Watch this space for regular updates. The full CoopEcon 2013 website will launch here in early April.

People from across the Southeast gathered in Epes, Alabama at the Rural Training and Research Center of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives from July 27-29 to begin the hard work of building democratic ownership in our communities.

Those new to the world of cooperative business development learned what it takes to put together a business that is responsive to the community it grows from. People involved in functional cooperatives gained valuable insight into the steps needed to grow them, make them more sustainable, and contribute to region-wide development.

Open space technology sessions covered a wide spectrum of topics including worker-ownership, financial record-keeping, nonprofit and coop interaction, technology use, and many more.

The conference was deeply informed by Jessica Gordon-Nembhard’s keynote address. Several panels featuring developers and current cooperators featured some of the most talented people in the movement from around the country.

Special thanks go to all of our great sponsors and supporters. Without you, this conference would not have been as successful. Special mention goes to the Federation of Southern Cooperatives who made their amazing facility in Epes available to us for this gathering. They are continuing to do the important work they began in the late 1960′s, building self-sufficiency and liberation among historically oppressed people in the US South.

Click here for downloadable conference materials, photos, and coop resources.

The South is the poorest part of the USA. This is due to historic patterns of oppression and exploitation that date back to the seizure of this land from its original inhabitants, the importation of Africans who were forced into chattel slavery, the immigration of indentured servants who worked out a variety of terms of servitude, the settling of Europeans fleeing various oppressions and seeking opportunities and more recently, the immigration of our neighbors from south of the border. The consolidation of systems of social control and governance placed the rule over the whole area in the hands of a relatively few who could make use of every contradiction and difference to extract ever increasing wealth from the area and appropriate it to their own individual use and benefit. The South was placed in bondage.

As long as we accept the current economic structures and approaches to development that flow from those origins, we can’t get out of bondage.

As long as we do not create opportunities for everyone to be productive, we can’t get out of bondage.

As long as our surplus is extracted and allowed to chase after the very highest rate of return, we can’t get out if bondage.

As long as we keep begging for small infusions of capital that allow the providers of that capital to extract even more of our wealth, then we can’t get out of bondage.

When we are productive, produce a surplus, retain that surplus to enhance and increase the productivity of our labor as well as create more productive opportunities, then our community is able to meet our human needs and continuously improve the quality of life for the community members.

For too long, the South has been a source for the extraction of raw materials and wealth. Early on, enslaved people themselves were produced and exported along with tobacco, timber, cotton, coal, and now, oil and natural gas. The wealth produced by this exploitation of the earth and our people did not mainly stay in the South. That wealth which did remain was not democratically controlled for the benefit of the people, but rather was privately held and became the basis for deeper entrenchment of the system of exploitation. The mechanization of agriculture changed the number of people without wealth who are needed to lubricate the mechanism of the wealth extraction process.

Every possible division between people was utilized to weaken our ability to resist this exploitation. While the most obvious and dramatic division has been race, the distinctions between hill people and valley people, woods people and swamp people have all been used to tighten the grips of exploitation. The struggles over wages, hours and working conditions were and still are struggles over the relative size of the surplus extracted. The mechanism of this economic system itself guarantees that the extraction of wealth takes place.

Although it will require us to learn how to work together and how to decide together, democratic ownership holds the key to new possibilities. Wealth creation is cumulative. Its value not only adds up, but it compounds. Community wealth should be stewarded by the community if is not to revert to private wealth. The community’s right to control its wealth flows from the social nature of its production. That is to say, the wealth was a product of people working together and producing a surplus together. A system where wealth is socially produced and then privately appropriated is inherently exploitative.

The creation and growth of cooperative enterprises – enterprises that are democratically owned and democratically controlled – gets us on the path toward job creation, wealth creation, wealth retention, democratic ownership, and democratic economic decision-making. This is what is needed to end Southern bondage.

This video documents some of the discussion, debate, and education that took place that weekend.

Jessica Gordon Nembhard tells the little-known story of the part played by co-ops in forwarding the rights of African Americans

Jessica Gordon Nembhard

THROUGHOUT his life, African American scholar WEB Du Bois proposed that African Americans should use ‘intelligent co-operation’ for ‘the common good’ and advocated for a Black co-operative ‘group economy’. Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association at the turn of the 20th century espoused cooperative ideals for their businesses and supported a Pan-African co-operative trading network. The Young Negroes’ Co-operative League in the 1930s, and the Federation of Southern Co-operatives since 1967, have brought African Americans together to support co-operative economic development.

African Americans, other people of colour and low-income people have seen many gains from co-operatives in the US:

• The Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company in Baltimore allowed African American caulkers and stevedores to protect their jobs, own their own company and escape discrimination from 1865 to 1883. They paid off their mortgage in five years and started to receive a stock dividend by the sixth year.
• The Consumers’ Co-operative Trading Company in Gary operated in the 1930s. It began as a food-buying club in response to the lack of quality, affordable food during the Depression. The club became a main grocery store. Later the co-op added a branch store, a filling station and a credit union. It paid dividends and offered co-op education.
• The Apex Cab Co-operative in Milwaukee began in January 1973. Although it was short-lived, it showed that cab ownership was viable for African Americans. One of its competitive edges was that drivers were willing to take passengers to any part of the city, unlike white cab drivers. Washington DC also had an African American-owned co-op cab company for several years.
• The Freedom Quilting Bee, a handicraft co-op in Alberta. Alabama was established in 1966 because sharecropping families needed a more stable income. The women began selling quilts after many of their families lost the farms because of their civil-rights activities. In 1968 the co-op bought land for a sewing plant and for families who had been evicted from their homes. By 1992 it was the largest employer in the town.
• The Federation of Southern Co-operatives/Land Assistance Fund is a network of rural co-ops (particularly farms, marketing boards and housing), credit unions and state associations. In its 35-year history, the Federation has mobilized $50 million in resources for support of member co-ops, facilitated $75 million in sales through co-operative marketing and helped retain $87.5 million worth of land in Black ownership. Its network of 16 community development credit unions had combined assets of $27.4 million with 14,633 members at the end of 2001.
• SSC Employment Agency in Baltimore is a worker-owned temporary employment agency. It places ‘difficult to employ’ workers (260 in 2000) in hospitality jobs, and trains members to be owners and managers of the company.
• Outside Boston, Co-operative Economics for Women (like WAGES in Oakland) organizes low-income women–especially women of colour–immigrant and refugee women and women surviving domestic violence, to create co-operative approaches to generating income while organizing for community development. They have spun off several successful women’s co-ops in sewing, house cleaning, catering and childcare.
• Co-operative Home Care Associates in New York City employs more than 1000 African American and Latina women as homecare paraprofessionals. Since 1987 worker-owners have earned annual dividends of between 25 and 50 per cent on their initial investment. The co-op maximizes wages and benefits for members, providing paid vacations and health insurance–unprecedented in this sector.

In spite of these successes there is still a long way to go: for every dollar of wealth white Americans hold as a group, African Americans have only 16 cents. If the 20th century was an era of rapid economic growth at the expense of human and natural resources, the 21st will need to create wealth based on the principles of caring community and democratic sustainable societies. Co-ops can offer a model for that future.

Jessica Gordon Nembhard is Assistant Professor in the African American Studies Department, and Economist in The Democracy Collaborative, University of Maryland College Park.