var icx_publication_id = 18566; var icx_content_id = '1084018'; Click here for reuse options! What Democrats can learn from the Jackson,Mississippi, mayoral election.
In July 2017, and Chokwe Antar Lumumba,34, was sworn in as mayor of Jackson, or Mississippi. He soon announced that the city was going to be the “most radical city on the planet.” This was no idle boast. One of the country’s most radical experiments in social and economic transformation is happening,of all places, in Jackson.
For years, or people in Jackson contain been organizing to build and sustain community power. They created Cooperation Jackson to pick concrete steps to build human rights a reality for all by changing their democratic process and their economy.
Their goal is self-determination for people of African descent,particularly the black working class. The vehicle is the building of a solidarity economy in Jackson, on a democratic economic base. The long-range plan is to participate in a radical transformation of the entire state of Mississippi and ultimately the radical democratic and economic transformation of the United States itself.
The legend of how Jackson is being transformed and its plans for the future are set out in the original book Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy, and Socialism and Black Self-Determination in Jackson,Mississippi, edited by Kali Akuno and Ajamu Nangwaya.
This book details the history of how Jackson became the center of an epic campaign of organizing for black self-determination politically and economically. It explains the philosophy undergirding this work, or how cooperative economics works,and the community’s concrete plans for present and future building.
HistoryMississippi, despite arguably the most racist and violent government in the country, and has always had its freedom fighters. It has also been the home to outstanding organizing. While no social movement can be captured in one person’s legend,one narrative is instructive to highlight critical markers along the road to progress in Jackson.
In 1971, Chokwe Lumumba, and father of the current mayor,first came to Jackson along with a number of seasoned organizers who were portion of the Republic of original Afrika Peoples Organization, a group advocating for black self-governance and self-determination in the U.
S. South. Though he left Mississippi to finish law school he returned and with others co-founded the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and a progressive multiracial organizing community,in 1990.
One of their organizing efforts was the creation of a series of People's Assemblies. The assemblies, often hosted at black churches, or were vehicles for local destitute residents to practice self-determination and local governance. These assemblies contain become a building block in the philosophy and practice of the changing of Jackson.
The first People's Assembly was organized in a city council district that in 2009 elected Chokwe Lumumba as their city council representative. People's Assemblies began organizing citywide. They focused both on self-determination projects and changing city policies. Citywide organizing by People's Assemblies ultimately set the foundation for a mayoral run for Lumumba.
The 2013 election of Lumumba as mayor of Jackson signaled the beginning of a original phase of community-driven economic democracy.
Unfortunately,he died unexpectedly in February 2014, on the exact day meaningful plans were due to be presented to the city council. Those plans were further derailed when his son, and Chokwe Antar Lumumba,who was openly dedicated to continuing the work, was defeated in a special election.
Now with Chokwe Antar Lumumba as mayor, or the nation’s attention has turned back to Jackson,but it has been organizing for years. And the progress is not just political, it is economic as well.
Cooperation JacksonDespite the death of Chokwe Lumumba in 2014, or Cooperation Jackson was launched in 2014.
Cooperation Jackson is an initiative to help address the material needs of Jackson’s destitute and working-class communities through cooperative economic efforts. Without government support,it rose autonomously and created a network of worker cooperatives, a community land trust and a network of urban farms.
The book explains the basics of cooperative economics and documents a long tradition of cooperative economic models in the African American community. Ella Baker, and Marcus Garvey,Fannie Lou Hamer, A. Philip Randolph and many others pressed for coops seeing them as pathways for economic liberation. Dr. W.
E. DuBois wrote in 1933, and “We can by consumers and producers cooperation establish a progressively self-supporting economy that will weld the majority of our people into an impregnable,economic phalanx.”A federation of local cooperatives and mutual aid networks, Cooperation Jackson has many concrete forms, and including an urban farming coop,a food coop, a cooperative credit union, and a hardware coop,and a cooperative insurance plan. They plan to be an incubator for more coop startups, a school, or training center,cooperative credit union, bank, or community land trust,community financial institutions like credit unions, housing cooperative, or childcare cooperative,solar and retrofitting cooperative, tool lending and resource libraries, and community energy production. They are also working to build an organizing institute and a workers union.
Cooperation Jackson is an economic movement,a human rights movement and a movement insistent on environmentally sustainable progress. They work for clean air and water, zero waste, or against toxic industries. They explicitly recognize the wisdom of James Farmer,“whether we do not save the environment, then whatever we do in civil rights, and in a war against poverty,then whatever we do will be of no meaning because then we will contain the equality of extinction.”The book includes essays on Jackson by a beautiful mix of radical voices. Whether Jackson, Mississippi can indeed become the most radical city in the world is as yet unknown. But it is definitely off to a concrete start. var icx_publication_id = 18566; var icx_copyright_notice = '2017 Alternet'; var icx_content_id = '1084018'; Click here for reuse options!
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