Ep 244 Cooperation Jackson with Kali Akuno

Cooperation Jackson fights to create economic democracy by creating a vibrant solidarity economy in Jackson , mississippi that will help transform Mississippi in the South . You can find more information about Cooperation Jackson at wwwcooperationjaxsonorg . Calli is an organizer , educator and writer for human rights and social justice .

He served as the director of special products and external funding in the mayoral administration of the late Chakwi Lumumba of Jackson , Mississippi . His focus was supporting cooperative development , sustainability , human rights and international relations .

Calli also served as the executive director of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund , based in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina , and he was a co-founder of the School of Social Justice and Community Development , a public school serving the academic needs of low-income African-American and Latino communities in Oakland , california .

Calli is also the co-editor of Jackson Rising Redux Lessons on Building the Future in the Present and Jackson Rising the Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson , mississippi .

Calli has written numerous articles and pamphlets , including the Jackson Cush Plan the Struggle for Black Self-Determination and Economic Democracy Until we Win Black Labor and Liberation in the Disposable Error and Let your Model Be Resistance A handbook on organizing new African and oppressed communities for self-defense . So Calli welcome to Revolution .

What that is for folks who don't know , community land trusts are a way in which communities can hold land in common in a community and really determine its value .

And for us what we are seeking to do is to take as much land out of the commodities kind of market in our community as possible to make it permanently affordable , but also to fight rampant gentrification and ethnic displacement , which is taking place not only in Jackson but in almost every major city .

You can think of Just being priced out by this new wave of tech entrepreneurs and tech capital which is coming in and gutting out our cities and turning it over to vampire-like institutions like Airbnb et cetera .

So our land trust not only is suited to fight against that , but it is the basis by which we kind of form our operations base for our worker cooperatives , and what we've tried to design with this is a system wherein they can kind of survive and compete in the long term with the likes of Walmart , for instance , which is the largest employer in the state of

Mississippi and throughout much of the South , and it's very much intent on destroying small kind of startup productive units such as those that we are involved in . So this is a little bit about what cooperation Jackson is and what it does , but it's constantly growing , evolving .

One of the things that we are trying to pursue now , in fact , we just did a training and doing a series of trainings throughout the South , trying to develop what's called a community-inclusive currency , and this is like a combination of time banking with alternative currencies .

But the pieces that we are most kind of interested in is how this institution , which we're borrowing from practices that have emerged in Kenya from a group called grassroots economics , is an element of economic planning that's embedded in their process of how you develop these kind of asset vouchers and inclusive currencies , but also the ability to do internal financing ,

which takes us out of some of these circuits of predatory capital that our model has been trying to figure out how to extract ourselves from the beginning . So we're constantly tinkering and growing . This May 2024 , for those of you who have been following us or those of you who haven't over the years will be a young 10 years of age come May day 2024 .

We started May day 2014 shortly after Chuck Willamouma's death , which you mentioned . It was somewhat a premature opening , but we've been learning , adapting , growing ever since that time and have no intention on stopping .

So we do a level of that with every group that comes in .

The difference with us is trying to integrate it within a network of fabric where in the businesses support each other and actually build kind of like building blocks upon each other to be able to have a level of internal markets and internal supports but also to be able to deal with some of the external threats .

Then there's the more kind of broader , longer term piece of our organizing which is focusing in primarily on building what we call kind of practical self-determination in our community , being able to provide our community's basic needs , starting fundamentally with food sovereignty and the quest to get us to that particular point , which is not something our organization alone

can do within Jackson , but the point is to put all the different growers in the community in a productive relationship with each other so that we're planting and producing and distributing based upon the caloric needs of our community , to all the different members of our community .

And to give a snapshot for those of you who don't know you know Jackson is over 80% black . By all metrics is one of the poorest cities in the country . We would argue with folks that if you look at real , the real rates of under employment and unemployment , you're talking roughly about 50% of our population .

So there are ways and levels in which mutual aid is just a survival necessity for large parts of the working class community in Jackson and one of the other pieces in terms of organizing and this is where that community inclusive currency piece that I was just talking about comes in we're trying to make time a valuable asset because those of folks in our community

who are being , you know , structurally denied employment , a lot of them have time and time is often looked at as a major problem .

We're trying to look at it and cultivated in terms of an asset , of something with all the skills that exist within our community we can mobilize beyond just the immediate relationships of solidarity that exists , say , within a family or on the street , but to generalize that through organized practices in the community .

So that's a particular piece that we've done , we've grounded in , we've had , you know , some varying levels of success , and then there's just our human rights advocacy work , and so you know , just to bring it current , one of the main things A lot of our members are involved in , obviously even taking the lead on and many respects right now , is fighting against

these reactionary , racist laws that are coming down from the Republican super majority that we have , and I'll just cite one , which is HB 1020 was just got passed , but in April . It was just enacted into law in July . And what this law does ? It basically strips Jackson some fundamental home rule .

Right , we have an occupying you know folks who've heard this before , but it's literally true in our community . You know , you have the capital police , which are controlled by the governor . They've now taking over all the police and functions in the city of Jackson .

Fundamentally , they've instituted , along with that , a new court system , which is not elected by anybody in Jackson , just appointed by the governor . They've installed this to now take over most of the fundamental cases . And so what ? This means that there's no recall . There's no .

You know , we didn't vote for these people or their platforms or the policies and orientation that they're using to adjudicate various cases . And , for instance , you know , so the audience is clear about what this means .

Jackson is not allowed to totally decriminalize , say marijuana , for instance , you know , because that's not within the law , even though medical cannabis has been now approved by the state of Mississippi .

But there's been a solid practice of , you know , folks not being arrested unless you know it's over a certain limit or certain kind of activities to be able to decriminalize a lot of economic exchanges which are a vital necessity , unfortunately , in our community , and so our police force , you know , in the city , was able to target not target folks for that and

redirect certain institutions and resources right to different types of activities in the community , but redirect that more towards education and keeping the numbers down . So they're coming in and just criminalizing anything and everything all over again to put more people back in prison in a prison system like in Mississippi , which is utterly horrendous .

You have folks who you know , we have real debtors prisons in Mississippi , for folks want to look that up , look it up . And we have , you know , tons of folks who basically are just sitting in jail for years waiting for a hearing or waiting for a trial for minor misdemeanors , right .

So this occupation is real and we've been kind of leading the charge on getting this repealed and revoked and that organizing looks like , you know , working with all the allies in the community , like the NAACP , mississippi , one Voice , to get these things kind of adjudicated through law , in our case , cooperation Jackson .

We use all these different avenues to try to fight back , but we're very , you know , clear that it's going to be through our own organizing and in the power that we build on the grassroots level which is going to shift this focus and rearticulate it in some particular way .

And so one of the main things that we're doing is organizing a new cop watch , for instance , that's now going on in the community , but also trying to practice and get folks back into an organized habit of kind of some of the self defense practices that need to take place against this kind of marauding police forces .

And then on a broader , deeper level , you know , since the bottom base , root of this is really the way this law was originally structured was trying to create a kind of protective but extractive bubble of all the majority of the white areas in the city and all the businesses are there , and taking that out of kind of the tax based on tax pool of Jackson .

A part of that was amended through our efforts in the coalition efforts , but another part of remains on the books , and so a critical piece of what we're aiming towards building and we're doing the public education for now is coming up with a boycott campaign .

In Jackson has a long history of this , going back to the 1930s , 40s and 50s of various kind of campaigns we did to fight against , you know , the old apartheid segregationist orientation that once dominated the country , and we're coming back to that and harking back to that . That this is again .

You know , this kind of revanche is , you know , white supremacist program which comes with the , with the manga movement , and we're back here yet again fighting against that , and we're building the base that we think , given time , will definitely succeed in crippling this move that the governor and his allies have imposed upon the city of Jackson .

So I was an Argentine after the factory takeovers there actually I guess the beginning of the century and I was in a factory that had been taken over and I was talking to some of the workers there about it and they were describing how their daily life was better , how the fact that they had a workers council now and that they were making decisions , so on and

so forth . And I asked them a question when you go home to your neighborhoods because after all , they're in the workplace , that's not the people who they live around necessarily when you go home to your workplaces and when you're at a dinner with your family or your extended family , do you describe this to them ?

Do you try and enlist support for them , for what you're doing , and even try and talk to them about they're doing it where they are in their workplace . And the answer struck me at the time , cause they said no , we don't .

And they said and so I pushed a little further and they said they felt like it only would happen in under the circumstances that it happened for them , which is that the owner split . The question was do we take over or do we give up ? And they took over and I said well , but why you're describing all these benefits that are accruing from what you've done ?

Why can't somebody else fight for that , instead of fighting from a position of , you know , absolute desperation ? And they didn't have an answer . But I'm guessing that you encounter something similar at times and I'm wondering is that the case and , if so , how do you deal with it ?

So Jackson is the capital of the state of Mississippi . For those who aren't aware , it's a shrinking city . I want everybody to understand that unfortunately , by some accounts and some news reports came out this year , it's the fastest shrinking city in the United States Now and only about 10 years ago , if you believe the US Census , it was roughly 200,000 people .

By the latest count it's 167,000 . And we can say anecdotally that we do know it's shrinking .

So but the history of it you know , even though it's one of the more industrialized sites in Mississippi , mississippi is still profiling in agricultural state , you know , with products like catfish and pigs and fish and trees being the largest kind of exports out of the state . So it's still very much dominated by that .

And how Jackson is situated , its industrial capacity is not in producing commodities , it's in moving commodities from point A to point B . So most of the industrial infrastructure was not , you know , say , like making cars .

We have a little bit of that now , like North of us , in Canton , mississippi , there's a new sign Renault plant which is 20 miles away from Jackson , but most of it is about building warehouses where you know the folks are picking up tomatoes or chickens or pigs or catfish , whatever , packaging them to a certain extent in Jackson , mississippi , and then moving them

up and down to Mississippi or up and down to railroads or up and down to highways and the way Jackson is situated . For folks to understand , it's a transport hub from New Orleans to Chicago , going north to south , and the main corridor there is the Highway 55 .

And then going east to west or west to east , you have the 20 , which basically takes you from Atlanta , georgia , to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and we're one of the little nodes that moves goods and services along that route .

Now , one of the main differences between why I lay out that picture , one of the main differences between Argentina as us , is Argentina most of those factors where they were actually producing raw commodity goods , not just moving in with transport , not just warehousing or acting as a kind of a logistic depot , with Jackson is , and so the things that we are doing

in cooperation in Jackson are more small scale production , like what our community production cooperative is doing in urban farming , what our freedom farms is doing , and so for us these are two institutions that are embedded in the community , but they're not in some industrial corridor or elsewhere outside .

They're actually in our community , surrounding our community , and we have to at all points articulate to our neighbors why we're doing what we're doing , what is around you and why it's around you and how folks can then participate in engaging , particularly in the farming .

So we rely upon a lot of in historically , we rely upon a lot of volunteer hours , and the key message is , as I was saying earlier , we have a goal of food sovereignty , but we're quite aware that our organization , which touches a couple of hundred people , does not have the capacity to produce enough on its own at least not with the amount of land that we

presently have , enough food for everybody in the community . But we are very much aware that , particularly folks who are over like 50 and over , many of whom who come from the Delta and have farming backgrounds , grew up in farming families or disfarming themselves .

There's a lot of backyard farms that exist in the state of Mississippi and Jackson in particular , but it's folks who are just kind of producing a little bit for themselves .

Well , we're trying to aggregate that and then put that in an organizing way to say that we can like both ramp up production but create these kind of internal community markets to be able to do .

We want to get to a point where we can plan out to a certain extent what each person is doing to be able to then do a level of trade and meeting kind of a certain supply but also ascertaining a certain level of demand planning . That we want to do .

We're inching our way in that direction , but our model is profoundly different in that we are very much clear about articulating the folks in the community what we are doing and in fact we have a whole kind of concept that we've borrowed from an organization called Insight Focus , which is a black-owned fab lab in Idaho , michigan , in Detroit , michigan , called

community production and it's very much rooted in explaining to everybody in a particular neighborhood what are the different things that we all need to improve the overall quality of life , similar to what you saw and heard people describe in those factories around how you control your time , how you control your labor and the working conditions once they were able to

co-operatize it . We're trying to do that same level of broad education and say there's a level of productive to meet our basic needs that we can and should do and have to do here in our community to improve the overall quality of life .

I think we're at the kind of we are charting kind of our growth and development and right now we're seeing we're in the completion of our second phase of development and trying to move towards the third but a critical piece of kind of our messaging that we've been trying to articulate to deal with the problem that you described of a limited kind of class

consciousness , if you will . Let's just call it what it is is to . You know , we really try to build our co-ops with a class orientation from the beginning right , a class conscious orientation and what that means . We've always kind of tried to articulate that we're not building co-ops for co-op's sakes but this is a form of work or self-organization .

You know that is critical to transforming all of our lives and one of the key strategies in campaigns that we've put out there . We think that there needs to be a major reunification of the trade union movement and the cooperative movement .

You know , in the United States , like in the UK or most of the English-speaking world in large part in the 19th century those two things were actually tied together right in here in the United States to , kind of gopher's model , separate that like it did so many other things , separated that so that they're not directly in touch with each other anymore and

oftentimes seen as competitors to each other . But we've been pushing what's called a union co-op , you know , kind of strategy and initiative , and we've been , you know , whenever we get the opportunity to talk to our , you know , our colleagues and comrades in the trade union movement , you know , to try to push them and encourage them .

Don't just settle for better wages within a contract , don't just settle for better working conditions .

Actually push to take over , you know , the place and turn it into a cooperative and then enable us to exercise direct workers' control , workers' democracy and be able to move things and plant it in such a way that we're working within the ecological limits of the earth , we're not working off the same kind of , you know , just profitable of everything else logic

which is literally killing us as we speak . So our orientation is , I would hope with this outline is always being profoundly different . Now does that mean everybody in the trade union listens to us ? Unfortunately , not right . But that doesn't mean that the strategy isn't sound or the message isn't sound and that some folks aren't coming around .

You know we've done several different things with Chris Smalls and trying to win him over to this perspective of think of don't just think of just winning a union contract at Amazon , think about turning Amazon into a broad kind of like public utilities one of the things I tried to drop in his ear and some of the folks there to rearticulate the struggle .

That's not just keeping on the terms that existed , you know , coming out of the middle portion of the 20th century with , you know , the Labor Relations Act , you know , because my argument with them was like , look , that limited us , you know , to a narrow scope of struggle and that was never good , you know , for the overall working class .

It kept us from being in solidarity . The law was written , in fact , so that there couldn't be but a limited expression of solidarity between workers and that was always a straight jacket .

And we have to go beyond that straight jacket and right now we think cooperatives are in a better position to do that than many of the trade unions because they're still bound in many respects , both logic and also contract wise , by many of the restrictions of the National Labor Relations Act .

And we're seeing we have to go beyond that right , like the capital went beyond it with all the different things , with , you know , the tab hardly in the right to work regime . We got to come back .

I think this go around to reposition ourselves and we think this kind of union , co-op , alliance and building kind of a class conscious orientation in all of the working class institutions that we build is fundamental to that .

Well , on the union side , there's all sorts of problems but all sorts of potential . Also . One of the things you mentioned was time , and I wonder what you think of this . A national campaign , like a national anti-war movement or a national climate movement , a national campaign around a 30-hour work week , but not just that .

A 30-hour work week where everybody who earns under a certain amount doesn't get three quarters of what they got before . They got the same salary that they got before . No loss . Everybody who earns above a certain amount goes down to three quarters . So it's not usually redistributed , but it is redistributed . It isn't just okay , we work less .

That's nice , which it is . And then your point if you go from , let's say , 40 hours or 50 hours down to 30 hours , there's all that additional time . The demand includes support , partly from that , you know , from revenues , et cetera , but support for retraining and for social involvement during those freed up hours .

So , for instance in Jackson , if people go from 40 or 50 hours down to 30 hours and all that time is retained , the argument isn't just that we can go fishing , which is nice , but the argument is that we can work for the community and we can contribute to what's going on with that additional time .

And so the demand becomes more than just you know , time at work . It's time at work , income and time given to society . You know , in organizing that's right . Do you think a national campaign could be organized around something like that ?

Right , like you know , some of the things that I know that the poor people's campaign were articulating were very much along some of these same lines . In fact , you know , we mentioned the trade unions .

The UAW had put forth some proposals , I think in the early 1960s , about a 20 hour you know work week and what that could enable , right , I think that there's some possibility of doing that , I think , in practical terms , I know I've been in a few conversations trying to interject in some of the different wings of the DSA , the Democratic Socialist of America ,

amongst other organizations , amongst them , in particular , because of the success that the DSA was able to really have going back , you know , 2016 to 2020 in particular , and raising , you know , the universal health care conversation and debate and the work that they were doing , somewhat , you know , through the auspices of , like Bernie's campaign , to raise that particular

issue . And I'm bringing that up because I think it is probably one of the best groups position to make an argument like this , and I think you have to bring it up , utilizing some of the same kind of strategies and institutional supports and arguments that were used around a single pair or the universal health care debate .

But it needs to be also interjected and included with a couple of different things , I think , to make it more comprehensive . So there's an active kind of growing movement , I should say , in the United States , around degrowth right and I think some of those components have to be involved in this .

Some of the proponents who are arguing for universal basic income , ubi they also need to be included .

But you know it's first going to have to start with a real dialogue amongst us on the left about developing the kind of both practical proposal in this campaign to issue something like this , and you know it would be helpful if there was , you know , some candidates who put this out .

But beyond that , we need to structure these campaigns so that we can run on these in each state right , similar , maybe slightly different , but to build the both momentum but the institutional support for a generational campaign , because in reality we know that's what it's going to take to move something like this .

But I think there's components of what we are already pushing in the real world right now various , you know , left and progressive forces that we have to be in more dialogue about , how we come together to put this into a comprehensive campaign so that each one of those that you're talking about they feel different kind of gaps .

So like the degrowth I think , in part filled in some ecological gaps that we would need to address , you know , like a move to a 30 hour work week , then the other piece around well , how do we make sure those who are elderly or those like children where would they fit in to be , to get some access to some of this redistribution ?

That's what the UBI folks , I think , and some of the better and sound arguments and practical arguments that they've been raising around that need to come in and we can be in the dialogue . But I do think we have enough right now .

When I'm saying we , I'm speaking of , like the broad left in the United States , you know I think , is small and fragment as we presently are .

We do have enough to successfully push on this if we think about it as a five to ten year campaign and build the Progressive steps from municipalities to counties , to states , to the federal and then move along that line . I think if we we get our act together and being some dialogue , we can move on this and do something successful .

And this regard and I say that because you know the conditions are ripe for an alternative and and if we don't provide many of these alternatives concretely , we know that the fascists are going to feel that void as they are already , and their , their solutions don't solve anything other than amassing more resources for small few and offering the stick In the hammer

to the rest of us . But you know they don't have a fear , at least not like now , of Putting forth the proposals that think in the same way that we do , and that's something we're going to .

The second might be a product of the first , compared to being sort of independently true . And the question arises what is the real obstacle , or what is , what are the major Obstacles to getting our act together ? Of course there's the media and there's repression and there's police and etc . Etc .

But I want to understand if you , if you could maybe shed some light on it , what are the obstacles inside us ? Not not because the other side doesn't want us to win , of course not , but the obstacles that are preventing us from doing it .

And when you look at Bernie's campaign , okay , it's not socialism the way I mean the word , the way you mean the word , but he called himself a socialist and he became the most popular politician in the country Right , and at the height of the 60s that was unimaginable . That's right at the high right .

So there is something different , seriously different , about now that is not so pessimistic , it's far more optimistic . Optimistic , except we can't get our act together Right . And it's not because you know the man is knocking on the door and telling me stay in place . You know , it's something else .

It's something inside us , and I'm wondering what you think about that .

Right now we're not as well financed , we don't have a fox Media network but regardless , right , in many respects , you know , our , our ideas are Winning the day in the broader kind of cultural wars .

So I think this insistence that some of us come out I know I come out of a tradition similar around this , you know which but these vanguard kind of notions and traditions and that there's one you correct line , you know that there has we still have remnants of that on the one hand , which form kind of institutional cultural blocks , for lack of a better word .

And then there's the more kind of , I think , left culture that's evolved from 1994 on , which is much more like influenced by the Zapatistas and horizontalism and anarchist traditions and what . What's missing , I think , is I don't have to agree with you on everything . I don't even know if I agree with myself on everything all the time , right , but what ?

What can we operationalize that we can work on ? And I think how the biggest thing we have to shape is how to Change , I think , is how we both the debate and enact the different practical parts of our vision or articulations . Like that is is the piece I think is the biggest obstacles .

Like we just don't really trust each other In many profound ways and I think it's like , okay , I , I need to trust you in order to do X , y and Z , but you know , I'm not necessarily I'm at a stage in my political life where I'm still as kind of a hardcore ideologue around everything , but I've I've neutered that to a degree and I don't know if that's the

right word , but you know , contain that to say this is what I want to work with you on and I don't need to agree with you on everything .

Right , I'm not trying to cancel what you believe or what you bring to the table , but can we sit down and agree upon , relative to this strategy , to this particular kind of campaign , can we agree upon these parameters Of both how we want to execute it and where we want to go , and also be very clear of what are the things that you will compromise on , what

are things you won't compromise on , and let's be clear about that to the greatest extent with each other up front .

So we know , hey , this is a when I get on , this is where I get off , right , and but if we're clear about that up front , then we deal with another big problem around our sectarianism and the habits of Well , this person is a sellout , or this person is a trader , or this group is reformist .

Like , look , we're going to need folks who firmly believe at this stage of the game , folks who believe that capitalism can be reformed , and folks who absolutely know that that's not true , to be able to work together Right on some of the things that we're going to do .

We're going to be able to work together Right on some practical things that may have a reformist bit , that may not satisfy everything that our folks you know I'll heat their turn on the hard left Might want to Kind of negotiate with or get down on , but say like , look , if it moves the needle and you know this far in our camp , in direction we may not ,

given the balance of forces to get everything we want we need . The point is to not create Barriers so that we can't continue to push for more of what we want , and that is the critical piece I think we're going to have to . We have to really figure out .

But I mean , if you look at , you know , the things I point to as evidence of how strong we actually are in this period , if you just look at the summer of 2020 , regardless of what you think about it how just many millions of people actually took to the streets , uh and and articulated some profoundly radical ideas .

Now , are they all going to come to fruition or be practical in the short term ? No , we already saw that . But you know , there was some , like you mentioned some qualitative changes , you know like . So the one of the things I've been , you know the I was , uh , early this year in Catalonia and folks were saying , well , you know what gives you encouragement .

I said the summer 2020 gave me a profound encouragement . I said , let me tell you what , what really was encouraging to me . I've never seen that many white people articulating issues germane to the black community , on the black community's terms . Never seen that before in my life in the United States , and I was like that's something like we didn't have that .

We had solidarity , but we didn't have this , you know , type of engagement in the 1960s , if you want to again make a comparison . So and to me that's an advance Do we still have , you know , further go in terms of dealing with issues of , you know , heterosexism and patriarchy and like , yeah , transphobia ?

We got a long way still to go , but I see them the need of moving more in our direction , and that's our challenge , I think , now to figure out how to operationalize that and make these , you know positions that we have , you know , fundamental pieces that we could execute in terms of policy execution in a practical way .

But there's another level , which is the people who we try to talk to and what they come at it with , and I'm wondering if their cynicism and and lack of hope let's call it and doubt about any campaign leading to anything beyond a small victory that then gets rolled back is a big factor .

In other words , it's not that they , it's not that they disagree with us that a better distribution of wealth would be good , that not relegating groups to lack of status , a lack of dignity , a lack of this and lack of that because of of their beliefs or whatever , would be good . It's not that they disagree with the values the left puts forward .

It isn't that they disagree with sort of the , the broad aims . It's they don't believe in any of it happening , and so they . You know you're asking me to roll a rock up a hill . I'm busy as shit . I've got two little kids . I'm going to take care of them because I can do that , right .

But when you talk to me about changing society , I just think you know you're in Cloud Cuckoo Land , it's not going to happen . And so , as much as I like you , as much as I can agree with you over dinner , I can't take that step . And I'm wondering if you , if you think that's accurate ?

And if you do think it's accurate , what do you think would speak to them ? Let me just add one more thing . One of the things about the sixties that was a little different than now is you could drive , you might drive down the parkway and somebody will wave a V sign , you know , from window to window on the highway , and it meant something .

It meant you were part of something amorphous , but bigger Right that what you were doing is you were doing something that was not the right thing to do , but bigger Right that what you were doing each day was about what you were chanting and the war , but it was also about a better world , and you had some hope and some belief that you were contributing to

that . That's missing now . I even think it's missing among lots of leftists , lots of people who call themselves socialists , lots of people who call themselves anarchists , etc . And and how do you , what do you do to ?

But the thing I draw upon is it's from , you know , the , the , the black experience , and I would think this would be true for indigenous folks as well . And the thing I'm trying to say is to generalize , is like to put yourself in in my ancestors shoes and just imagine yourself .

You know , you take some revisioning work , but first imagine yourself on one of those slave ships coming over and you just packed in there like sardines , it must have seen utterly hopeless at that point yeah Right , completely hopeless .

And then imagining , you know , getting off and just being stuck in captivity , you know , for decades , all your life , or for generations . And the reason I tell this this , the story is that , look , we , we found ways , not always healthy , but we found ways of making sure that we're not just going to be in the dark .

We found ways of not only surviving through those times but envisioning , right , a different future , if not for ourselves , for our children or grandchildren , and that particular piece , I think , is lost , you know . But I think it's like look we , let's , let's dive into the things that members of the human family have already been through . That parallel .

You know the kind of hopeless that you're now feeling and recognize your position . You have more agency than they ever had , right , and so there's far more that you can do than what those you know in opposition 200 years ago could do . So don't lose sight of your agency , don't lose sight of what you practically can do , despite how overwhelming it is .

And remember that you know enough about other members saying , your family , your extended networks . You know you're not the only person suffering like this Right , or feeling limited like this . So let's build some solidarity there and figure out how do we do you know the problem solving ?

There's some deep counter cultural work for lack of a better term that we have to do to recreate social bonds that enable hope Right and a sense of community to be rebuilt that nurtures this hope .

That's a critical piece of what the left has to do , I think , in this particular point in time , particularly with some of the younger generations at least that we work with , because they are holding a lot of young folks are holding kind of a climate burden which they know is real , right . That's like you know , we see it , we feel it .

They're not always clear how , but you know and the thing is , the point is OK , the only way you're going to get through this is not by creating some bunker . That's not really going to help you .

Only way you're going to get through this is creating deep community bonds , right , and developing the relationships that are carried through today , like that is our fundamental task , and I think the things we got to go through in a general sense is to look at what happened to indigenous people doing the genocide , and look at what happened to African people , you

know , doing periods of enslavement , and try to look at what are the different ways in which they reconstructed communities to be able to survive those , those terrible acts , but to also come out fighting right and never surrendering , never giving up at any point in time , despite how , you know , bleak it might have appeared or was , you know , to be able to put

future generations as , like myself and you . So we can , we even having this conversation right , and so history has to be a guide , I think , in part of things , of what resources , what wells are we going to to drink from , to kind of nurture ? You know our spirits , let's just be clear about that .

And , and one of the pieces that we have to be able to do , I think the left . You know we used to be a broad entity that dream of different worlds and different futures , and that is a that is a piece of our legacy and kind of our , I think , our function and role in society and the whole .

That we have to recapture , you know , to be able to paint a picture of what the future could actually look like . But then , you know , be able to ground that in small little ways and practices that are happening now that build that , and that's , you know , coming back to us , that's , that's a part of practical thing .

We asked for cooperation , jackson is that is part of what we're trying to be right , a little bit of glimpse of what the future could look like in the here and now .

You know , with all this imperfections , with all this limitations , but to say , hey , you got a bunch of folks with very few resources in a very poor community have been able to accomplish this and we could accomplish much more with broader solidarity , resources and development of skills to move us further , but to look at the potential of what's there and what needs

to be added on to grow it like . That's what we're trying to be and trying other . It's trying to inspire others to be as well .

I'm not sure how closely everybody , even those who have signed it , have attended to it , but it's an effort to try and generate a conversation about unity , about a respectful unity , which is not based upon uniformity and agreeing on everything , but is based upon some significant kind of shared vision and strategy and outlook .

One of the things that has been broached is when you were describing the effort of the people who are the organizers , the political people , to have closer bonds . You were saying how we should figure out where we agree , where we can work together and work together and also understand where we have differences , and so on .

It sounded to me sort of like a coalition in this , following in the sense of okay , let's have a coalition , about a 30-hour week with some appended very important additions and who all can work on that , even though we disagree on these other things or we don't have these same other emphasis .

I wonder what you think of the reaction and I admit it is one that I have that coalitions are good but they're not what we really need .

What we really need is something like let's call it a block , bloc , call it anything doesn't matter right , but it is in very real sense everybody who would waive , whatever the movement sign is not a V , in other words , everybody who is in some way in part of the movement . How could that be ?

It would mean that inside this thing , we all are taking leadership from the parts that are most affected by and embodied in a particular aspect .

So in other words , we're all in here , the anti-war part , the global , the climate part , the affirmative action part or the anti-racist part , et cetera , and all parts basically say we're together , our part is going to support the rest . The disagreements will work out , but we're going to support the rest . And what does that mean ?

It means we're going to follow the lead of the most forefront , most active , most involved group in what it's most involved in . So all the organizations and the movements are going to take leadership from you know , I don't know anti-climate crisis organizers about the climate crisis .

That doesn't mean they won't agree on some things , but we're going to work out those disagreements and add our strength , mutual aid , our strength to theirs for their agenda and similarly around , say , anti-racist or anti-fantasy , whatever . So it's not a least common denominator , agreement , coalition , it's a sort of a greatest common , I don't know .

Commonality , unity with respectful discerns , something like that no .

We can't stay there , right , we're not going to win , and my objective is to win . We're not going to win just staying in coalitions , because those will fracture and fragment as soon as that issue is either resolved successfully or soundly defeated . We know that from how history rolls itself out .

So there has to be a conscious element within these coalitions which is seeking to forge long-term bonds with various forces on various different issues , in various sectors and various communities . It's going to have to have kind of a multi-layered approach .

So this is where I think you know there's kind of if you will , the way I look at it like there's the organic symmetry of need that these coalitions will come together for right . But then there has to be something which is conscious intentions and deliberate .

You know some sector if you want to call that a party or something to construct a historic block , but some organizers who are at least of opinion of you know how do we build a collective whole and identify , like you were saying , what are the different players and components and things that we need and how do we put them in constant dialogue and relationship to

each other so that we can , you know , have debates but also build collective synergy , a collective mission and , ultimately , a collective identity that you may be working in climate , you may be working around , you know , protecting abortion rights , but we're on the same plane of struggle and these are the practical ways that we're going to be in relation with each

other , to show up , to be involved , to be engaged in whatever these issues is and , like you know , I would maybe expect you know , you know best around and you're most positioned because you've been working and say , like the climate field for the last 30 , 40 or 10 , however many years .

I want you to take lead on that , but be very clear about what are the ways in which I can show up and be a part and make a contribution and vice versa . That's a more conscious element that we have to deal with right , and I'm not a proponent of long term kind of coalitions , but just being practical and say that's what needs to start Now .

You know , as you , I want to go back now .

I'm a big critic of the DSA but again , also being practical , I think that's a group , given its size , given its positionality I think it's weakening a bit , you know the last couple of years , but I think it's one of those institutions that needs to be thinking about being kind of a glue and reach out to different the better elements , reach out to the

different sectors of the black left , the Latino left , the indigenous movement and figure out what are the different ways . You know , in a complimentary way .

Not the DSA is going to be leading it , but just that the fact that there's more activists there , there's more resources there , like how can they be of service and be in building this new type of historic block that we're going to need to win , and I think that is the way in which we need to look at it in this particular section .

And for those who don't mean you know like I'm barring this term historic block , primarily brought from Gramsci .

So folks want to identify and look at kind of what , what , what I mean there specifically and that will probably be multi parties , but groups that are in an alignment , right , they don't have to agree on every particular thing , but they're very clear about a coherent program that they're trying to execute .

And this is a program that's been articulated , you know , over time , through , through struggle , and you know , to be clear , michael , you know one of the things that we're trying to make is a contribution to a program like that .

We call ours the building fight formula , right , and we're saying , first and foremost , that there are a set of you know , activities , right , things that we can do to kind of anchor ourselves and identify these as building blocks of how do we reorganize our communities and our workplaces .

You know , fundamental to rearticulate this working class power to transform society . And the key thing is to get people to see that these things are critical in themselves to transform this .

And you can come at this from all these different ideological points , but being a combined practice , that is what this kind of formula is trying to articulate and lay out so that we can construct this very particular historic block .

Strategic strategy becomes irrelevant if you can't win , I tell people I use this as an example suppose you were going to play one-on-one basketball , you know , with Ron James and it's going to be on TV . There's nothing you can do about it . It's going to be on TV . You're going to be seen all over the place .

Do you spend the next month practicing your ass off ? Is that the best thing to do ? Or do you spend the next month figuring out how to look better on TV while you lose 100 to three , instead of losing 100 to seven ? If you practice and the answer is you spend time figuring out how to weather the storm , look good , have your family be , etc . Etc .

And I think a lot of people on the left , the Chinese used to have this slogan , and I'm no malice dare to struggle , dare to win . When I first heard it I thought dare to win . What the hell is that ? Don't we all want to win ? Why do we have to dare to win ? And it's because they're afraid . You know you can be afraid to win , I'll fuck it up .

You can be , you know , so doubtful that winning is possible . You can feel like trying to win is going to make me into a macho turd . You know there's all sorts of barriers and I rarely feel what I got from you immediately , which is , you know , I'm not doing this to look good in the mirror . I'm not , you know , to be able to see myself in the mirror .

I'm not doing this to be able to , you know , say I'm a good person . I'm doing this to win , to win , fuck it all . You know , if we don't win , what's the point ? That attitude ? And okay , we had that , some of us had that in the 60s , and we were crazy because we thought dare to win tomorrow , dare to win in 20 minutes , right ?

In other words , we had no sense of what it involved . Now a days , people have so much sense of what it involves that they dump it . You know what ?

That's cool , I'm okay , and what's missing is why are you doing this , are ? you doing this to have fun or to win ? Are you doing this to look good or to win ? And that's what I get from you , what ought to be widespread , but I sadly think it isn't . And I'm not sure . No , it's not .

And that may sound hard , but we also have to point out the weaknesses and the fractures within the existing structure and the fact that , you know , capital doesn't have a clear plan of what it's going to do .

Right , like they are fragmented in many fundamental ways and lack a lot of vision themselves , and within that there's a profound degree of opportunity that we just have to seize . And that's where that I do love personally that old Miles phrase dare to struggle , dare to win .

And if you're not willing to engage and get out there , then you're just going to stay in the same position you're in right .