Upstream - African American Co-ops with Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Episode Date: February 15, 2017

In this Upstream Conversation we spoke with Professor Jessica Gordon Nembhard, author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. We spoke with her about the history of solidarity economics--particularly worker co-operatives--within the African American community. We travel in time from the era of slavery, through to Jim Crow segregation, share-cropping, and finally within the modern day prison industrial complex, looking at how cooperatives have formed in prisons in Puerto Rico. What can we learn for the United States, where African Americans comprise one-third of the prison population? We also spoke about the intersection of capitalism and racism. How do capitalism and racism support each other? And how can the act of participating in cooperative economics chisel away the power of capitalism? Jessica was also featured in our episode on Solidarity Economics. To listen to that episode, visit: http://upstreampodcast.org/solidarityeconomy  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

You are listening to an Upstream Conversation with Jessica Gordon-Nemhart. Jessica is an Associate Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Department of Africana Studies at John Jay College, City University of New York. She is also the author of Collective Courage, A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. She was recently featured in our Solidarity Economy episode. Welcome to Upstream, Professor Gordon Nembhard. Thank you.

Can we start by just tell us where we are right now? You're in my office on 11th Avenue and 59th or 58th Street in Manhattan, New York. I'm a professor here at John Jay College, which is a branch of the City University of New York. And can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to do the work that you do? I am a Ph.D. in economics, and I've been a professor teaching for, I guess, 14 or 15 years. But before that, I was a researcher in nonprofit think tanks

and looking at the issue, particularly of black economic development and the ways that we could configure community economic development that would be much more humanizing and family friendly and supportive of prosperity for all that kind of thing. And while studying that, I stumbled across cooperatives and realized that cooperatives had a lot of the attributes of the things that we were looking for and then became an expert. And I started talking to black communities about cooperative economics and found out that most black communities didn't know much about it or felt alienated from it. And I tried to understand that, which led me to realizing that African Americans thought that we didn't have a legacy or a history or a connection with co-ops, which

didn't sound right to me. So I started talking to more people about it, ended up with a classmate from my grad school days who had actually studied W.E.B. Du Bois' economic thought, and his economic thought is basically cooperative economics. So he gave' economic thought, and his economic thought is basically cooperative economics. So he gave me some readings, and once I read that, I realized we did have both a legacy of theory of using co-ops and also a history of co-op practice, and I decided that I should document that more. And isn't it true that the research that you're talking about from W.E.B. Du Bois was over 100 years ago, and that was kind of the last written research? It's the last full-length research, right. In 1907, he wrote that book and convened a conference

around the issue. And since then, there's been a few articles, scattered articles over the last century. And then there was one other book, but that book was about North Carolina, a state, not a national study. And so, yes, in addition to the need to kind of resurrect the legacy and the understanding of it, there was also a need to actually update the information. And so the book that you're referring to, which you released in 2014, is called Collective Courage, A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. So why collective courage? Why that title? Well, it took me about 15 years to get that title.

I would have had just the other half of the colon, the other side of the colon, which was really boring. And everyone kept saying, you need something catchy, right? And I was like, what's wrong with a history of African-American cooperative economic thought and action? And, of course, throat and practice. And, of course, the problem is just like me, I already had trouble remembering the whole thing. So I realized, yes, people were right. I needed something more reader friendly. And I went through a variety of titles. And then I latched on to Collective Courage for, I guess, a couple of reasons.

The first one was I was trying to connect to something from Ella Jo Baker, who's one of my sheroes and a leader from the 1930s in the black co-op movement and a very dynamic, incredible black woman. And so I thought if I could do something in the title that would remind us of her, though this doesn't actually do that. But that was how I started to get the thing. So I started looking for, I read, started rereading her newsletters and writings about co-ops. And I did come across a newsletter where she said something about courage. This is really hard work. Every group that's ever tried to do it has had to work hard. And we just have to stay the course kind of thing.

And so I thought, oh, that's an interesting way to think about it. And then I was trying to think about what to match with courage if I wanted to use something about courage. And so, of course, it's about cooperatives. So I thought, okay, collective, right? Because it is this history of collective courage. And then to cinch it, I actually was thinking back to one of the themes that comes out in the research, which is, unfortunately, the sabotage and the white supremacist terrorism against people who tried to establish and or did establish cooperatives. And so I thought it was an important title also, because then it would help remind us that even in the face of that kind of terrorism and economic sabotage, that we still persisted and were able to keep this legacy going. So in the book, you talk about the role and the presence

of cooperatives in African-American communities. Can you talk a little bit about what times in history in particular cooperatives played a really significant role and why? So the first answer is that every period of our history, there was a role and there was cooperative activity. Almost from when we were on the boats, the horrible slaverships chained to one another and brought over forcibly. If you think about cooperatives the way Du Bois thought about it, which was economic cooperation, not necessarily an officially incorporated cooperative enterprise. And so if you think about ways to cooperate economically, then you can see that there's a long history from all kinds of informal people just helping each other out in a solidarity kind of economy

to sharing farming, sharing farming tools, sharing food, pooling dues money to help bury each other when you needed to bury someone, family member, even if you were enslaved, that kind of thing. So we actually can see from the very beginning, there were all kinds of ways to cooperate. And Du Bois even talks about the Underground Railroad being a form of economic cooperation. The Underground Railroad was an informal secret system for helping to harbor fugitive slaves and runaways to help them get from slavery to freedom. And mostly it was geographically from the southern United States to the north and then eventually to Canada. The north

was not always free, so the north wasn't always the stopping point. And then there was also a time when even if you were in the north, militias and stopping point and then there was also a time when even if you were in the north militias and bounty hunters could take you back to the south so you had to actually leave the country but the underground railroad was a social system but also an economic system because you had to share resources people had to have food there were wagons there were people had to have big enough houses to have an underground place to hide people, that kind of thing. And so it was kind of a social and economic network of people, mostly barter and other kinds of support. And so when you think about official incorporated enterprises that follow what we call the seven cooperative principles and other cooperative values, I found three significant periods. The first was around the 1880s,

which is post-Reconstruction, and I don't know how much U.S. history you want me to go into, but I can explain the post-Reconstruction era in a minute. The second was during the Great Depression in the 30s and 40s, and then the third era was the 1960s and 70s, what's considered the official civil rights or the end of the civil rights and the beginning of the black power movement era. So when I realized there were those three periods, I tried to think about what were the connectors, why were those periods similar. So in looking at the 1880s and 1930s and 40s and the 1960s and 70s, the themes that I found were, first of all, the role of black organizations.

And all of those three periods, there were significant and sometimes very large black organizations that were not just talking about sort of civil rights or political rights, but were also somehow either talking about or practicing economic justice and often incorporating cooperative economics into either what they talked about was needed or what they were doing. For the 1880s and the 1930s, there was economic necessity was also another. So even just pure survival using the cooperative strategy to survive. And then in the 1880s and the 1960s and 70s, there was also these growing movements to regain or to gain liberation, especially civil rights, voting rights kinds of stuff, but also again connecting the need for economic independence, economic justice, economic

control, community-controlled economics. So the 1880s, one of the most important black organizations at that time was the Colored Farmers National Alliance and Cooperative Union, which was a combination of a co-op union, a labor organization, and a mutual aid society and part of the populist movement. It was a political party as well, trying to regain rights for blacks. And that actually in 1886 was the largest black organization in the country. Started in the South, but it actually had members all over. And so that's what I mean by a strong black organization that was promoting and participating in a cooperative economy. In the 1930s, you have several different organizations

and activities going on for Blacks, the Young Negroes Cooperative League, which isn't huge. In the end, it has about 400 members, but it holds annual conferences. It connects with a lot of Black young people and gets the message out. It does a lot of co-op education, and so it's important there. In addition, you've got the growing a lot of co-op education, and so it's important there. In addition,

you've got the growing Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which is not huge, huge, but it's the first real independent black labor organization, and they're also promoting cooperative economics, studying it, and trying to start co-ops, especially through the Women's Auxiliary. By the 1940s, you actually have black colleges and universities teaching cooperative economics as part of some of their consumer education programs. And so you have co-ops that are associated with the schools in those neighborhoods. So again, all this connection to black organization and organizing. And then by the 1960s,

even though none of the major five civil rights organizations talk openly about cooperatives, they all collaborate behind the scenes to put in a request to the Ford Foundation to get a grant to organize a meeting to start a regional co-op development association. And so it's because the support came from all those civil rights organizations that the Federation of Southern Cooperatives gets started and develops as a regional organization to support co-op development.

And that actually still exists today. It's 50 years old this year. And so you can see the kind of momentum between people needing co-ops, wanting them, and then getting the strong backing from the organizations that are serving multiple needs in black communities. To me, those were the really important times when you could get a lot of growth happening. And so going back, you went all the way back to slave ships. So going back, even you went all the way back to slave ships. I'm wondering even if we go back even further to economies in Africa before coming to the U.S., were there threads of solidarity and different things that you can see really supported the cooperative movement and the solidarity movement once in the United States?

So I started to investigate that. I put a little of it in the book. I wasn't able to spend as much time on it because it turned out there was so much information in the U.S. But I have been convinced, and I'm actually trying to get some people to study this more now, that there are lots of examples in Africa and even among indigenous First Nations in North America who are practicing cooperatives. And now I actually talk about cooperatives as being a universal. I think almost all societies, especially in the early years, but probably continuously use co-ops. There's a scholar named Chancellor Williams who has a

chapter on cooperative economics in Africa. And he says cooperative economics is basically the basis for all survival, that all groups survived using cooperative economics. And it's only when we supposedly developed industrialization that we somehow lost that sense. Though I could also argue there's some aspects of industrialization that are still very cooperative, but not in the ways we think of co-ops. But anyway, like cartels and things. So yes, and I do believe that there were what I call African retentions in terms of for African Americans here in the U.S., that there are things that they may have remembered from life in the past, connections between the religion and other economic activities. I think they were drawing on things that they knew from

the past, but we don't have a lot of evidence of that. What I've been able to show is that there are probably some retentions, and then there are also definitely deliberate efforts to learn whatever, even if it was European cooperative information, they were trying to learn whatever they could about co-ops in any form to practice it. How in general would you define or describe the solidarity economy? Maybe to someone who's never heard the concept before. So the solidarity economy is recognizing the ways that human beings solve their economic issues and economic issues are the issues of survival, production, exchange, trade. Solve those things by working together in non-exploitive ways

that can range from bartering to fair trade in the way that we know fair trade now in terms of actually working with across continents and across boundaries to make sure that the people that you buy from are getting a fair share of the profits and treated properly. And within those two, between barter and fair trade, are all kinds of things that include cooperatives, worker ownership, community ownership. So there's community development finance, there's credit unions, there's worker

co-ops, there's community-owned businesses, there are worker-owned businesses, anything that's really where the profit motive is not as strong as the motive to support and develop human beings and to solve the problems collectively, and then to do it, as I said, in a way that's non-exploitative, that is about human dignity and human sharing and well-being for everybody. Let's go back to the 1970s, 60s and 70s. Could you tell us the story about the Freedom Quilting Bee? Sure. It actually started in 1967 or probably a year before they incorporated.

It actually started in 1967 or probably a year before they incorporated. So in the late 1960s in Alabama, a small town, Alberta, Alabama, the quilting bee is made up of women whose families were sharecroppers. And I guess I should explain what a sharecropper is. Sharecropping is the system actually that happened right after emancipation. It turned out to be a new version of slavery, but it was supposed to be a new way to do wage work. And what you did was you allowed families, African-American families who had been slaves on a property to now rent that property from a landowner who had probably been their master or maybe had been the master down the street or whatever. And it's sharecropping because

you get to use the land and then you share the profits from the crop to pay for the land. And of course, the notion is if you had been enslaved, then you had no way to pay rent or anything, but you still needed to work the land. So you worked the land, paid the rent back once you had a profit but the profit came from the landowner buying the crops from you and deciding how much the crops were. But also between the time when you plant the crops and the time you harvest you also needed to borrow seed, plows, work animals, food for your family, et cetera. So you end up owing the landowner almost everything

because you don't have any money at all until the crop comes in. So you end up basically at the behest of the landowner once again because they can decide how much to pay you for the crop. They can decide how much to charge you for the land and for all the materials you had to use in advance, et cetera. So by the time you finish each year, you actually come out in debt. And then the debt carries over to the next year. So that's sharecropping.

So the women, especially in the winter, made quilts. And one year, a priest realized he could take their quilts and sell them up north. And he did and brought them back some money. And they thought, oh, this could be a great extra salary so they started a quilting bee formed it officially as a cooperative and within several years made enough money so they could buy land they could build an actual sewing factory so they weren't sewing out of their homes they made enough money so some of the families didn't have to share crop anymore. And what was really fascinating was the fact that the co-op really gave them economic independence, which changed the whole nature of their lives

and often the lives of their communities for several reasons. The first thing is what started out to be augmenting their share cropping could then turn out to be a full-time work for the women, and they could even get their families out of sharecropping in some cases, not always, but some cases. So that was one thing. Two, the camaraderie and sense of solidarity. Freedom Quilting Bee is also a founding member of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. So they came about six months before the Federation started, but they saw themselves as part of this developing a regional organization, being connected to a movement, that kind of thing. The third thing is because they made money separately from the white man that they could control themselves, they then learned a lot

of financial literacy because you have to learn that kind of stuff to run your own business. They also made enough money. They bought 23 acres of land in their town, which then gave them control over land that no one could take away from them. So that this was also a period of civil rights registering to vote, especially Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana had very strict voting registration laws that pretty much precluded blacks from registering. And then if they did register, they often were receiving violence against them, like they would be evicted from their sharecropping house and land. Sometimes they were put in jail. Fannie Lou Hamer was actually beaten almost to death for registering

and for teaching other people how to register. So the quilting bee now had 23 acres of land and a factory, so they could put people to work. They also could lend out their land to families that had been thrown off of the sharecropping land when they registered to vote. So now they were actually participating in the civil rights movement, not just trying to vote, but in supporting people to vote. So now they were actually participating in the civil rights movement, not just trying to vote, but in supporting people to vote to give them economic independence so that they weren't dependent on the whites who could then retaliate against them. So there was that

connection. They ended up, by 1992, being the largest employer in their town. They employed about 150 people between the quilters themselves, who are basically owners. They also had an after-school program, a daycare center, and some other small projects going on in their complex. And that would be the final piece, I would say, because these had been women who were originally working out of their homes, they now have a place, a factory to work in, but then what do you do with your children? So again, the co-op model allowed them to incorporate satisfying all the needs they had as mothers, as family members, et cetera, because now they could also use the co-op to establish these child care centers and after-school programs so their children also were taken care of and they could still work. So I love to use that example because it's an

example of so many different ways that co-ops help women, that co-ops help a political movement, the economics of it, and the solidarity and independence that gets created. You mentioned in 1992 it was the largest business in the town. What's happened since? Right. Well, it's a little bit of a frustrating story let's see if i can tell it the most the simplest easiest way and maybe if it has any lessons for right so one of the lessons is definitely that by the 2000s the quilting bee was kind of defunct which is a shame but But at its height, it actually was selling quilts through two retail stores, as well as had all these other sub programs going on and

hiring people and that kind of thing. So to say that even if they puttered out now is not that bad, which actually leads me to a lesson learned that I try to talk about throughout the book, which is I really never talk about or try not to use the word failure. I realize that the process of creating a co-op or doing practice in cooperative economics is actually so liberating and has so many different facets of learning and skill development and progress that it really never is a failure, even if the co-op itself only lasts a year or 20 years, or even if the co-op doesn't even get off the ground, because there's so much that's learned by trying to do it, by practicing this kind of

solidarity economics, by learning enough to even think about starting a co-op. The practice you get in working together with other people and learning the skills. Sometimes people start to get the literacy or the financial literacy or the other kinds of literacy or skill building. People develop leadership. So there's all kinds of things that happen because you participated in a co-op or trying to start a co-op that don't end just because the co-op ends. And so to me, there isn't really ever a failure. There might be more successful and less successful examples. And what also comes up for me in the story of the Freedom Quilting Bee is this idea that a cooperative can exist, but it still exists within the current capitalist system and the current

globalized system so as you were speaking i was imagining handmade quilts i mean maybe they were using machinery of course but they started out handmade definitely and then in comparison with what's happening across the border in mexico in sweatshops or overseas and you know i mean this was in the 90s that you were saying was the height and then it was kind of downhill for there. I mean, it's, you know, I understand. So it's also the industry changed. Yeah, we have to take it in the context. And this just brings up the good question of, you know, cooperatives have, they do have a profit motive. I mean, they want to be sustainable, but they also have other motives. So ultimately, you have a business model that's trying to value things other than profit, competing with, because the environment is competitive,

with models that are purely competitive. So we see this in this example a little bit. So what do you see are the ways that a cooperative can exist within a capitalist system with so many things kind of going against it? Right. So there's a couple of things. One of the first things, which I think is how I might have even gotten interested in co-ops, is as an alternative, right? So for people, groups of people, communities, neighborhoods, ethnic groups, racial groups who are already marginalized and left out, a co-op can fill that niche of where the market failed, where the profit motive didn't lead a company to create what was needed or to-ops in the U.S., especially amongst of alternate people, people who aren't the dominant economic group, are filling this niche of nobody else is doing it. Either you're not hiring black people or you're not providing this product that black people want or you're ignoring that neighborhood, that kind of thing. So a lot of the housing co-ops were for that reason. Blacks couldn't get mortgages, couldn't get apartments in somewhere else, so they tried to figure out how to own their own credit unions and other lending circles. The same thing, you can't get access to capital in commercial banks and things like that, and so you create a financial institution for yourself and your neighbors and your community.

institution for yourself and your neighbors and your community. And so in some ways, that's what helped them to continue to exist was that nobody else wanted to be in that business, or at least not in that business in that neighborhood or not with that clientele or whatever. So you didn't always have competition. Sometimes you had competition, like the white retail store across the street, and you're a co-op because they're treating you so badly or aren't selling the kind of supplies you want, but then they're mad that you're boycotting them and started something else. Well, that's again where the collective courage title came from.

In those cases, they're going to undermine you. They're going to undersell and try to get back your customers. They're going to firebomb your store. They're going to try to undermine the character of the people in the co-op. They're going to, sometimes they bring in militias and kill everybody involved in the co-op. So there's lots of ways that they retaliate to try to stop you. And these are all examples that you're giving from what you've researched. Yes, unfortunately. And so, yes, there can be a niche, but also sometimes not just capitalism encroaching back,

but also sometimes, as I said, the white supremacist violence, which just won't let you. But again, that's where that courage comes. You kind of, even when they kill some of your members or firebomb your building, you kind of go underground and regroup somewhere else and try to do it outside of their radar. And so staying outside the radar often tends to be a real survival mechanism. And then the final thing I want to say about how they can survive,

and this actually was articulated by several of the black organizations that were doing co-op development and turns out to also have been the strategy of the very successful Mondragon co-ops, which is the interlocking co-ops, support and supply each other. So work together, have a credit union that helps supply the financial needs for the rest of the co-op and the rest of the community, have a worker co-op and factories that supply the store. So have all these interlocking, as many interlocking co-ops as you can. From early on, that was what people thought. If we could have some kind of co-op commonwealth, that then we wouldn't need any of the outsiders. It wouldn't matter what the outsiders were doing. We could just supply ourselves, interlock with each other, and support ourselves, and we wouldn't really need

much else. And so that was another way, even though it didn't happen as much, it was kind of an ideal. And then the final thing is the co-ops that did survive the best and that survived sabotage and retaliation were the ones that had the strongest community support. So even the members of the community who weren't official members of the co-op somehow supported, either helped to supply things or helped to do something or stood in front of the militia when the whites came with guns, that kind of thing. So that kind of community support, community solidarity also matters a lot. It's got to be almost impossible to discern the difference. But I'm wondering, you know, how much of the retaliation and the pressure

from these white groups or other people was because it was an alternative economic project or because it was African-Americans and they were acting independently? I mean, I guess maybe that was both. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right. It they were acting independently. I mean, I guess maybe that was both. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right. It's hard to know. I mean, sometimes it looks like it was just the blacks because there are some cases where

it was just blacks, like the Leflore County Massacre in Mississippi in 1889. That one, it was just blacks because there was a white co-op store that was allowing the black co-op to use it. And they massacred only black co-op members. They also made them desist in printing the newspaper that they printed. And they forbid the white co-op from serving them. So they didn't make the white co-op close, but they refused to let the white co-op serve the black co-op members of the neighboring co-op from serving them. So they didn't make the white co-op close, but they refused to let the white co-op serve the black co-op members of the neighboring co-op. So that one was clearly a racial issue because they were willing to tolerate the white co-op. So it depends.

And so let's bring it to present. So one of the threads that you spoke about in the three examples of history that you gave are that times of crises really bring economic solidarity. And it makes sense people have unmet needs. So we're still, you know, many would argue in a recession after the 2008 crash. So what have you seen after in this recent period of history in terms of African American co-ops? So I have been talking about that this is another period where we should see a flurry, a flourishing of co-ops in general, but certainly for my model, African American co-ops and co-ops with other subaltern groups. And I think we have, I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't been keeping that much track of it because I'm

still doing so much book talks and talking about my book and talking about history more than the present. But I know from a couple of things. I know one because of all the interest I've been getting from black communities around the country who are starting. I mean, when I go there, they show me their new fledgling co-ops and their ideas for co-ops and stuff. So I do have that anecdotal. And I seem to go about three, sometimes four places a month. So I'm not talking trivially about one or two places I go to a year. I mean, this is a lot of places I've been invited to. And it seems like they all already have at least one or two co-ops and are trying to get three or four more going. So just anecdotally, there's definitely a lot happening.

In terms of the fastest growing co-ops, we know that right now the fastest growing are urban food co-ops and worker co-ops. The urban food co-ops are still mostly white, but there's a new growing segment, which is low-income black urban food co-ops. And then the worker co-ops, the fastest growing group there, are actually immigrant women, and some of the immigrant women could be classified as black. So the data we do have is also showing that there's a growing interest, especially among people who, again, have been totally left out and have very little or nothing and are trying to make something out of nothing. So that's been really exciting. The Movement for Black Lives has gotten very interested in cooperative economics, and their new platform actually talks about economic justice and funds for and funding for cooperative economic development and cooperative economic training and information

because also in their platform they see solidarity economy and cooperative development as essential. And so that's really exciting because they've been able to grow from talking about police protection and police brutality and criminal injustice, but now they're able to think about how to incorporate economic justice and co-op solidarity economy development in the whole, again, sort of integrated platform for what we should do and where we should go next. One insight from your book was how sometimes movements in U.S. history that were once connected became split or were disassociated.

And I know you're just giving a great example of today, a movement that has many different areas, police brutality, economic cooperation. So what are these times in history, these examples where this was split? So the most fascinating period is back to those 1880s. And I will, I guess, stop to give a little bit of U.S. history again. 1865 is the end of the U.S. Civil War. The U.S. Civil War is eventually fought to be against slavery, though it's not started that way. And then we have a reconstruction period from 1865 to 1877. And then we have a Reconstruction period from 1865 to 1877. During that Reconstruction period is really the first civil rights era.

We have a lot of laws passed. That's when all the amendments get passed to end slavery, to allow all men to vote, and to provide everybody with equal protection under the law and citizenship, which is the 14th Amendment. Emancipation was the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, and voting for men was the 14th Amendment. Emancipation was the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, and voting for men was the 15th Amendment. But that period ends with the election of 1876 and the pulling out of the federal troops from the South in 1877, which then leaves the Southern conservatives to then reinstate almost slavery conditions, but basically apartheid conditions, which get called Jim Crow. So by the 1880s, we're basically in a regressive period. It's really actually similar to the period we're in right now with the election of Trump

after Obama. So if you're going to call Obama the sort of Reconstruction period, even though there weren't that many new rights for blacks, but anyway, a period when there's a lot more happening for racial justice and that kind of thing. And then there's this backlash. The 1880s are also when the Ku Klux Klan starts. And there's lots of economic sabotage. There's lots of disenfranchisement, meaning blacks aren't allowed to vote, etc. So the populist movement, which is partly a white movement for white small farmers and that kind of thing to assert the rights of sort of grassroots rights. There's also a black populist movement, which is trying to reinstate all the civil rights laws, especially voting rights and other laws.

It's also the same time that the labor movement is starting. And the labor movement is very connected to the populist movement, but it's also very connected. It's also connected to the racial justice movement because the labor movement at that time realizes that you can't fight for white working rights if you don't bring black workers because otherwise they can always use black workers

to separate you, retaliate, et cetera, divide you. So the labor movement is all about integration, is also about political rights. And the labor movement is supporting co-op development, which is also another movement that's created an upsurge in Europe, and then that upsurge moves to the United States and Canada, and there's a whole new excitement about co-ops and the use of real incorporation laws for co-ops and credit unions and stuff by the early 1900s. And so the labor unions are integrated or trying to be integrated. They're talking about co-op ownership

because to them that's the ultimate height of labor rights is to own your own factory, your own means of production, etc. They're also fighting for political rights. And so all three movements, populist, labor movement, and co-op movement are together and pretty much integrated. And they came about because of the backlash? Yeah, is it because of? Just because that could help us understand something for today. But yeah, it's a good question. i'm just wondering why in that time of history why that time of history i think probably because yes we had a glimpse in the reconstruction period of how things could be better things reverted because

the powers that be were able to take back control. And then, right, groups were like, we shouldn't keep regressing. We need to move forward. And these are the ways we think we can move forward. And so, yes, I think there was that whole. So there's a combination of blacks saying we shouldn't regress and whites saying there's lots more. Right, it's also the height of sort of not the height but it's part of the industrialization of the united states right and the more urbanization

of the united states so there's a lot more workers and so that's why labor unions have more interest because workers it's really the raw period when workers are just totally exploited and so the labor union so it's yeah it's a ripe period. And then probably the industrialization of agriculture and farming was why the populist movement. Right. They are trying to protect small farmers and small farmland and that Jacksonian farming notion. Right.

So it's all coming together in these interesting ways. And then, as I said, the co-op movement actually has coalesced in Europe at this point. You have 1844 with the Rochdale Weavers, and then by 1896 you have the International Cooperative Alliance, and so you have those ideas also with European immigrants bringing those ideas. So there's all kinds of these ideas about what life should and could be and what it was, and now, you know. And the Rochdale Weavers is where we get the roshdale principles that you mentioned that are the original five principles that are now the international

seven principles of cooperation right so all that is happening in this period and in the southern united states in particular so in the north you have these very repressive capitalists who are just industrializing. You know, they don't care who dies or whatever. And there's the fight for the eight-hour day and for health rights and stuff. And in the South, you've got the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and the plantation block, as we call them. And so these are the alternatives. And they're all really working together until the white supremacists really first drive the integration apart.

It's just impossible to stay integrated with the assaults that the white supremacists, particularly in the South, are doing against the populists and the labor movements. What were they doing in particular? Well, it's back to terrorism and intimidation. So they're doing a lot of intimidation threats, but also firepower. So even the labor unions, labor leaders are being shot, right? They're disrupting meetings.

They're not allowing groups to meet certain places. And even for the co-op stuff, The Knights of Labor have, I think, 208 industrial co-ops in the early 1880s. And the railroads are refusing to move any co-op products. So there's all, again, all this kind of sabotage as well as this actual intimidation and violence against even whites at this point. So white labor union people, white co-op people are even getting either killed or threatened, that kind of thing. And so most of the accounts talk about people going underground, meaning you don't even know who the leaders are anymore. Some of the black co-op groups actually have to have white leaders

because it's too dangerous to be a black leader and you're too much of a target. So you're meeting in clandestine places or you're not having real meetings. You're passing around notes and things. So it's really hard to do anything. The co-ops themselves are going under because they can't, right? They can't even move their products. They can't get loans, et cetera. So there's a real assault.

And so what happens is everything kind of separates. The populist political parties kind of just be political parties and don't talk about integration or labor stuff or co-ops. The co-ops go to their separate corners and the black co-ops do something separately than the white co-ops. The labor movement separates from the co-op movement. So by the 1900s, they're all kind of separated. The labor movements have become very conservative. The co-ops are kind of low to the ground. I think you had an example of even labor unions, not allowing black members anymore. Right. Some of the early 1900s, a lot of the labor unions are extremely right. They find that if they have black members, then they think the employers will hire

the blacks instead of them for a lower wage or whatever, and they don't want to compete with them. So they'd rather just totally leave them out, or they don't allow them to become skilled workers. So yeah, unfortunately, it's like a really sad period of time. But the example of how everything was working together, I think, is really exciting and is probably something that we would want to think about again. I don't think there was ever a time since then when everything worked, all the movements kind of worked so much together. But certainly by the 30s, eventually the black and white labor movements came back together

somewhat though you end up with the brotherhood of sleeping car parties being separate black union but you have some union activity i guess by the 40s not the 30s but by the 40s and by the time afl-cao come together that's also when sort of the integration of the unions happens more i don't know what happened to the Populist Party. It kind of is defunct, right? Eventually, the Democratic Party takes over some of those. But the Democratic Party is so divided because it kept the Southern Democrats who were never progressive.

Wow. Well, yeah, I'm definitely thinking a lot about today's time. Yeah, today is right for us pulling all those things back together and connecting them all. Pulling back together and then also the increase in presence and visibility of Ku Klux Klan

and white supremacist groups and people fearing for, you know, being Muslim or, you know, other things. And then what came to mind was the solidarity at Standing Rock and the Black Lives Matter delegation going and supporting. And so I'm seeing a lot of similarities. Yeah, that's, I teach a course about how lessons from history, learning from the past, and it's

just so much stuff we can see connections and learn and better understand what's happening now and where maybe we could go forward. So while you were speaking about, you're first talking about slavery, and then you were talking about sharecropping. And then I know that now what you're working on is prisons. And I could not help but just see the similarities in prisons being disproportionately African-Americans and such a similar relationship, especially the private prisons with the people in prison and the people who are working there. So I was like, wow, that we went from slavery to sharecropping and now to the prison industrial complex. So can you talk a little bit about what that is and what the work you're doing now?

Right. So between coming here to John Jay, which actually specializes in criminal justice issues, and turning my attention more to what we call community justice, community-based approaches to justice, but also just, as you said, interested in that trajectory, what's sort of the next comparable situation to what I've already looked at in slavery and Jim Crow segregation and sharecropping and that kind of thing. And the prison industrial complex, particularly prisons themselves, but also for returning citizens. Those issues, again, about not just being marginalized, but being shut out of a system is another example of the ways that I've found co-ops can work. So I thought about

looking into how co-ops can be a solution for that. Now, it turns out that the Europeans and the Canadians are way ahead of us on this. And so I did a little bit of studying of the Italian model, a little bit of some Canadians, but then I was lucky to find out about what the Puerto Ricans were doing. So I actually studied what's happening in Puerto Rico even more than I studied anything else. And since Puerto Rico is actually in the federal system, it seems like it should be possible for us to do what they're doing here. And so two things. One, I've just started trying to put together information. What are ways that co-ops can be used by imprisoned people?

And what are ways that co-ops can be used for returning citizens? And then what are examples that have been successful? And why are they successful? And what kind of elements do we need to put together for that? So briefly, what I'm calling the Puerto Rican model, I'm not even sure they call it the Puerto Rican model because they're testing some things out. They only have about four of these co-ops, and one is about 12 years old. The others are very young and just starting out.

But what happened was a group of prisoners, and I never remember the name of the prison, and it's not in the book because I learned this after. They actually, through art therapy, they were making sculptures. And they were making so many sculptures that they didn't have any more people to give them away to. And so they thought that this could be a business model, right? They could actually start selling their sculptures. And when they started studying what business model they wanted, they stumbled upon co-ops. And they realized that that really embodied the way they wanted to work, the way they were already working together, and the way they wanted to work. Some of the sculptures, they actually were made not by one person, but by a group of them. Like one person would do the actual sculpture, somebody else would paint it, and someone else would make the pedestal for it, that kind of thing. And so they realized they were already working cooperatively. So they actually demanded some co-op education and co-op business development support from the prison. And the prison luckily reached out to the League of Co-ops in Puerto Rico,

which is a very well-established organization, which sent them a co-op educator. So once they learned more about co-ops, they decided to incorporate as a co-op. But then they found out that the Puerto Rican co-op law has a restriction that if you're incarcerated, you can't be a member. You especially can't be a board member, but you can't be a member. And they didn't want an outside co-op. They didn't want to be members of a co-op that was owned by outsiders or owned by a nonprofit or owned by, right, they wanted to own and run their own co-op. So they were able to get an audience with the governor at the time, 12 years ago, I forget what her name was. She was the female governor of Puerto Rico. She listened to their case, got interested in it, and got them connected to some of the state legislators. And they had a successful campaign and changed the law to allow them to own and run their own co-op so they could be members and board members.

So then they incorporated as a co-op and they were able to do just incredible things. I have talked to the co-op educator and one of the members who had been the secretary for a while and then before he got his sentence commuted and is out now. And so I've traveled around with them telling their story for the last two years or so. And it's just fascinating to hear them talk about both the agency that comes with putting together their own co-op and arguing for their own co-op, but also all the different myriad benefits

that come with the co-op ownership. So things like a lot of the members had been relatively notorious in the prison for being troublemakers, but now they're so focused, many of them got their time sentences commuted as co-op members. It just changed the whole way they presented themselves and operated in the prison. The guy, Roberto Rodriguez, who was the secretary when he was a member of the co-op, talks about how being a member of the co-op really transformed his life. It gave him much more of a purpose. It gave him a sense of community. It really made him feel human again.

He was able to then show good behavior. And sorry, I'm putting quotes up in the air. But anyway, he was able to show good behavior so that he actually got most of his sentence commuted. And apparently, if you talk to a lot of the members, 50 of them over 12 years have gotten out already. Two of them recidivated, but one is already out on parole again. So really only one out of 50 recidivated, which is what people who are looking at prison issues are interested in is recidivation rates. And so all over the world, the prisoners and co-ops have very low recidivism rates, much lower than the national averages. And so that's one of the ways that we

can see that it worked, even if you don't care about the human side, the way it's provided dignified work and humane relationship building and transform people's lives. If that doesn't matter to you in terms of rehabilitation, it would matter that these recidivation rates are so low. And there's now three other co-ops. One is, I think, a solar energy co-op or an alternative energy co-op in one of the prisons. One is a computer tech co-ops. One is, I think, a solar energy co-op or an alternative energy co-op in one of the prisons. One is a computer tech co-op. And then they have a woman in the women's prison. There's a woman's co-op. That one had trouble getting off the ground. One of their problems was the woman they elected as president was in solitary confinement. So then they had to get a waiver for her to be able to spend another two hours out of solitary to attend co-op meetings. And then they transferred half of the women who agreed to join

the co-op to another prison. So then they had to get new members. Then the prison stole their business plan for a bakery. And so they had to switch to sewing. So anyway, the women have had a slow start, but I think hopefully in 2017, they'll be able to do something. Wow. And so in the United States, are there laws against prison co-ops or co-ops for people formerly incarcerated? You know, we're looking into that. It does seem to be state by state. So there's several issues. There's co-op law itself and co-op laws are state by state. There's not a federal co-op law. So it depends on which state you're in. And then there's laws about whether incarcerated people can go into business for themselves at all. So whether you can be a co-op based on co-op law and then

there's whether you're allowed to go into business as an incarcerated person. So I've been working in projects here in New York City, though. Right now we're just doing more co-op education among some returning citizens, and hopefully in another year I'm going to be teaching a course on cooperative economics in one of the prisons through my college. And then in Washington State I'm working with a group called Reparations Law that's working with the black prisoners caucus there and they're actually looking into what their rights are

they found a law about being able to start some kind of special designated type of business that they can start and they're trying to find out if that means that kind of business could also be a co-op and if they could start a co-op and they want to do a combination in and out they're not sure if they want the same business to be in and out or if they just want a set of co-ops and some of them would be returning citizens and some of them would be prisoners and one of the things they're looking at first actually and maybe i'm not supposed to say this they have some ideas about what work they would do, what would be the first jobs for the prison co-ops, and what kind of needs they have. So they have a bunch of ideas. We're in the middle of doing, helping them do co-op education,

but also we're looking into all the policies and laws. One thing I really just appreciate about this whole conversation is knowing that you are an academic, you have an academic background. And yet what you're doing is you're changing that which you're researching, because by shedding a light or, you know, in some cases, a spotlight on something that hasn't been very visible, you're bringing it both to visibility and you're also growing it. It's this kind of cultivation of it through research, which I think sometimes people don't think that people in academia do. So how does that feel being in academia? And yet, you know, do you really identify also as someone who's an activist?

Right. So I do call myself a scholar activist. In fact, I go back and forth. Sometimes I say I'm an activist scholar. Sometimes I'm saying I'm a scholar activist. I suppose technically I'm an who gave back to my community and someone who tried to make the world better. So that's needed to really create cooperatives. And part of this has been both an anti-alternatives to capitalism, but also this very anti-black, very like discrimination and, you know, racism and everything has been such a historical presence for African-Americans. So if you were to go upstream to the root cause of the problem of why has it been so hard for African Americans, both in the cooperative movement, but just in general in the United States, what would you say are some of your insights or answers that can then help us with what are our solutions? So for me, and this is actually why I became an economist to try to deal with some of these, racialized capitalism. So capitalism and racial injustice, which really go

to me go hand in hand. Like I don't, I believe they're so intertwined. We can't even say which came first or whatever they developed together and developed to support each other. So to me, those are the real root causes that we have a racialized capitalist system that believes that only a certain group and number of people should get ahead and that nobody else deserves to and that some of that is based on race and a lot of it is connected to using race to divide people and that we have a system that definitely believes

in allowing plunder and exploitation and then rewarding that, and that's willing to leave people behind. And so I got excited about co-ops because I saw it as a place to start for people who are left behind, where you don't necessarily have to claw your way back in, or you're not even necessarily trying to claw your way back in,

or you're not banging on the door to get back in. Now, some people and some co-ops, even some of the examples I have in the book, actually used a co-op to get back into the capitalist system. So they're outside, and they use the co-op to get back into the capitalist system, right? So they're outside and they use the co-op to position themselves and stabilize themselves enough to then enter capitalist system. But most of the time they were either surviving and just kept trying to survive or surviving and then realizing that they actually needed this independent separate system to live the kind of

lives they wanted for themselves and their children and their community and that kind of thing. I guess my upstream is I actually feel like if we can intervene in the sense of have small local enclaves of people practicing economic justice and living in relative economic independence, that if we can create interlocking systems and a larger and larger cooperative commonwealth, we can both insulate ourselves from the oppression, both economic and the racial oppression, but also maybe we can change the system eventually

if enough of us get into this interlocking system that we might even be able to change it, and change it in two ways. In terms of the racism, I feel like if African Americans can establish themselves as equal partners with some of their own economic prosperity and independence, that then integration makes sense. But integration until now has been, we've integrated from a position of inequality

and a subaltern position, so integration has been false for us. It hasn't really, it helped a few of us to get ahead, but the rest of us actually have been worse off since integration, unfortunately. So we can't even end racism and really integrate until we can enter as equals. And part of that entering as equals is having control over our own economics and having some prosperity and stability and that kind of thing. So that's part of the racism thing, but also we can't undo racism if we don't undo capitalism. But then I also believe that the act of participating in cooperative economics and solidarity economics also helps to chisel away the power of capitalism. And I think one possible scenario is that eventually we have so many interlocking co-ops and solidarity economic

structures that we don't really need capitalism anymore and we undermine it. But I think that's a long-term strategy. So I don't have a lot of hope for it in my lifetime, but I do think it's possible because of all the ways that I've seen co-ops transforming people, that it's possible if we can just get more and more of them happening that we can create a more transformative, liberatory economy and world. Wonderful. Thank you so much for your time and for everything you shared. Thank you, and you're welcome. you've been listening to an upstream conversation with jessica gordon nemhart

which is part of our exploration of the solidarity economy to listen to our solidarity economy