Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Cooperation Jackson is a long term vision. “We’re going to ultimately have to create our own network of supply and value chain,” says Akuno. “If we exist in a bubble, we won’t survive. It’s a big experiment in democracy. Talk to us in ten years, and see where we’re going.”
The Social and Solidarity Economy is based on individuals and communities arising from social initiatives. Material benefits are not the essential building block of its identity. Rather, it defines itself by the quality of life and well-being of its members and the whole of society as a global system.
The emergence of solidarity in labor comes to coincide with the broader process of recuperation of the rich meaning and content inherent to work itself.
The road from the reality of poverty to the solidarity economy is not opened by the poor alone in their efforts to address their needs and problems.
This is the first road to solidarity economy, traveled by many who set out from the reality of poverty and experiences of popular economy. As these initiatives encounter others arising from other realities, with different motivations, the idea of a solidarity economy sector acquires greater visibility.
This is one of the signal lessons of the inspiring work of Tosepan: that a culture of solidarity — fortified by cooperative(s) providing for material and cultural needs — deepens democracy, and that this in turn makes it very hard for predatory capital to enter.
Quietly and in secret in summer 2014, we began venting frustration with recurring sexism in worker co-ops, food co-ops, and solidarity economy organizing in New York City, and beyond.
When we say “solidarity economy” we are asserting the necessity of introducing solidarity into the economy, incorporating solidarity into the theory and practice of economics.
As one of the co-founders and now Executive Director of the non-profit division of Cooperation Jackson, Kali Akuno is working to transform the city into ‘a beacon of radical politics’.
The solidarity economy is a global movement to build a post-capitalist world that puts people and planet front and center, rather than the pursuit of blind growth and profit maximization. It isn’t a blueprint but a framework…
At the end of June, activists from Mexico, the United States, and Canada gathered at the Fearless Cities Conference—North America’s first ever municipalist summit—to discuss local strategies to build a more just, democratic, and inclusive economy…
But its that type of intended, broad, people’s participation and engagement – which is critical to making an assembly and is also critical towards reaching and politicizing people to be agents of their own self-transformation, which is what we are aiming for.
