Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Project Eject, the People's Assemblies, and the Question of Autonomy
Many people throughout the United States have been inspired by the gains of the social movements in Jackson over the past decade. And many have been extremely confused and disappointed by the apparent “internal” strife that has erupted within and between factions of the progressive social movements in Jackson over the past several months. To everyone concerned about the social movements in Jackson and where they are headed, be you in Jackson or well beyond its confines, we ask you to try and not view these struggles as negative, but rather as growing pains. What some of us are now trying to demonstrate is how to hold our peer’s and ourselves accountable towards the development and implementation of a transformative program, i.e. the Jackson-Kush Plan. What we are trying to do is stop the right drift of our comrades - the types of political, ideological, and programmatic drifts we have sadly witnessed over and over again throughout the course of history with radical movements.
We are also trying to educate (and learn) through struggle via the means of engagement available to us and to a broader audience of interest. We have no interest in tearing anything we have worked to build down. Our interest is centered on seeing the aims of our labors come to fruition and not be negated by the logic of neoliberalism and its imperatives.
To this end, we want to note that there is a two-line struggle emerging over the question of the People’s Assembly in Jackson, Mississippi. One line maintains that the People’s Assemblies should fundamentally be vehicles of autonomous people-derived power. The other emerging line maintains that People’s Assemblies can be expressions of community engagement in collaboration with or under the direction of the municipal government (principally the Lumumba administration in this case).
One of the reasons why I maintain that People’s Assemblies must be autonomous political actors is expressed by the emerging struggle over “Project Eject” (Empower Jackson Expel Crime Together). Project Eject is the local iteration of the Department of Justice’s “reinvigorated” (their word) Project Safe Neighborhoods program, being pushed by President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. US Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, Mike Hurst, officially launched Project Eject on Thursday, December 7th in collaboration with the Jackson Police Department, the FBI, ATF, and other law enforcement agencies.
Despite the “community safety” rhetoric of the DOJ, Project EJECT has two primary purposes: 1) to contain the progressive social movements in Jackson (keep in mind that the DOJ recently threatened Jackson over its “sanctuary city” practices) and 2) to displace hundreds, if not thousands, of Black working class people from the city in the effort to gradually change its racial and political composition. We need to be clear on this, and get this point through to the Black middle class forces that appear to be collaborating with the DOJ on this program. Their class biased efforts to support "tough on crime" measures, rather than pushing for a people-centered program of self-determination, actually weakens the overall political strength of Black communities like Jackson (witness the demise of Black electoral power in Atlanta, Georgia after decades of promoting neoliberal housing and “safety” policies by the Black political elite that have gentrified the city and displaced tens of thousands of Black working class residents/voters). And further, we have to get the community as a whole to see that the launch of Project Eject is part of a deliberate effort targeting Jackson. Rather than being an isolated incident, this move is a continuation of the raids against the immigrant community that occurred in the spring and more recent threats to retract federal funding from Jackson if it does not terminate its human rights protection measures that make our city a type of “sanctuary city”.
Project Eject maybe an extension of “crime prevention” programs that were in place before the Lumumba Administration came into office, and therefore may take some time and difficulty to dismantle. As a result, the Lumumba administration maybe constrained in what it can and cannot say publicly in regards to the program at present. This is where an autonomous or independent People’s Assembly should come into play. An autonomous Assembly could raise its voice in rage against this utterly reactionary program and organize and lead a campaign to dismantle it. But, an Assembly that is in part directed by the Mayor and his administration, as the Assembly held on November 28th was oriented, is and will be constrained in its ability to speak or act against something the Mayor is either supporting (we know JPD Chief Lee Vance is in support) or otherwise constrained in opposing publicly.
As noted, Project Eject is a direct threat to the social movements of Jackson. So, silence from any quarter in this case is a form of consent and concrete agreement with the political program and project of Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions. Project Eject must be resisted and defeated. And we have to build the political vehicles to do so immediately. We hope the People’s Assembly effort being lead by the Democratic Visioning Committee will engage in this effort.
Monday, December 18, 2017
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Elections Don't Necessarily Change a Damn Thing
From the Black Agenda Report https://blackagendareport.com/cooperation-jacksons-kali-akuno-elections-dont-necessarily-change-damn-thing
A key strategist among the Black radicals that were behind the election of two Black mayors in Jackson, Mississippi, says his fellow activists have a decision to make: “Are we trying to be a good steward of the rules as they exist -- which I think is a complete waste of time -- or are we pushing for transformation of society?” asked Kali Akuno, of Cooperation Jackson. Akuno warned against falling into “the Syriza trap,” in which radicals wind up carrying out the policies imposed by banks and big business.
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Casting Light: Reflections on the Struggle to Implement the Jackson-Kush Plan, Part. A Response to Comrade Bruce Dixon.
“Our agenda includes
topics whose importance and acuteness are beyond doubt and in which one concern
is predominant: The Struggle. We note, however, that one type of struggle we
regard as fundamental is not explicitly mentioned in this agenda, although we are
sure that it was present in the minds of those who drew it up. We are referring
to the struggle against our own weaknesses. We admit that other cases may
differ from ours. Our experience in the broad framework of the daily struggle
we wage has shown us that, whatever the difficulties the enemy may create, the
aforenamed is the most difficult struggle for the present and the future of our
peoples. This struggle is the expression of the internal contradictions in the
economic, social and cultural (therefore historical) reality of each of our
countries. We are convinced that any national or social revolution which is not
founded on adequate knowledge of this reality runs grave risks of poor results
or of being doomed to failure” – Amilcar Cabral
When navigating treacherous waters or dimly illuminated
paths, it is necessary to have a stable mind, a steady hand, and clear vision.
And when trying to help others navigate out of similar journeys, it is
necessary to provide clear and concise lessons and instructions.
Politics anywhere and everywhere has always been complicated
and tricky. The electoral dimension of “modern” politics is no different. The
electoral systems that we’ve been subjected to and institutionalized within
over the last two hundred plus years of the US settler colonial project are
treacherous, particularly for the colonized and subjugated peoples in this
colonial empire, and those drawn from its laboring and exploited classes. These
sectors of society have been forced to “perform” for power and influence in the
main, and contest for power on rare occasion, within a rigged game, wherein the
very limited choices on order merely allow one to engage in symbolic gestures
centered on regulating aspects of the capitalist economy, making minor adjustments
to who reaps the most benefits from the system and how those benefits will be
disbursed. On occasion, we’ve been able to raise our voices regarding whether
to expand or contract the repressive mechanisms and institutions that reinforce
the systems of white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy, and to adjust the degrees
of pollution and waste we are subjected to by the capitalist social order of
extreme extraction and exploitation.
It is within this oppressive and undemocratic social order
that those of us seeking liberation are constantly searching for pathways to
emancipation. The Jackson-Kush Plan was and is one of these pathways. The broad
and multifaceted effort to execute this plan, euphemistically called the J-K
Plan for short, has recently been the subject of some public controversy and
come under some scrutiny, primarily by its own author – myself. Statements I
made on October 21st, and widely broadcast to the world on October 25th via the
Black Agenda Report prompted much of the controversy. But, this was only kindling
apparently as the main controversy was stirred up by Bruce Dixon’s article in
the Black Agenda Report on November 1st, entitled “Democratic Party affiliation in Mississippi a compromise made in error says Cooperation Jackson’s Kali Akuno.”
Unfortunately, comrade Bruce Dixon missed the mark in
providing a clear and concise rendering of the lessons I was trying to provide
about the ongoing struggle to implement the Jackson-Kush Plan and realize its promise
and potential towards making a substantive contribution to the social
transformation of the US empire. Now, before going too deep into this essay,
let me say unequivocally that I support Bruce Dixon’s cause of trying to
educate people, most particularly a younger generation of Black activists and
organizers, about the treachery of the Democratic Party, in the hope of
dissuading them from joining it or aligning with it in any form or fashion.
But, it is essential that I correct some mischaracterizations of the struggle
in Jackson that have been advanced by Bruce Dixon over the course of the last
several weeks. These mischaracterizations only serve to distort the
contradictions at play in the ongoing struggle in Jackson, and in my view
hinder folks from learning the critical lessons I was trying to convey on
October 21st.
Let it also be known that while I disagree with many of the
policy and programmatic priorities articulated by the Mayoral administration of
Chokwe Antar Lumumba thus far, as well as Mayor Lumumba’s increasing public
alignment with the Democratic Party (particularly the so-called Bernie wing of
the Party), I have a vested interest in doing all that I can to help the
Lumumba administration succeed. I am committed to struggling with the
administration internally where possible and externally when necessary, to stay
the course of pursuing radical social transformation as articulated in the
Jackson-Kush Plan. However, the central question that must be addressed is how
is “success” being defined and assessed, and by whom? These are critical
questions that will be returned to shortly, to help everyone clearly understand
what the fundamental “compromise made in error” was (and is) that I referenced
in October.
Since the release of the Jackson-Kush Plan in 2012, thousands
of people throughout the US empire and the world have stated that the plan, and
the work that has emanated from its pursuit, have been a major source of
inspiration for those seeking a more democratic and equitable future in
general, and those on the left seeking to build political and social power more
particularly. In short, the Plan rests on three pillars: 1) the construction of
a dual power in the form of a People’s Assembly to build collective power
(power with as opposed to power over) from the ground up to build a new society
and to nullify the power of the settler-colonial state; 2) to build an
independent political party (originally stated as a political force in the
document as a result of an internal compromise) to serve the will of the People’s
Assembly, and: 3) to initiate the process of constructing socialism by building
a comprehensive solidarity economy from the ground up through the autonomous,
self-managed initiatives of the organized community to build the local
productive forces and provide an alternative to capitalism and it forced
impositions which force the vast majority of us to work for wages and pay rent
(or mortgages) in order to survive.
It must be noted, for the sake of clarity and transparency,
that there was a political organization behind the development of this plan,
and until fairly recently, its coordinated execution. The political organization is the New Afrikan
People’s Organization (NAPO) and its mass association, the Malcolm X Grassroots
Movement. Both organizations are partisans of the New Afrikan Independence
Movement (NAIM) and highly influenced by the democratic centralist
organizations of the 20th century that fought for national
liberation and state power as the primary means to advance the development of
socialism and emancipate New Afrikan people. The J-K Plan was not and could not
be a spontaneous development. It took years to formulate, and it was built on
decades of hard work and experimentation, that was synthesized through years of
study and reflection. So, there was a conductor, as it were, driving its
advance which is critical to note as a lesson for anyone trying to pursue a
similar strategy. Knowing what went into its development and execution cannot
be ignored or overlooked.
That said, of all the things that the J-K Plan conveys, the
component of it that has far and away drawn the most attention has been its
electoral component. Like it or not, this has been the primary source of inspiration
engendered by this document. Given how the media is focused in this society,
and how power is too often narrowly understood, this sadly is what the
overwhelming majority of people focus on in reference to the radical work in
Jackson. In our specific case, it would seem that the J-K Plan provides a
straightforward rationale for the city council victory of Chokwe Lumumba in
2009, and justifies the pursuit of the mayoralty of Jackson by Chokwe Lumumba
in 2013, Chokwe Antar Lumumba in 2014 and 2017, and seems to provide a roadmap
to building municipal and eventually regional (i.e. the Kush), and state level
power in Mississippi. And while there undoubtedly is some truth to this
perception, it should be noted that it fails to grasp the deeper meanings and
pursuits of the strategy. For instance, the electoral component of the strategy
was originally intended to be an adjunct component of a broader objective, which
was to build a transformative, anti-colonial power from the ground up through
the People’s Assembly as an autonomous vehicle of self-governance that would
engage in a developmental process of socialist construction by building a
dynamic social and solidarity economy on the local level to create new social
relations and means of production (which is the mission of Cooperation Jackson). Building a new independent political party that
would engage in electoral politics, but not be bound by its pursuits, was just
one component of this radical strategy. Sadly, this understanding has been lost
or ignored, and even more disappointing, has not really been pursued by the
forces claiming adherence to the J-K Plan over the past 10 years. Why this is
so brings us to the heart of the contradiction or “compromise made in error”.
When me and my comrade Kamau Franklin first conceived of the
idea and advanced the proposal to NAPO and MXGM that Chokwe Lumumba run for
mayor in 2008, our primary objective was to use the campaign to: a) gather
concrete information about who and how many people in Jackson believed in and
would openly support the pursuit of New Afrikan (Black) self-determination and
sovereignty, and b) to use the data gathered from this social experiment to
advance our base building work in the city (and beyond) to build power. The
power we were focused on building was the enhancement of the capacity of a
self-organized community to collectively exercise its will by transforming the
social means to meet its material and social needs. The focus was on changing
social relationships from below, by moving people to pool their resources,
skills, and intellectual capacities to more effectively utilize what they have
to improve their lives and to struggle to either build or appropriate the
resources (land, capital, and social institutions) needed to suit this end. It
should be noted, that we did not rule out the notion that Chokwe should win the
election, but this was not our initial focus.
However, in the process of agreeing to pursue this course of
action, comrades in the Jackson chapter (keep in mind that neither me or Kamau
lived in Jackson in 2008) stated that they did not want to engage in a “symbolic
action”, that they wanted to “win”, meaning actually attain the office (which as
it turns out became focused on the Ward 2 council seat, as the initial proposal
to run for Mayor was modified based on commitments the chapter had already made
to an existing candidate). Given that we had done some preliminary research on
the possibility of winning an election that was favorable, I initially offered
no resistance to this notion. For my part, I went along with this notion
because I thought that we all agreed with the power building objectives stated
above. As it turns out, we did not. The problem
was that we failed to collectively define what we meant by “winning” beyond
this point, and herein was the fundamental “compromise made in error”. We did not agree on whether the victory was
defined as building power, or winning and holding office. Or, if the answer was
both/and, how would this advance the liberation of Black people within the US
in the short and midterm? How would this victory support the building of the
New Afrikan Nation, the decolonization of Turtle Island, and the dismantling of
the US government? We moved forward on the basis of assumptions, not on the
basis of concrete clarity. And moving forward on this basis is what has led us
to the impasse that we find ourselves in today.
For this, I have to be very self-critical, and address my
own failings. For my part, I had assumed that as a result of working closely
with comrades in the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement for well over a decade and a
half, that we had fundamental clarity and agreement on these and many other
central questions. I didn’t heed a warning issued by Amilcar Cabral decades
earlier about always struggling for the utmost clarity when attempting to move
forward strategically, primarily to overcome the underdevelopment of our
political forces and our movements overall. I didn’t do this at this critical
juncture. Struggles for clarity were made in earnest down the road, and
proposal after proposal was sent to press for clarity. But, most fell on deaf
ears, particularly when they challenged the notion of why we were continuing to
engage in electoral politics if it wasn’t serving the primary function of
building power.
As a result of this compromise, winning elections became the
primary focus of the “on the ground“ work in Jackson from 2009 on. In practice this
election centered focus has translated into downplaying the politics of the New
Afrikan Independence Movement, limiting public discussion of the Jackson-Kush
Plan, crafting a more “popular” political platform called the “people’s
platform” that orientated itself towards the restitution of a welfare state as
opposed to the construction of socialism, and making public overtures to
appease capital expressed in statements that “Jackson is open for business” and
“we want corporations to come here and get rich”. All of these moves were made
to enable the candidates to become more “electable”. These actions and
orientations are in contradiction with the focus and pursuits of the original campaign
proposal. This development sadly repeats a time worn pattern of revolutionaries
throughout the world over the past 200 + years who turn to electoral politics
to allegedly transform the system from within, who along the way get
transformed by the system and step by step become revisionists, reformers, and
agents of neo-colonial subjugation and neo-liberal social destruction.
Therefore, the choice of which electoral vehicle to employ
in pursuit of the original proposals aims was and is a secondary contradiction,
not a primary one. Bruce’s article mistakenly makes the vehicle question the
primary contradiction, i.e. whether we should have engaged in electoral
politics at all given the objectives being pursued, which is an error. Radicals
and radical movements must seriously interrogate when and where to engage in
electoral politics. For my part, I see electoral politics as a field of
struggle that revolutionaries cannot ignore, given the balance of forces in
society as a whole. But, I don’t think we need to give much of our limited time
and energy towards this pursuit. Rather, I argue that we need to put the
majority of our time and energy into building working class organizations that
are focused on enhancing the productive capacities of the class in its
comprehensive composition (meaning those who are employed, under employed,
structurally unemployable, those who labor in the fields, and those who labor
in prison) and amassing the skills and resources to transform society and
defeat the corrosive powers of capital.
However, this does not negate the fact that one of the
original pursuits of the J-K Plan was to build a new political party, one that
would engage in electoral politics, but be more of a facilitator of the
political pursuits of the social movements than a traditional “American”
political party. That such a party has not been built after 10 years of this
experiment is, without question, one of the critical failings of the project
thus far. But, when “winning” elections under the present social conditions
becomes the primary objective, the primary contradiction we’ve confronted
negates the pursuit of autonomous power, the execution of a radical program,
and the building of a revolutionary vehicle all at the same time.
But, in reference to the vehicle question itself, there are
a few mischaracterizations comrade Bruce has made that must be clarified. The
first notion is that we, particularly those of us in Cooperation Jackson, broke
with the Democratic Party. On this point it must be noted, that it is hard to
break with something that you never joined. Cooperation Jackson has never been
associated with the Democratic Party. And nor have I. In fact, over the past 12
years as it relates to electoral politics I worked hard to either build new
electoral vehicles, like the Reconstruction Party (ReconP) while situated in
New Orleans from 2006 to 2008, or supported Green Party (GP) candidates like
the McKinney/Clemente (2008) and Stein/Baraka (2016) tickets in particular, or
help rebuild the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which still
exists and generally poses as a left alternative to the Democratic Party in the
state of Mississippi. Further, it should be noted that when Chokwe Lumumba ran
for office in 2008/2009 and then again in 2012/2013 he did so as a member of
the MFDP, which won access to the Democratic Party primary in 1968 as a part of
an effort to empower Black voters in Mississippi (the vast majority of whom
only gained access to the ballot in 1965). In addition, NAPO and MXGM, to my
knowledge, have never made a formal decision to join the Democratic Party, here
in Mississippi or anywhere else. That said, the organizations unofficial slide
into the orbit of the Democratic Party and all its open and discrete machinery
has progressively gotten worse since 2008, when neither organization chose to
support the Reconstruction Party or the campaign efforts of an MXGM member,
Rosa Clemente, who was then running for Vice-President under the Green Party
ticket. The primary reason being that the vast majority of the members of these
organizations at that time did not want to isolate the organizations or
themselves from the Black masses who were overwhelmingly rallying to the Obama
campaign. So, yes, there is a lesson here again about the need to be clear,
centered, and focused in one’s strategic pursuits, but it centers more on
strategic focus then it does on questions of tactical implementation (which in
the case of the J-K Plan is what an electoral apparatus would be).
So, if there is a fundamental lesson to be learned from the
struggle to implement the Jackson-Kush Plan over the last 10 years, as noted,
it is the need to be clear, and to constantly struggle with yourself, with your
comrades, and with the social actors and movements you are engaged with for
clarity and consensus. In my honest view, the New Afrikan People’s
Organization, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the Jackson People’s Assembly,
the Lumumba administrations and Cooperation Jackson have all contributed a fair
amount towards the reinvigoration of the left over the last 10 years,
particularly in the realm of providing those on the left with a sense of hope –
albeit misplaced hope in many respects because it is sadly being employed to
prop up liberal notions about the utility of electoral politics to the left (as
can be seen by recent efforts of the Movement for Black Lives, MoveOn.org and
others). But, as it relates to the advance of the Jackson-Kush Plan we could
have and should have done a lot more towards the realization of its objectives
over this span of time. As it stands, the forces publicly aligned with the J-K
Plan (which truth be told is not altogether clear anymore to this author) are
now (objectively and subjectively) fortifying (intentionally and
unintentionally) several misleading narratives that are being widely promoted
by liberal and revisionist forces to justify their reformist worldview and
politics. The primary danger is that our labors will be utilized to uphold and
promote the false notion that capitalism can be tamed and reformed through
electoral politics. It cannot. And connected with this, there is the danger of
reinforcing the false notion that the state is or can be a neutral arbitrator
of various conflicting social interests. The state is not neutral in any form,
but most particularly in its settler-colonial form, which we are subject to in
the US. The state is an historic vehicle that exercises power over society that
must be transgressed through human action. This requires democratic vision, the
self-organization of the working class and oppressed peoples, and radical
practices of material production (the goods and services we need to live) and
social reproduction (nurturing and caring for each other and our children and
grandchildren) over generations to create a new society.
The aims and objectives of the Jackson-Kush Plan are still a
viable radical pursuit. Despite the mounting resistance to the program being
mounted by reactionary forces in Mississippi, there is still enough time and
political space to fully implement the strategy and realize its aims. However,
it requires a major course correction in my view that demands a realignment of
the constituent forces related to the J-K Plan that focuses on building a
transformative power from the ground up, breaks with the politics of reform and
accommodation with neo-liberalism, and fortifies the position of the radical
social movements within Jackson. The “success” that I spoke to earlier, would
for its part, include the Lumumba administration being a part of this
realignment and entail it centering on processes of social transformation, and
the struggles this would inevitably invite, over and above merely serving as an
instrument of “good governance”. Focusing on transformation means advancing the
final goals of self-determination and the construction of socialism through the
agency of the working class and fortifying these constructions with every decision
the administration makes executing the functions of state governance within the
municipality.
For my part, I will continue to struggle for the realization
of the Jackson-Kush Plan through the work and contributions of Cooperation
Jackson and the construction of a new political organization to help fill in
some critical gaps that exist in the movements for revolutionary social
transformation in the US. It is my sincere hope that the New Afrikan People’s
Organization, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and the administration of
Chokwe Antar Lumumba will make the course corrections suggested herein. Our
movement has nothing to gain by pursuing the path of collaboration and compromise.
If anything, without a major course correction, the Lumumba administration is
structurally poised to reenact an “American” version of the neo-liberal tragedy
currently being executed and administered on the Greek people by Syriza. It is
only by pursuing a revolutionary path, however difficult it may appear in the
short-term from the perspective of having to be a “responsible” administrative
force, that we, as a movement, will gain. This would entail pursuing things
like a comprehensive food sovereignty program, with the elicit aid of working
class vehicles like Cooperation Jackson and the People’s Assembly, to eliminate
the threat of food being used as a weapon, that would require converting most,
if not all, of the cities vacant properties into urban farms. This would entail
creating administration supported people’s markets and distribution centers,
and support for a local alternative currency or token, to help facilitate the
exchange of this community produced value.
The Syriza Trap is not completely inevitable. Clear
leadership, with a clear plan, and uncompromising will can still go another
route. I say this because I know all conscious political actors make mistakes and
we all have the ability to learn from them, and most importantly, correct them.
It is in this light that I note that despite our present differences, we have
to be cognizant of that fact that in the face of the concentrated power of our
enemies, that none of our differences ultimately rise above those posed to us
collectively by the systems of capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, white
supremacy, and hetero-patriarchy and their conscious and willing agents and
enablers. The process of “unity-struggle-unity” is still applicable on the
level of alliances, fronts, and blocs. When and where possible, I look forward
to allying with the Lumumba administration, NAPO, MXGM and many other
organizations in the common struggle to dismantle the systems of hierarchy,
alienation, and oppression and construct a new world, beginning in Jackson, but
in no way limited to it.
Much more could and will be said in due time on the subject
of sharing some hard lessons from the ongoing struggle for radical social
transformation in Jackson. However, it is my hope that this short essay helps
to illuminate a path of struggle just a bit more, and helps to inform those who
have been inspired by the collective works in Jackson to not repeat our
critical mistakes.
“Policy is the
starting-point of all the practical actions of a revolutionary party and
manifests itself in the process and the end-result of that party’s actions. A
revolutionary party is carrying out a policy whenever it takes any action. If
it is not carrying out a correct policy, it is carrying out a wrong policy; if
it is not carrying out a given policy consciously, it is doing so blindly. What
we call experience is the process and the end-result of carrying out a policy.
Only through the practice of the people, that is, through experience, can we
verify whether a policy is correct or wrong and determine to what extent it is
correct or wrong. However, people’s practice, especially the practice of a
revolutionary party and the revolutionary masses, cannot but be bound up with
one policy or another. Therefore, before any action is taken, we must explain
the policy, which we have formulated in the light of the given circumstances,
to Party members and to the masses. Otherwise, Party members and the masses
will depart from the guidance of our policy, act blindly and carry out a wrong
policy.” – Mao Tse Tung
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Saturday, October 28, 2017
We Can Build a Better World from the Ground Up
http://inthesetimes.com/features/debate_socialism_organizing_working_class.html#ufd3
This article originally appeared in IN THESE TIMES on October 26th, 2017 for their November 2017 Issue.
The article had the title "We Can Build a Better System from the Ground Up".
Cooperation Jackson members working on our emerging Community Production Center - October 2017
For the first time, virtually all of humanity is incorporated into one social order and one mode of production: the capitalist world-system. More people are involved in commodity production and exchange—as wage-laborers, indentured servants, prisoners or slaves—than ever. This means that the working class is larger and potentially more powerful than at any other point in history.
So I agree with Bhaskar that the working class is in a central position to transform the world-system. He is also right that the working class is fragmented, for all the reasons that Kathi mentions (and then some).
Social perceptions and consciousness can change rapidly, given the right conditions, as the past seven years of global events demonstrate. The instability we are now experiencing—wars, ethnocentric and religious violence, terrorism, mass migration, and the rise of right-wing nationalism and outright fascism—is accelerating the transformation of consciousness and political action the world over. On the progressive side, we have seen millions of working-class people challenge and even topple dictatorships in Africa and Asia, and millions mobilize to confront growing inequality and dispossession in the democracies of Europe and North America. This shows that even without mass left organizations, the working class can act as a political force.
But for the most part, the Left has been eviscerated through political repression, capitulation to neoliberalism and the trappings of electoral politics that serve to legitimize rather than challenge the system. In places like Egypt, Libya and Syria, this evisceration led to the reorganization of dictatorships. It also means that the gains in Europe and the United States have been limited to shifts in the public discourse about class and inequality, and relatively minor progressive policy shifts. More is clearly needed.
Unfortunately, in much of the world (including the United States), the Right is doing better than the Left at reaching working people who feel they are losing their status, privileges and birthrights. For the working class to play a transformative role in society, we must build our own left-oriented organizations and institutions, and quickly.
These organizations and institutions must not aim to recreate the social-democratic or electoral routes to power of the past century. Instead, the Left must build a new type of revolutionary working-class organization. This type of organization must learn from and transcend the 20th century's failures of both the vanguard—with its emphasis on centralism over democracy—and social-democratic parties—with their faith in representative democracy and the neutrality of capital.
We must be prepared to both build and fight: fight the impositions of capital where we work, live, play and pray, and build, from the ground up, institutions on the basis of social solidarity and ecological regeneration, such as worker cooperatives and time banks.
Kathi’s emphasis on coalitional politics may go too far in decentering capitalism, but she is right that a new working-class movement must take on multiple modes of domination, oppression and hierarchy. In my view, capitalism is the nexus of oppression in our era, and fashions and conditions all other forms of oppression in its own service—colonialism, ethnocentrism, racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, et al. Of course, other systems of oppression have their own logic and animus, and some, like patriarchy and heterosexism, are much older and socially entrenched than capitalism.
This new type of organization must recognize that working-class people aren’t just one-dimensional beings: They have concerns, needs, wants and desires that go beyond wages and work conditions. It must also recognize that class position is conditioned by race, ethnicity, nationality, language, religion, sexuality, gender, age and physical ability—these concerns are not just “add-ons” to the class struggle.
On this basis, our movement can advance a vision of a wholly new system, a new communist civilization, rather than settling for an exploitative system with the wherewithal to accommodate more Black presidents, Queer soldiers and Woman preachers. We can and must do better. The suffering mass of humanity, and all the life forms capitalism is rapidly extinguishing, demand nothing less.
Thursday, October 26, 2017
To Govern or Transform: Some Reflections and Lessons from Jackson, MS
Originally posted in the Black Agenda Report on Wednesday, October 25th, 2017.
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Cooperation Jackson: Fighting for Economic Democracy on GNN Democracy in Action
This conversation was had on Tuesday, October 17th, 2017
Surviving Natural Disasters and Targeting Black Identity Extremism
https://kpfa.org/episode/hard-knock-radio-october-17-2017/
https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=271170
A discussion with Davey D of Hard Knock Radio about surviving natural disasters, being self sufficient and the United States government surveillance of Pro-Black organizations and individuals.
Monday, September 18, 2017
Fearless Cities: International Municipalism
The closing of the Fearless Cities international municipalist summit presented a map of municipalist movements around the world and outlining how they can work as a network to support one another organizationally and politically over the coming months and years.
Featuring:
Xavier Domenech, Executive Board of Barcelona en Comú, MP for En Comú Podem, Coordinator of Catalunya en Comú
Kali Akuno, Cooperation Jackson, Mississippi
Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona
Fearless Cities Conference: Organizing a Municipalist Platform, Structure and Confluence
This workshop focused on how to build a strong organization with effective, democratic decision-making. It's focus was on organizational structures, information flows and on how to integrate people from parties and social movements.
Speakers
Yolanda Sánchez, Barcelona en Comú, Barcelona
Emine Özmen, Vice Co-Chair of the Democratic Regions Party, Kurdistan
Adriana Manzoni, Massa Critica, Naples
Kali Akuno, Cooperation Jackson, Mississippi
Yolanda Sánchez, Barcelona en Comú, Barcelona
Emine Özmen, Vice Co-Chair of the Democratic Regions Party, Kurdistan
Adriana Manzoni, Massa Critica, Naples
Kali Akuno, Cooperation Jackson, Mississippi
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Lessons from Mississippi
https://player.fm/series/alternative-radio-aust-programs/170605-kali-akuno-activism-lessons-from-mississippi
"http://www.araudio.araustralia.org/170605.mp3"
Mao said, "A single spark can start a prairie fire." Indeed it can. Rosa Parks is a perfect example of that. Her refusal to sit in the back of the bus led to the Montgomery bus boycott and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the segregated South. They're some erroneous notions about Rosa Parks. That she was simply tired and had to rest her weary feet. Yeah, she was tired all right. Tired of the racism and discrimination. And Rosa Parks was not some casual activist. She was part of a movement that triggered a wave of protest and eventually broke down an entrenched system of injustice. It didn't happen overnight. One of the lessons activists have learned is that for their work to be successful it must be sustained over periods of time. Kali Akuno is a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson. He served as the Director of Special Projects and External Funding in the Mayoral Administration of the late Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, Mississippi. His focus in this role was supporting cooperative development, the introduction of eco-friendly and carbon reduction methods of operation, and the promotion of human rights and international relations for the city. He also served as the co-director of the U.S. Human Rights Network.
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Black Power takes root in the heart of Dixie
https://indypendent.org/2017/06/black-power-takes-root-in-the-heart-of-dixie/
One correction to the article: Cooperation Jackson has only been in existence for 3 years. It was founded on May Day 2014. I have been a member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement for 20 years. Marisa did a great job synthesizing a nearly two hour interview, but unfortunately conflated these two points.
The movement for Black self-determination that Akuno helps to lead has roots in Mississippi that date back to the 1970s. After decades of base building work by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) and others, radical lawyer Chokwe Lumumba was elected mayor of Jackson in 2013 only to die less than eight months into his first term in office. In May, his son Chokwe Antar Lumumba won the Democratic primary on a platform of food sovereignty, zero waste and creating a solidarity economy. He is all but certain to be the next mayor of Jackson.Jackson is the largest city in Mississippi. Surrounded by prosperous white suburbs, it is more than 80 percent Black and overwhelmingly working-class. “If you are making $10 an hour here you are doing damn good,” says Kali Akuno, who for 20 years has been a driving force in Cooperation Jackson, a community organizing hub intent on radically changing business as usual in Mississippi’s capital city and creating a model for local movements in the United States and around the world.
When Antar takes office, he will face a hostile white business elite and a Republican-controlled state legislature that will try to stymie him at every turn. Akuno is one of Antar’s closest advisors. He recently spoke with The Indypendentabout the challenges that lie ahead and the Jackson movement’s enduring source of strength.
Marisa Anne Day: What do you hope to achieve?
Kali Akuno: The construction of economic democracy from the ground up, the transformation of the economy and the social relationships that frame what makes us human. That is not something we can do alone.
We hope to inspire and offer a model to others who want to pick this up. We want to continue drawing from eclectic sources of inspiration — the Mondragon worker cooperatives in Spain, the Zapatistas, cooperatives in the South going back 200 years in the Black community, [cooperative] projects in the early days of Tanzania, Algeria, Guyana. The first step for Cooperation Jackson is to build a vibrant social and solidarity economy in Jackson that can form a stepping-stone to economic democracy.
Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson. Credit: Jed Brandt.
What is the significance of this victory for organizing in the United States?
It demonstrates that the left can win in the United States, win electoral victories, make gains in a struggle to control the means of production. It has a broader significance with the election of Donald Trump. Our victory in Jackson points to a way forward. Take some heart from it, all is not doom and gloom. We can organize ourselves to fight back and counter the moves of these reactionary forces. If we do our work right we can start dictating the social momentum and rearticulate some of the fundamental norms of society.
What the country is facing with this neo-Confederate neo-fascist regime on a federal level, we have been living with here in Mississippi for quite some time. Black, Indigenous, Latino communities have been figuring out ways to not only survive but to push back. Our electoral victory highlights what is possible when you resist these forces — and what type of work it takes: long term, patient, strategic base-building work, which we have been concentrating on here for about 40 years.
A lot of movements talk about empowering “the people” but after they win elections fail to come through. How will you resist that?
Our beliefs alone are not enough to safeguard us against right drift and institutionalization. An effective counterweight is having political organization with multiple ideologies within it. Having that diversity was a saving grace [with Chokwe Lumumba] because you had folks, especially from anarchist tendencies, who were suspicious about going into government. A lively debate and struggle was one safeguard.
The Jackson People’s Assembly is the dominant accountability mechanism. Direct engagement is where the assembly has its strength and can apply pressure on Chokwe Antar or anybody else in that position. The People’s Assembly was built to be a dual power institution, with the ability to shape society on its own without the assistance of government.
How do you maintain buy-in beyond ideological divides?
We don’t recruit or engage with folks on the basis of “you have to believe what I believe in order to struggle and work with me.” That takes a backseat to “I’m here because an injury has been inflicted upon you or upon our community and let’s figure out a collective way that we can address this issue.” People find out what you believe through your practice first and foremost, and then your statement of why you are engaged in the struggle afterward.
In Mississippi, the out-and-out nature of white supremacy helps to keep a focus in the community. I might have differences with you about this belief or that strategy but in the face of having to confront people who are visibly in the Klan, it gives people a clear orientation: We are in a struggle and my contributions to it are critical to my own survival.
This context is why the radical message of a Chokwe Lumumba or a Chokwe Antar has resonance in a place that is deeply conservative and religious, and why so many people who don’t share their ideological views have trust in them. The perception in the Black community is: “They have been consistent fighters against the forces of white supremacy and exploitation. I know what sacrifices they and the members of MXGM have made by standing up to the Klan.”
We work on that common ground and over time we have won a lot of people over who wouldn’t necessarily use that rhetoric but would say, I am for democracy in the workplace. You see a gradual movement and a broader adoption of these ideas and principles.
What is the situation in Jackson you are stepping into? What forces in Mississippi are aligned against you?
The primary force of opposition against us is the Greater Jackson Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber is dominated by white businessmen, almost none of whom live in Jackson proper. They live in the white suburbs that were constructed to accommodate white flight. Jackson is still a city where a large portion of its businesses remain in the hands of a small white minority elite.
Jackson is over 80 percent Black. Most of that, overwhelmingly, is Black working class. That includes sectors where the real unemployment rate is closer to 50 percent of the adult population. Wages are extremely low; if you are making $10 an hour here you are doing damn good. That would be damn near a Black middle-class wage here in Jackson.
The Black community, by its numbers, can put people in office but their ability to govern can be constrained because the economic base of the city is controlled elsewhere. One of the threats is if you elect Chokwe Antar, all these white-owned businesses are going to leave town. What that does is shrink the tax base, the revenues to operate. That is pointing a gun at the city and saying you have to go this way for the economy not to collapse. For the community to consistently vote in a way that says “Yeah, I know that gun is to my head and I’m going to vote this way anyway” says a lot.
The Chamber is not making idle threats. They have concrete plans to gentrify the city, to displace the Black working class, because if they can change the population dynamics they can eliminate the possibility of a radical like Chokwe Antar from being elected.
How do cooperative networks provide counterweight against those forces?
The bedrock for us is food sovereignty. Hunger will no longer be a weapon against the working class. We will utilize all the vacant land around the city. We can create supply chains based on our own principles rather than being totally reliant on “market forces.”
We will construct cooperative enterprises, from food processing to non-carbon based distribution, bikes and electric vehicles, to lessen the carbon footprint of the city. Going to zero emissions and zero waste will accomplish several goals at once: sustainability, creating jobs, a better quality of life and ultimately more self-determination and self-reliance within the community.
We are creating an integrated system, bottom-up efforts, the support of an administration we control and a policy framework to give what’s getting done below more teeth.The base is starting with what is available to us, land, addressing a concrete need, food, and from there building out the solidarity economy.
How can people engage with what you are doing from outside of Jackson?
Doing this work takes resources. Our sustainer network annually covers one-fourth of the cost. Friends of Cooperation Jackson chapters build relationships of solidarity. The most concrete way that folks can help is to build Cooperation New Yorks, like-minded organizations. Organizing in your own community will help us more than anything else.
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