Blog

Nexus: Solidarity Economics – A Path Forward

(Originally published on 7/30/2020, The Northcoast Environmental Center, link)

By David Cobb

In the inaugural “Nexus” column, we shared our belief that we could not create a sustainable and regenerative society under capitalism. Almost all the responses we received were in agreement, but pushed us to describe a path forward. So this month’s column is dedicated to concrete, achievable policies grounded in cooperative, democratic and sustainable values. This framework is often described as a “solidarity economy” that would place people and planet before profit.

Worker-Owned cooperatives (link)

 Thanks to COVID, the unemployment rate is soaring and most of us are teetering on the brink of personal financial disaster.  Worker-owned co-ops could change that.

• Studies show that on average worker-owned cooperatives outperform traditional businesses in terms of industry average wages and benefits, productivity, job stability and satisfaction
• Worker co-ops are locally rooted and tend to prioritize giving back to the community (7th Cooperative Principle).
• Co-ops tend to boost civic engagement, a spillover effect of workers running their own business.
• A growing movement:
  • A number of cities (NYC, Madison) are investing millions of dollars in worker co-ops as part of a strategy of inclusive economic development.
  • A recent $32 million grant was awarded to 4 national co-op developers to encourage and support the wave of baby boomer small business owners who are approaching retirement, to sell their businesses to their workers.
  • Locally, Cooperation Humboldt has launched a program called “Worker-Owned Humboldt” to support existing co-ops and to incubate new ones.

Community Land Trusts (CLTs) (link)

In a country as wealthy as the U.S, the level of homelessness is appalling. Over ½ million people experienced homelessness in a single night in 2018 (and that was before COVID and the wave of evictions and foreclosures coming.)

Housing is unaffordable because it is being treated as a commodity (something to be bought and sold) rather than a basic need and a right. Speculation (gambling) on the housing market plays havoc with the availability of affordable housing, and leads to speculative bubbles that crash the economy such as the meltdown in 2008.  Community Land Trusts could change that.

• CLTs decommodify land and housing by taking them out of the speculative market, thereby creating permanently affordable housing.
• CLTs enable low and moderate income individuals/families to own their own home by leveraging grants and subsidies as well as providing a long term land lease at a nominal cost.
• Foreclosure rates for CLTs is as much as 90% lower than conventional housing.
• Generally, at least 30% of the CLT Board is composed of community members, thereby ensuring democratic, community control.

Local Energy Democracy (link)  

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects catastrophic impacts on human and environmental systems unless world governments can transform global energy infrastructure within the next 12 years. Despite the existential threat, fossil fuel industries continue to exploit human and environmental resources for shareholder profit, with impacts on the health and livelihoods of low income and other vulnerable communities worldwide. In fact, two hundred years of extracting natural and human resources to fuel a global economy have created dual crises: a climate crisis and a crisis of inequality. Locally developed and governed renewable energy systems (energy democracy) could change that.

Energy democracy can encompass various strategies and look different in different places, but is driven by a common set of principles and broad vision. By capitalizing on the decentralized potential of renewable energy resources, energy democracy transfers control over the energy economy to communities/stakeholders, for example through community-based public entities or cooperatives.

• By democratizing as well as decarbonizing the energy economy, local renewable energy systems make it possible to share the benefits of moving off fossil fuels. Energy democracy can channel energy assets, employment opportunities and cost savings to disadvantaged communities where they are most needed, reversing histories of dispossession.
• Energy democracy requires institutional, social and economic innovation, which disrupts business-as-usual practices with pathways to a more just and sustainable future.

Public Banking (link)

Privately-owned banks operate to maximize shareholder profit.  They frequently invest in projects that accelerate the climate climate crisis and exacerbate income inequality in pursuit of  short-term profits. In addition, investment decisions for local communities are often made by Wall Street bankers who have never even visited that community. Public Banking could change that.

• A Public Bank is operated in the public interest and owned by the people through their representative governments. They are a way to democratize public financial decisions.
• A Public Bank can be used to finance climate change solutions.
• Public Banks can make low-interest loans for affordable housing, local businesses and student loans.
• Public banks can reduce taxes. Their profits are returned to the general fund and they do not need to charge interest to themselves. Eliminating interest reduces the cost of such public infrastructure projects as much as 40%.
• California already allows the creation of local and regional public banks. Pending legislation (AB 310) would create a statewide CA State Bank.

Participatory Budgeting (link)

Public budget decisions have enormous impact on our lives, but the process for how those budgets are created  is incomprehensible and inaccessible to most people. Budget decisions often fail to address community needs, and instead meet the demands of those with the most power or loudest voices. This disconnect fuels some of the biggest problems with our democracy, especially record-low participation and trust in government. Participatory Budgeting could change that.

Participatory Budgeting ensures that all voices have a place at the table by allowing participants to work together across partisan divides for the good of their communities, while increasing government accountability. 

• Participatory Budgeting makes government more effective, fair and innovative. It connects residents’ local knowledge with technical expertise, directing resources toward public priorities. Low income people, people of color and youth participate at higher rates than in typical elections, and learn valuable civic skills and knowledge. This participation often leads to creative new projects that push broader policy change.
• People all over the world are using Participatory Budgeting, proposing, developing and voting on legislation. Some are using “citizen assemblies” to change the way government works. In the U.S., many cities have allowed hundreds of thousands of people to directly decide how to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds via Participatory Budgeting.

None of these policies alone are transformational. Together, they represent an opportunity to reshape our world.

Freedom Rider: Churchill, Columbus and Leopold Fall Down

by Margaret Kimberley

(orginally posted on Black Agenda Report, 6/17/20)

Millions of white people glorify mass murderers because their sense of identity and place in society is deeply tied to white supremacy.

“It is important to name and shame the mass murderers.”

The perpetrators of crimes against humanity are often elevated to positions of respect and admiration. It all depends on who did the killing, and who was killed. Now the murderers are being called to account. The new movement in the United States against police and other state violence has inspired this welcome change taking place all over the world. The criminals are being exposed decades and even centuries after their atrocities took place. There is no statute of limitations for murder nor should there be for calling out people who have the blood of millions on their hands.

Statues of Belgium’s King Leopold have been defaced and even removed. Leopold held the Congo as his personal fiefdom, the Congo Free State, where he killed as many as 15 million people who were forced to work on rubber plantations. The cruelty of murder and mutilation was exposed after a more than 20-year reign of terror. George Washington Williams, a black American journalist, played a key role in bringing the genocide to public attention.
Instead of Adolf Hitler being the only European who comes to mind when genocide is mentioned, the name Leopold ought to have the same effect. But Hitler killed Europeans and Leopold killed Africans. The crimes of one are widely known while the other escapes condemnation because his crimes were erased.

The same can be said of Winston Churchill. During World War II he presided over a famine in colonial India caused by the theft of rice and wheat which supplied Britain’s armies. An estimated 3 million people died but starvation in Bengal province was not his first opportunity to commit mass murder. After World War I he advocated gassing Iraqis who rebelled against British rule. “I am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes.” He had already ordered chemical weapons attacks against the Russian Bolsheviks in 1918.
Now Churchill’s statue in London’s parliament square is covered in a large box to protect it from protesters. A group scrawled graffiti which correctly labeled as a racist the man who said that his Indian victims “breed like rabbits.”

The taboos are falling just like the statues that honored slave traders and Indian killers in this country. Robert E. Lee’s monument in Richmond, Virginia is now covered in graffiti and a likeness of George Floyd, whose murder at the hands of police motivated people to denounce the killers whose crimes are covered up. Too many historians choose to affirm corrupt systems rather than tell the truth. But the people are ignoring entreaties from all the elites and are taking matters into their own hands.

Christopher Columbus is among those being exposed. His voyages on behalf of the Spanish crown were followed by other European invasions which brought disease and bloody conquest against indigenous populations from the tip of South America all the way to Alaska. This genocide was the precursor to the trans-Atlantic slave trade which brought Africans to suffer as chattel throughout North and South America..

But there is a reaction to every action and when the question of removing the Columbus statue in New York City was raised, governor Andrew Cuomo demurred, “But the statue has come to represent and signify appreciation for the Italian-American contribution to New York.” Columbus was born Cristoforo Colombo in Genoa. This need for Cuomo and others to hang on to the criminal is obvious. Columbus puts Italians at the center of the settler colonial state. They are not the southern European catholic immigrants who were often looked down upon when they first arrived. Columbus makes them white Americans and they cling to him lest they lose that imprimatur.

Everyone should work mightily to remove the stain of mass murderers who even define how we identify ourselves. The name Columbus came to mean America itself. We are left with a South American nation, Colombia, named after him. The U.S. capital is the District of Columbia, while Canada’s far western province is doubly colonized with the name British Columbia and cities like Columbus, Ohio and institutions like Columbia University abound. The indigenous who suffered because of his invasion now have their culture labeled pre and post Columbian. The crimes continue as millions of people are forcibly linked to the genocidaire.
“Columbus puts Italians at the center of the settler colonial state.”

New York’s governor is not alone in trying to stem the tide of truth telling. A group of white men armed with guns and other weapons felt the need to protect a statue of Columbus in Philadelphia . This intransigence tells us why it is so important to name and shame the mass murderers. Their credibility must be destroyed if white supremacy is ever to become a thing of the past. The statues must go and so must excuse making for atrocities if whites are the perpetrators and non-whites are the victims.

The hand wringing over monument removal is not just connected to reverence for these individuals. While millions of people want change, millions more do not and they hold on to Columbus or Leopold or Churchill or Robert E. Lee because their identity and place in society is firmly tied to white supremacy. If a Columbus statue comes down so might a small portion of white entitlement and its privileges.

The monuments to genocide must come down. The discomfort caused to the elites is of no concern to anyone who wants to strike at the heart of racism as practiced around the world. Good-bye and good riddance to Churchill, Columbus, Leopold and all of their ilk.

Planet of the Humans: A Review

by David Cobb

Planet of the Humans debuted on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and has provoked widespread praise and criticism. Almost everyone in my circles either loves it or hates it, and I can see why.

The core premise of the movie is that our civilization is on the brink of collapse (if not actual extinction), and that “Big Green” mainstream environmental groups have been hijacked by corporate interests and are duping the general public into believing that we can solve this crisis using renewable energy.

On the one hand, I am deeply appreciative that filmmakers Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs are willing to state the obvious — infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide. They confront the severity of the ecological collapse more directly than most films that reach a more mainstream audience, and expose the reality that allowing the billionaire class to “solve” this existential crisis simply won’t work.

The film also accurately highlights the problems of the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign, which has helped shut down over 300 coal plants across the country. That seems great, but in short order we learn that the program’s biggest donor is billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who has helped to ensure that natural gas plants have replaced most of those shuttered coal plants. Bloomberg is making hundreds of millions of dollars on natural gas, arguing that it is a “bridge fuel.” That is absolutely false, and virtually every environmentalist and climate scientist acknowledges that inconvenient truth.

The film also exposes the ecological destruction and social violence being perpetrated across the global south associated with the production and distribution of lithium, and serves as a much-needed take down of biomass, pointing out that use of this so-called “green alternative” usually spews more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the coal plants it replaced.

But the film also has a lot of negatives. And I do mean a LOT of negatives.

One huge problem is that the film argues that solar and wind power are as problematic as biomass, and that is objectively, demonstrably false. One glaring example– they claim that solar panels take more energy to produce than they generate over their lifetime. This claim (which originated by climate crisis deniers) has been frequently and thoroughly disproven. Is this just journalistic laziness, or an intentional effort to deceive? 

In another scene co-producer Ozzie Zehner falsely asserts, “You use more fossil fuels [manufacturing renewables infrastructure] than you’re getting benefit from. You would have been better off burning the fossil fuels in the first place instead of playing pretend.”

Studies have repeatedly  proven that the lifetime carbon footprints of solar and wind power are about 20 times smaller than those of coal and natural gas. Further, the energy produced during the operation of a solar panel and wind turbine is 26 and 44 times greater than the energy needed to build and install them, respectively.

But the most egregious problem with this film is it’s tacit support of ecofascism, a merger of environmentalism with nationalism and white supremacy.  The film erroneously concludes that the only solution is  to “get rid of enough people.”  While it is true that the human population is in overshoot, the cavalier manner that Moore and Gibbs approach the subject is grossly negligent. It’s no wonder that right wing mouthpiece Brietbart is praising the film.

I am not arguing that Moore and Gibbs are racist white nationalists. I am arguing that both what they say (and what they don’t say) feeds into a disturbing narrative of some of the most disgusting beliefs of the last 200 years, and they should know better. 

It is too bad they missed the opportunity to share the good news that the simple solution to human overpopulation is to empower women and to promote family planning. Studies show that women with access to reproductive health services break out of poverty, and those who work are more likely to use birth control. Further, education about contraception has a huge impact.

Most disappointing of all is what this film did not do.

First, they failed to interview any of the leaders of Just Transition, a vision-oriented movement led by front line impacted communities that builds economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.

Second, they failed to acknowledge that capitalism itself is unsustainable, and that we must  transition to a solidarity economy framework in order to survive.

David Cobb is on the Interim Steering Committee of the Green Eco-Socialist Network and a co-founder of Cooperation Humboldt, a community organization that puts these theoretical principles into concrete practice.

The Killing of George Floyd: A Turning Point If…

by Margaret Kimberley

(originally published by American Herald Tribune, 5/29/20)

On May 25, 2020 a man named George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis, Minnesota police while being arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill. An onlooker recorded video showing Floyd gasping, “I can’t breathe” numerous times as a policeman pressed a knee on his neck. The killing evoked memories of Eric Garner, who was also recorded speaking the same words as he died at the hands of New York City police. What happens in secret on a daily basis can become a national crisis when a killing is witnessed by millions of people.

Minneapolis exploded into a full scale rebellion in the wake of Floyd’s death. Some use the word riot, but the motivation for the mass action is quite serious and should not be so casually dismissed. The protest has taken such a serious turn in large part because the odds of punishment are so low. Eric Garner’s killer is free, so is the Minnesota cop who killed Philando Castille on video. Photographic evidence is of little use when prosecutors are an integral part of law enforcement machinery. Their job is to indict and convict those who fall into the hands of police, often for minor offenses like Floyd. Prosecutors are therefore compromised and unable to provide justice when their police partners become the accused.
Minneapolis prosecutor Mike Freeman gave credence to the worst fears when he said, “That video is graphic and horrific but there is other evidence that does not support a criminal charge.” Like the officer who killed Floyd, Freeman’s home is now surrounded by angry people. Another group of protesters forced police to flee from a precinct building as they set it on fire. Because there is little hope of justice, there is no peace either.

Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar is one of the politicians complicit in police violence. She was the prosecutor in Minneapolis from 1999 to 2007 and she declined to prosecute more than two dozen fatal police encounters during her time in office. She was a presidential candidate and is now being vetted as a possible running mate for presumptive democratic party nominee Joe Biden. Her inaction in bringing justice to police victims didn’t hurt her political fortunes. Other prosecutors chose not to charge Floyd’s killer, Derek Chauvin, when he was involved in three separate shooting incidents.

Chauvin and prosecutors are two sides of the same coin. They are the people who keep the engine of over policing, brutality and mass incarceration running at full speed. The system may react by terminating officers when they become the subject of press scrutiny, but the wheels of a corrupt machinery keep turning.

It is also important to point out that Floyd’s killing did not occur in a vacuum. The one black person killed every day by police, private security and vigilantes includes victims like Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. Arbery’s killers were arrested more than two months after the murder and only after video surfaced, ironically taken by a man now charged as an accomplice. Breonna Taylor was killed by Louisville, Kentucky police serving a search warrant on the wrong home. These deaths spawned anger across the country and Floyd’s killing was the last straw for thousands of people now protesting across the country.

This popular anger is not new. The cry for justice goes unheeded and there has been no lasting mechanism for responding to the deaths and injuries that take place out on a routine basis. The movement spawned by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization inspired hope of change but it eventually fizzled out. BLM’s leadership are now among the non-profit industrial complex, dispensing patronage for the democratic party and prospering off of undeserved reputations.
Police violence spawned rebellions in Harlem in the 1940s, and Watts and Newark in the 1960s. The initial acquittal of the police who brutalized Rodney King in 1992 also sparked a violent reaction. This pattern of violence, injustice and reaction will go on until there is real change. That will not happen without desperately needed grass roots organizing.

In Chicago, the National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression (NAARP) fights for legislation that would bring the police under full community control. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) campaign “No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeat the War on African/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad” includes a candidate pledge organizing tool. The pledge demands the end of militarized policing as seen in the Department of Defense 1033 program which sends military equipment to police departments all over the country. BAP also demands federal investigation of all instances of lethal force carried out by the police. This tradition of organizing and engagement with the political structure must be renewed and strengthened if the carnage is to be stopped.

The cycle of video death, protest, outrage and brief media attention must be transformed. The people who burned the Minneapolis police precinct did so because as the saying goes, they have seen this movie and know how it ends. It is now time for a new ending. The Klobuchars and Freemans of the world must be put on notice that they cannot go unchallenged when they have blood on their hands just as the police do. This must be the last time that politicians think that platitudes in a Twitter post will be acceptable to an angry public. Outrage can and must be turned into meaningful organizing that challenges the system. George Floyd’s death can be a turning point if the people stay in motion.

Do we need money?

by Peter Schwartzman

Cooperation Humboldt and the Solidarity Economy