#cooperation jackson

[probablyasocialecologist]

A series of critical steps must be taken before we get to the level of mass direct action on an ongoing and consistent basis. We have to do a much more thorough job of getting people to understand the severity of the crisis and our collective ability to do something about it. We have to win over hearts and minds; and we have to defeat this notion that capitalism cannot be overcome. We must do more to convince people en masse that preserving life on this planet will require us to engage in an epic struggle against forces of reaction that are doing everything in their power to undermine our efforts and preserve the status quo - as we have seen over the last decades from the Movement for Justice for Oscar Grant, to Occupy, to the Movement for Black Lives, to Standing Rock.

Kali Akuno, Tales from the frontlines: Building a people-led just transition in Jackson, Mississippi

[indizombie]

It's a crisis of views and values and there's a lot of environmental racism going on. We are sending our money to the government to get what needs to be done, done. And they're not doing it. "We're underserved. People of colour are underserved. We stay in the worst parts of town, just so we can survive. We're not asking for mansions, we just want to live and have the normal stuff, running water, clean water. We've been on the boiled water alert for about a month. It's not drinkable, so what do we do? How do we feed our children, how do we cook and eat? This is not something that has just happening. This is slow rolling and it has gotten to the point of untenable. We're struggling here.

Imani Olugbala-Aziz, member of the volunteer group Cooperation Jackson  

[solarpunkwitchcraft]

Putting Black Empowerment to Emergency Use

Cooperation Jackson deploys its community production capacity to make masks during COVID-19.

In response, the collective’s Community Production Cooperative is turning out as many 3-D printed and hand-sewn masks in its “fab lab” as it can, getting faster with practice. The printed masks take sixteen hours to make, and with an assembly line approach (while still practicing physical distancing), the sewn masks, which previously took an hour and a half to make, now take about forty-five minutes.

The collective plans to post videos to teach others how to make them, modeling the DIY culture—which is a core part of the black radical tradition—that Akuno believes will be much more needed in the future.

[edwordsmyth]

Towards a General Strike to End the COVID-19 Crisis and Create a New World

We must do everything that we can to create a new, just, equitable and ecologically regenerative economy. The question is: how?

"We should take inspiration in the fact that we are not alone in calling for and acting upon a call for a general strike. Workers throughout the country and the world are spontaneously taking matters into their own hands. Auto workers, chicken factory workers, nurses, drivers, grocery store workers, and more are all taking independent action. Calls for a rent strike are going viral, as working poor and homeless workers are starting to occupy hundreds of vacant homes to meet their needs and practice the necessary social distancing to ensure their survival. Things are in motion and we need to build upon this momentum quickly."

[protoslacker]

I’m here to talk about just transition, like transitioning from an extractive, destructive, exploitative economy to one that affirms life, to an economy that is regenerative, to an economy that honors Mother Earth, honors the sacred. How can we sort of get back to those ways? And, yeah, I think about just transition, and I think it needs to be a framework which includes social justice, because many times the people who are on—who are mostly directly impacted by climate change are the communities on the frontlines, and so a social justice framework should be sort of put in place when thinking about a just transition.

Brandon King at Bioneers. Making the Transition from Extraction to Regeneration

This keynote talk was given at the 2019 Bioneers Conference.

[berniesrevolution]

Democracy At Work w/ Richard Wolff | Economic Update: Cooperation Jackson: A Closer Look

[loneberry]

Jackson, Wakanda: Black Liberation and Technology

Here is an essay I wrote for READING WAKANDA: Reconciling Black Radical Imaginations with Hollywood Fantasies. The essay discusses Cooperation Jackson’s analysis of race and technology, the film Black Panther, capitalist techno-optimism, and Afro-futurism. Read it here:

http://www.socallib.org/reading-wakanda/jackson/

[democracyatwrk]

We sat down with Kali Akuno, director of Cooperation Jackson, at the Fearless Cities conference to discuss the challenges of movement building in Jackson, Mississippi