Adding to the Mentality of the Cooperative Movement

I am at CoopEcon 2013 with some amazing leaders across the southeast, including 5 others from Birmingham, Alabama. Amongst everything else we have gotten a fairly extensive history of the US south's coop movement history. Much of which rooted out of Civil Rights Movement Era organizing and resistance to  racism and classism. This organizing work included, but is not nearly limited to, SCLC, CORE, and SNCC organizers helping communities make this happen.

I want to add onto something due to all the amazing amazing stuff I have heard. I feel some of the framing I have heard is that Cooperatives are just a resort, many times a last resort, to resist the system of oppression we live in. But because of the amazing work groups like the Federation of Southern Cooperatives has done, I think we can now flip that mentality, and would benefit from flipping that mentality. Again, not because those groups did anything wrong, but because they did it so right, that they have created enough of a base to allow us to flip that mentality.

So first, what is it that we are resisting? All Oppression, including Racism (or White Supremacy), Classism (or Capitalism), and Patriarchy (such as Sexism, Hetrosexism, and Cissexism). What do all those things do? Oppression is a system that dehumanizes people. Cooperatives are about collaboration, organization, and community. So instead of having the script that Cooperative are a resort our communities fall back on to resist when we can't figure out what else to do, the script should be Cooperatives are one of the FIRST things we can do to CLAIM our humanity.

We can build entire communities made of cooperatives. Cooperative agriculture, cooperative housing, cooperative grocery stores, cooperative construction companies, water utility cooperatives, sustainable energy cooperatives, cooperative hospitals, etc. Creating entire sustainable cooperative communities. I believe it was H Rap Brown who, in the late 1960's, said something to the line of, 'you know, they own the money system. So even if you gain all the green money, all they have to do is change to red money.' H Rap Brown, amongst other things, was a chairman in the late 1960's of the largest civil rights organization in the southeast, SNCC. Well, if we create entire sustainable cooperative communities, cooperatives wouldn't need to be what we do out of necessity anymore. Getting rid of money is something we could do out of a potential necessity. Well, I mean, if our entire community is a self-sustaining cooperative with food, energy, clothing, and shelter, if they try and rig the money system, such as doing some kind of monetary inflation, or something along those lines, to try and stop this type of work, it doesn't matter. Because we don't need your green OR red money anymore. We could switch to a Resource Based/Gift Economy if needed. It is not new. It has been done on this exact land before. These types of economic systems are the types of systems the Indigenous ran on. If we have created a system that priorities community, organizing, and collaboration, and we run our systems of food, clothing, energy, and shelter in our own communities, we don't need money. We could trade, or better yet, gift it. Because everyone would be taken care of and apart of the community.

Of course this is NOT a statement of what every community should do. Every community has different needs, and that needs to be respected. No one knows their own communities like those communities themselves. Though this is a statement of what communities could do if they choose it is right for them. Cooperatives aren't just a final resort because the current system isn't working, Cooperatives are a type of first resort to claim our humanity.

"A cooperative isn't truly a cooperative unless it prioritizes justice!" - An approximation of a quote from one of the women on the panel who works for the Federation.

In addition to other 'traditional' value-based organizing, this is some of the work Magic City Agriculture Project (www.MagicCityAg.org), the group I am lucky to work with, is hoping to continue in an urban setting, starting in Birmingham. Not surprisingly, two of MCAP's board members are 60's foot soldiers as well.

Much Love, Peace, and Solidarity Forever!

2-Step Alternative Community Development Plan

Sometime I hear people always vouch for gentrification because they say it will build more wealth in the city to help cash poor people later. I want to propose a simple 2 step alternative plan for the City of Birmingham.

1) Pass a living wage bill. In Birmingham, Alabama 27.3% of the population lives below the poverty line. That is much higher than the state poverty level of 17.6%. A city living wage bill of say $11.50 an hour would bring and keep massive amounts of wealth into our city. Think about this, in areas such as Southwest Birmingham there is literally nothing but Churches Chickens and McDonalds. That is it. No restaurants, no grocery stores, nothing. So if those restaurants started paying 4 dollars more per hour that would be about $8,000 per full time employee more per year. Assuming they have 12 full time employees, and 4 part time employees, that would be about $112,000 more per year per store being kept in communities. I have been told the Jimmy Johns in 5-pts South makes about $12,000+ profit per week going to the owners salary. That's $624,000 per year. Meaning, he could easily spare $112,000 a year. He would still be making $512,000 in salary per year. This of course means more money for people to buy houses, more money for people to consume at retail and food stores, and more tax revenue.

2) All the tax breaks and money that City Hall would have given to development projects that would cause gentrification, instead gets put into a cooperative loan fund. This loan fund would be specifically for people trying to start worker-owner coops, consumer coops, housing coops, and community land trusts. The loans would be given out at 4%. That number being chosen here because inflation averages around 3.8%. So it means the fund would keep up with inflation and wouldn't decrease over time. Worker-Owner coops stimulate small business ownership within Birmingham. Building and keeping wealth in our city, and building up our citizens. Consumer coops help give consumers and residents power and incentive to buy from these small local businesses. And Housing Coops and Community Land Trusts deal with our housing problem. In the state of Alabama 70.7% of residents own their place of residence, while only 50.2% do in Birmingham. Home ownership creates residential ownership over their place of living and their community, which can help builds and stabilize neighborhoods.

Zero extra money would be spent with these two points, but with simply the passing of these two ideas we could drastically change Birmingham.