporate greed and provide mutual aid. It was the state’s strongest
alternative to the two-party system until 1944, when it merged with
Democrats to create the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party that Minnesotans
know today.

“This place was always a flashing beacon for progressives,” says
David Bednarczuk, resident _mojakka_ maker and park historian. When
Bednarczuk, who lives in Hibbing, joined the cooperative in
the 1970s, he was one of the first members who did not speak Finnish.
Part of a new generation of antiwar environmentalists, he helped
reenergize the park after what he called a ​“lost generation”
of members were subjected to FBI surveillance and political repression
during the McCarthy era.

Today, members of the Mesaba Cooperative Park Association—
educators, artists, trades workers, hospitality workers, historians,
healthcare workers and railroad workers — continue to use the
park for community gatherings. Most members aren’t Finnish, but the
radical traditions of the working-class Finnish founders live on in
the park itself, a remnant of a time when ​“cooperative
commonwealth”
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existed throughout the United States, including one led by socialist
Eugene Debs that tried to establish cooperatives to serve as models
of socialism.

That spirit of collectivism has faded from our national life,
including here in Minnesota, where it’s largely been replaced by
what I call the ​“Minnesota Dream” — the dream of owning
lakeshore property up north, a kitschy cabin where you can escape the
grind of city life and the hell of other people, an individualistic
fantasy of peace and privacy and private property.

Mesaba Co-op Park represents a radical alternative to that Minnesota
Dream. It embodies an economy that is based, instead, on cooperative
ownership, collective decision-making and mutual thriving. It is, as
Bednarczuk says, a beacon — a guiding light toward a different
world that we might yet choose to live in.

_[AMIE STAGER [[link removed]] is
associate editor at Workday Magazine.]_

_Reprinted with permission from In These Times
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All rights reserved. _

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* Finnish-American
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* co-ops
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* Workers' Co-ops
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* Minnesota
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* Farmer-Labor Party
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* Finnish immigrants
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* Mesaba Iron Range
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* McCarthy Period
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* Red Scare
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* radical history
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* Left History
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* Socialist Party
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* Communist Party
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