Historical Foundations
Fight, Resist and Build/The Temporal Conjuncture
The Vision and Strategy
The Projects
A Butterfly’s Emergence: The People’s Network for Land and Liberation
The content of this article draws from a People’s Network for Land and Liberation (PNLL) panel at the 2024 Decolonizing Economics Summit (2024), 1 supplemented by material from organisational websites, and individual conversations. The substance is directly attributable to them, with contextualisation.
The objective of this article is to uplift this emergent formation, grounded in Indigenous and African-centred values and ways of being, and situated in a critique of coloniality and an understanding of the current conjuncture. This US-based network builds on long-standing political relationships forged through movement work over the last several decades. The significance of this group of interconnected organisations is their ability to see a path forward at a time of intensifying crises and material challenges. They recognise that communities can only depend on themselves and must build the path to self-sufficiency in real time and urgent conditions. Their values and principles provide a guide to creating and living the world they want, counting on their self-determining, collective, and creative plans and practices to lead them thoughtfully toward the vision they have set forth.
In many ways, little is “new” in what these projects are doing. They draw on practices that communities have historically engaged to survive and thrive. What is relatively new is the period of end-stage capitalism that calls upon people all over the globe to find the means for meeting the needs of all forms of life, at a time when the system’s elite and dominant powers consider most living beings dispensable, disposable and a burden.
Historical Foundations
Coloniality and the capitalist world-system have held violent reign for the last 600 years, organising life along global hierarchies of superiority and inferiority. 2 These arrangements have been politically, culturally and economically produced and reproduced for centuries by institutions of the capitalist, imperialist, white supremacist, Euro-centred, Western, cis-gendered, heteronormative patriarchal, Christian-centric modern world-system. 3 These historical processes, narratives and deeply entrenched structures established polarities, separations, binaries and oppositions that continue to carry out genocide and epistemicide on a world scale.
This era of coloniality and racial capitalism is in great upheaval; we have entered a period of a multitude of intensifying crises of new proportions. We are experiencing a true conjuncture. Economic institutions, social relations and political structures are being contested everywhere. Global disparities are acute. Five men now own as much wealth as half the world’s population combined. 4 Electoral processes all over the globe have put fascism on the ballot with a bare pretence of democracy. 5 Project 2025 in the United States is a raw expression of this reality. 6
Despite the rhetoric of being the land of plenty, in the United States food, shelter and basic needs are increasingly inaccessible, especially to those most vulnerable and with few resources. In 2021, more than 29% of all adults (63 million) had trouble paying expenses; 44% of Black households and 38% of Latinos, and the situation is worsening. 7 This reality makes it increasingly urgent yet challenging to map a way forward for most people.
At the same time, we are witness to a deep and intensifying resistance. The Network is led by front-line marginalised communities who have historically suffered most directly from the existing system. Some of this pushback takes the form of protest; other formations focus on policy and/or electoral politics; still others direct their energy to building a path through solidarity economy and alternative projects grounded in community self-reliance and determination.
Embedded within each approach is a political orientation rooted in an analysis of the system, and how change occurs. All frameworks need to be contextualised in time and space. In the United States, additional dimensions include the decline of the nation’s hegemonic position globally and internal colonial relations. This necessitates not only a critique of coloniality and capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy but also a perspective on the role of nation, social movements and whose experiences, perspectives and voices should be centred. 8 This history provides the foundation for understanding the significance of the People’s Network for Land and Liberation.
Structural Implosion
Within the United States it was one thing to promote an idea of endless possibility (the “‘American’ Dream”) when the economy was expanding and another as the wealth and income gap began to significantly grow in the 1970s. Since that time, the skewed pattern of income distribution in the US has led to ongoing and massive increases in the income of the top 10% and especially the highest 1%, yet a decline in real income of the general population. Corporate profits during COVID-19 exacerbated this pattern dramatically, with the largest profit margins since 1950. 9 In recent decades taxes were cut on the very wealthy, raises in the federal minimum wage became rare and regulations that protected worker wages were dismantled. In 2020, it is estimated that average CEO–median worker pay ratios were 830 to 1. 10 This pattern continued to escalate in the last three years, with corresponding political shifts e. g. in the rollback of many of the social supports won over the last several decades.
While the wealth of the US is often explained as an outcome of being the “greatest country in the world”, with more modernity, more technology, more efficiency, more liberty, more culture, and more democracy than anywhere else, the realities have led to a crumbling of this false narrative (as a nation borne of theft and genocide) and of US exceptionalism in many people’s minds. Among adults aged 18–49, only 16% believe that democracy in the US is a good example for other countries to follow. 11 Still, the notion of cultural and technological superiority is deeply ingrained in the American psyche and provides the context for why a “dream” and the idea that upward mobility and material success are accessible to all would be considered exclusively “American”. 12 This impacts the capacity to organise and mobilise and to create and build alternative systems.
The United States’ decline as a hegemonic power is occurring in real time. The substance of the “‘American’ Dream” has been shaken. According to a survey among young people (18–29), only 10% say that the US “stands above all other countries” and 55% of those who identify as Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents say other countries are better. 13
The multiple political and economic crises signal a precarious era, made worse by the ruling class’s determination to continue expanding profits. Increasing unemployment and greater numbers at soup kitchens, mutual aid networks and homeless shelters are just the beginning. In 2018 over 11.1% of families in the US faced food insecurity, which doubled in 2020 to almost one in four families. 14 Black families are more than twice as likely to experience this (36%) than white families (18%). 15 These trends are compounded by the expanded privatisation of social services, to such an extent that schools, medical facilities, and policing, have largely become domains for profit-bearing as opposed to being services delivered for the public good. Project 2025 will eliminate much of this infrastructure entirely, and outlaw protest. 16
This process of the empire’s unravelling began to occur with the increasing social power of racial “minorities” during the 1960s and 1970s, leading to the moral exhaustion of the notion of “‘America’ the Beautiful”. 17 This conjuncture was not destiny, but a familiar pattern in geopolitics sometimes difficult to recognise because of the premise of US exceptionalism.
In recent decades, people around the world have been rising in rebellion against the domination of the economic elites and of the rich states of the pan-European world. Whether it is the more than 250 million Indian farmers who were on strike for almost a year against brutal laws that would have destroyed their livelihood, the rise of radical politics in Latin America, mass protests in Kenya or global outcry about the US-sponsored genocide in Gaza, it is evident that a new day is dawning.
The colonial-capitalist system is in irrevocable decline. And still, the forces at the top are determined to maintain it “by any means necessary”. Middle strata constituencies present means for reform for example through elections and isolated political victories that are entirely insufficient and also temporary. The centrality of the US nation to the structure and organisation of the world-system means that US society and the core premises of the “‘American’ Dream” are being exposed as fallacies, built on social relations of coloniality and power. 18 Resistance and the building of self-determining formations and projects within the nation are essential components of the struggle to challenge and weaken the hegemonic power of the United States.
Fight, Resist and Build/The Temporal Conjuncture
Given this context, communities seek the means for survival by utilising a variety of strategies. In some spaces and periods, these projects are grounded in political power such as the Zapatistas or in Rojava. At others this resistance is centred in building cooperatives and community-based institutions such as in Mondragon (Spain) and the Seikatsu Club (Japan). Still others are evident in dual power, mutual aid, and abolitionist initiatives such as those that flourished in recent years in response to the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, e.g. mutual aid, time banks, cooperatives, community land trusts, and urban gardens. 19
Some though not all movements view raising awareness about and interest in considering the structural context for the difficulties they face as a central part of their work. Whether formulated as abolitionism, eco-socialism, communism, solidarity economies or through frames such as “a world in which many worlds fit”, 20 it is widely recognised that the very foundation of the social world is in flux. Many communities are looking within to find the means to survive and thrive rather than to the state or external structures and institutions. The solidarity economy (SE) is one such framework, with practices rooted in values of solidarity, participatory democracy, equity, sustainability, and pluralism. 21 The SE is a vision and framework for building a post-capitalist future. In the United States there are estimated to be roughly 28,000 sites noted on the “solidarity map and directory”. 22
People’s Network for Land and Liberation: The Vision and Strategy
The People’s Network for Land and Liberation provides a powerful example of this politic, grounded in the following commitment:
The mission of PNLL is to decommodify the land to re-establish the right relationship with the earth and all our relatives and relations. We aim to advance democratic ownership of the means of production and liberatory social relationships. We are committed to building communities that regenerate the earth’s lifegiving ecosystems. PNLL consists of autonomous organisations that share best practices and opportunities to allow each entity to fulfil its organisational mission. 23
Shaped by six regional projects, the People’s Network includes:
The projects (nodes) are rooted in the foundation of a solidarity economy and organised around the specific material conditions in each locale. These practices comprise an alternative development framework grounded in solidarity, mutualism and cooperation, equity, sustainability, economic and people’s democracy, and pluralism. While cooperatives (worker, consumer and producer) are central, projects have also developed public banks, community land trusts, alternative currencies, time banks and other practices. 24
Here is a graphic of the People’s Network for Land and Liberation’s five-point programme (Figure 8). 25
The People’s Network grounds their efforts in the metaphor of imaginal cells of caterpillars, pointing the way toward a radical transformatory future. They note:
As a caterpillar’s body disintegrates inside its chrysalis, clusters of cells, called imaginal cells, begin to form a butterfly. The caterpillar’s immune system attacks them, but eventually they trigger new cell division, multiplying and combining to form the new body. Soon, the butterfly emerges and takes flight. 26
At the Decolonizing Economics Summit, David Cobb shared that the People’s Network for Land and Liberation is a programme to win a new world. Providing historical context, he observed that at this time in history we are in a polycentric crisis of an economic and ecological collapse, and rising fascism. David noted that we need a completely new system as mainstream institutions and organisations are not solving the problems and explains that in fact, they are not designed to solve the problems of white supremacy and capitalism, settler colonialism or heteropatriarchy. PNLL is part of the movement of people returning to ancestral ways of relating to each other and to the land. PNLL is about returning to the balance that existed before settler colonialism.
Decolonizing Economics Summit (2 May 2024) 27 : The Projects
In opening this session, David stated:
Before white supremacy, there was a time when all humans lived in the right relation. We are striving in the People’s Network for Land and Liberation to not only get back to that, but to use technology appropriately to live a new life.
The People’s Network for Land and Liberation is an emerging BIPOC-led consortium of six autonomous organisations that share a vision for a new world. Each of these organisations in their communities works to build cooperative, regenerative, and balanced systems. Together, the network ties together individual efforts, shares information and techniques and inspires others.
David noted that in developing these projects, the Network seeks to re-establish the right relationship with the earth, our relations, and relatives and to advance democratic ownership of the means of production, and liberatory social relationships. The organisations are committed to building communities that regenerate the earth’s living ecosystems. They participate in the network with specific perspectives on how this looks in the real world, and in each particular context.
PNLL is explicitly post-capitalist and rooted in solidarity economy values of solidarity, participatory democracy, equity across all dimensions, including though not limited to race and gender. They focus on sustainability and living in harmony with the planet, and a commitment to pluralism, understanding that this is not a one size fits all. What follows is a brief description of each organisation, as shared by the presenters.
Cooperation Vermont 28
Michelle Eddleman McCormick is the director and lead organiser of Cooperation Vermont (CV) and Cooperation Vermont Community Land Trust. She is the general manager of their flagship project, the Marshfield Village store, a historical, central and important building in the community, which was converted to a worker-owned cooperative. The mission of Cooperation Vermont is to build thriving community economic and environmental democracy by organising with local communities and existing related efforts throughout the state. She stated,
Cooperation Vermont is preparing for the continued deterioration of economic and environmental conditions and for the inevitability of displaced peoples. The vision is to shift away from extractive systems of economic development and toward just transitioning collectively to create self-sufficient resilient communities with thriving ecologically sustainable economies.
She continued by sharing that Cooperation Vermont is very new in its inception, only about two and a half to three years in formation. It is an intentionally seeded project in this specific bioregion, considering the realities of both climate and political change in the US. The idea is to develop this region to be more resilient and to plan for the future. For example, if we need a fruit-bearing tree in 20 years, we need to plant seeds now. There are many places, particularly along the Gulf and in the South, that might quite literally be underwater by the time our children are having children. We are trying to help prepare for that future, and even before that, for the political shifts in the country, as political migration may be even sooner.
The Cooperation Vermont Community Land Trust is involved in several important ventures. Cooperation Vermont is under contract to purchase the Rainbow Sweets Building for the CV Community Land Trust. This will bolster both local food sovereignty and the solidarity economy. 29 The Landstead Elders Project is working to decommodify land, develop affordable housing, and usher in a new generation of land stewards who also provide community-level care for elders, aging in place. 30
The goals Cooperation Vermont pursues in all their work include worker ownership, community production, economic democracy and self-determination. Their strategy focuses on developing cooperatives; building productive capacities; establishing land trusts; furthering food sovereignty; mutual care and ongoing education and growth. Their vision is to “shift away from extractive systems of economic development and, through a Just Transition, collectively create self-sufficient, resilient communities with thriving, ecologically sustainable economies”. 31
Community Movement Builders 32
At the Decolonizing Economics Summit, Edget Betru shared background about Community Movement Builders (CMB). CMB is a member-based collective of Black people who are developing sustainable, self-determining communities through cooperative economics, community organising and dynamic programming in Black communities throughout the country. Programme centres for CMB are on community economic control, direct democracy, local economic control, fighting gentrification, anti-police violence and over-policing in Black communities, controlling education in Black communities, ending mass incarceration, and sustainability. We are steeped in anti-imperialist politics and Pan-Africanism. CMB seeks to create liberated zones where communities are in control of their political and socioeconomic destinies, institutions and resources. 33
CMB was at the centre of the Atlanta movement to stop cop city, the building of a large-scale militarised police training centre that is leading to the destruction of over 90 areas of forest in greater Atlanta.
Like the other nodes in PNLL, they are working to develop a land trust to address the lack of housing in their communities and to decommodify land. CMB owns four homes that are used as workforce housing for community organisers in southwest Atlanta. CMB is also developing workers’ cooperatives and gardens to grow food and to build production capacity. They have begun developing the Community Sea Moss Cooperative, Aquaponics and Security Cooperative, which is also a cop-watch programme in the local community.
Community Movement Builders is also doing fight-back organising, working to establish their own kind of liberated zone. This is how they frame that work. They have established eight chapters around the country. As mentioned, the Atlanta and Dallas chapters have been organising to stop the development of Cop Cities, which are now being developed all over the United States. 34 Other chapters are engaged in different types of work. The Los Angeles chapter of CMB has been involved in the student encampment at UCLA. The Sacramento chapter has a school. Most chapters engage in mutual aid work in the community. Their work intentionally combines fight and build components.
Cooperation Jackson 35
Cooperation Jackson grew out of the Jackson Kush Plan (J–K Plan), which was developed by the New Afrikan People’s Organization (NAPO) and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). The J–K Plan is an extension of the foundations laid by the Republic of New Afrika, going back to the early 1970s when it worked to establish a Provisional Capitol for the Republic in Mississippi. Activists involved in that work identified the area around the Mississippi Delta, as a place where there were the most contiguous counties with majority Black populations. The idea was to concentrate on organising work in this region as a place to create autonomous institutions and exercise Black self-determination and sovereignty. 36
Through running for local offices, building cooperative enterprises, amassing land trusts that can then be used for housing and production, Cooperation Jackson has been creating a zone centred on self-determination.
It’s important to recognise that a radical organisation in Mississippi rooted deeply in the community, with an explicit anti-racist, feminist, post-capitalist framework owns over 52 properties in three states! The vast majority of these properties are situated in Jackson and form the Fannie Lou Hamer Community Land Trust. Six of these properties are single-family homes that are already operating as housing cooperatives, giving people a place to live. The organisation currently has four additional housing units that are undergoing renovation and rehabilitation. Another ten are undeveloped parcels of land that are being farmed using agroecology and Indigenous practices. These properties are stewarded by the Freedom Farms Cooperative, a worker-owned cooperative. Other parcels are undeveloped and in the process of major soil remediation using natural techniques to regenerate the land.
The first building Cooperation Jackson set up is the Kuwasi Balagoon Center for Economic Democracy and Sustainable Development, a 6,000-square-foot community centre that already operates as a space for organising, arts and cultural programming, etc. 37 The second space they established was the Imari Obadele Community Production Center, with multiple 3D printers, laser cutters and other digital fabrication tools and equipment, inspired and guided by Incite Focus in Michigan. The Community Production Center is the home of the Community Production Cooperative (CPC). One of the main things the CPC is working on is learning how to build eco-dynamic housing using locally sourced materials. These houses will form the basis for the development of the Ewing Street Ecovillage, which is going to be an experiment in the development of an urban “off-the-grid live–work” community, that will house 32 housing units. 38
The third is a 10,000-square-foot building that is being repurposed to serve as a site for recycling, again, owned by a worker cooperative. The fourth site is the Ida B. Wells shopping centre with six units only a block away from the community centre and community production centre. This location will house the People’s Grocery store, which will be owned and operated as a multi-stakeholder cooperative, owned by its workers, suppliers, and community members. 39
In addition, the community land trust is stewarding another acre that is being used as a commercial composting site, and is the primary operating base of Zero-Waste of Jackson, which is a recycling and composting worker-owned cooperative. 40 The other anchor of Cooperation Jackson’s sustainability and just transition work is the Green Team Landscaping Cooperative. This worker-owned cooperative employs energy-efficient lawn care equipment to manicure lawns, retain their soils, and turn their refuse into compost.
In addition to these cooperatives that Cooperation Jackson has developed, it is currently in the process of developing four additional cooperatives, including the Eversville Design and Print Shop Cooperative, the Evers Cafe and Catering Cooperative, Chisa Medical Cannabis Dispensary, Chisa Farms (focusing on medicinal cannabis and hemp cultivation), the Black Coffee Cafe and Library Cooperative. 41
Cooperation Jackson is on the leading edge of the process to democratise the economy and decommodify land.
Incite Focus 42
Blair Evans is a leader in the digital fabrication world and a senior instructor for the Fab Academy. He has been central to the development of Incite Focus. Blair relates the work of this project to the five key points of the People’s Network for Land and Liberation and shares some of the context for its emergence.
The centrality of the need to decommodify land is a critical one for Incite Focus, located in a historic community of Idlewild, Michigan, nicknamed Black Eden. It is a community over 100 years old that was forged during times of segregation to provide a safe space for African Americans who came north during the great migration. These areas were redlined pressure cooker environments. The community used outdoor spaces to congregate and be culturally expressive in places, outside of Idlewild, that weren’t supportive of doing so. Blair shares,
Five generations or so of my family’s participation is here so we’re really embedded in the place. There were also significant intellectual crosscurrents with people thinking about how folks might be able to live differently. There was cooperative economics happening in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Since then, the echoes of the past are present, though many people moved to a different mindset.
Some of the network of people associated with Incite Focus got involved heavily about 10 years ago, when we noticed that the environment was starting to shift. We purchased a lot of the assets that were about to be commodified and sold on the speculative marketplace. Right now, we control two motels that were in the green book and a community centre. We have a 60-acre parcel that’s going to be our resilience centre. We also have six houses on the lakes in the Idlewild area. Those are in a transitional space right now because our expertise coming into this was making stuff, the built environment, and digital fabrication.
We are a national training centre within the Fab Academy network, 43 part of the Fab Lab network. We offer training programmes through diplomas in digital fabrication, and the natural environment. Those skills relate to having a sustainable long-term relationship with the land where it can provide the yields that we need to provide for ourselves. We also aim for the land to regenerate itself going forward through permaculture or Indigenous practices.
Cooperation Jackson was the first to follow us on the digital fabrication side, with their community production centre. There’s a higher ceiling when folks really figure out what it is that they are trying to do rather than to just get jobs. The idea is to train people to think about work differently; to be able to utilise the land; to develop things that are in their own best interest as opposed to creating wealth for other people. There has of course been pushback against our work, government establishments trying to squash our efforts. When we shifted base to Idlewild we spent a significant amount of time working with formal power and dealing with institutional mechanisms of solidifying the means for the people to be able to create what we want.
If you’re in an agricultural area, you understand that if you want to grow good crops, the first thing you must do is to grow good soil. If you have good soil, good crops can emerge from that. We’ve been doing a lot of the invisible work of creating an environment where innovators can be successful. In the digital fabrication area, there’s a huge transition in the ability to localise the meaning of production and own it. This is in the context of communities being able to produce the durable goods that they need and use, and the capacity to customise the process. They need to utilise local supply chains which opens the possibility to radically rethink patterns that we’re usually locked into, not just in food, also what this means in terms of practical things like houses and furniture, and transportation.
We need an authentic space to not just imagine these things, but also to be able to build and use them. There’s a place and a process. We have gone through the process of helping the community gain some agency in the levers of power. This ranges from interacting with government offices, to offering to help, to holding them accountable. We have instituted a couple of successful recall petitions, such as one that’s gone through a successful election to shift the governing body in the township. That’s part of an overall effort on the municipal side, to rebuild government and shift thinking.
Not everybody in Idlewild has a solidarity economy mindset or an interest in decommodifying the land etc. Most municipal policy, planning and regulatory structures, don’t allow for it to exist, period. We are adopting a whole new ordinance system that allows people to live, work, learn and play in an integrated way. We need to be able to synthesise these capabilities and manifest the impact on quality of life. We want to decouple having to spend most of your time working at a job that you don’t like, to create the kind of world that we want to live in. We’re looking to plant both feet in the world-building context.
This has been about a four-year effort to work within the local and county government, and we’ve been fairly successful. Some township officials appreciate that this is one of the pathways that is viable for economic development and creating quality of life in the community. However, in most communities, that’s not the case. If you’re not doing high dollar development and attracting extractive capitalist enterprises that are investing a lot of money to create jobs then immediately flow back out of the community again but don’t leave any residual benefit, then you’re not doing economic development. We’ve created the conditions and have a wider analysis of what that can be done, which then allows us to participate in the process of using training and cooperative development as an economic development strategy.
We are involved in shifting a lot of land from the private sector, into the social space, Community land trusts are one mechanism for doing that. There are also other types of perpetual purpose trusts that take land out of the speculative marketplace and put it into a context where people know that there’s a long-term asset in the community. We’re moving key assets from the corporate into the social sector, so the community has the authority and the agency to manage it. They then have the resources to do what they need to create the quality of life that the community wants. One of the things that empowers us is that we know that if we can set the stage properly, technology exists now to allow us to begin to localise all these things. Technology is growing at an exponential rate. If we know where it’s going, we have to start pointing ourselves toward that future.
We also now have digital redlining as opposed to physical redlining and new forms of law enforcement. Unless we get ahead of this, we’re always going to be wondering, why are we worse off now, when all this technology came along that professed to allow us to be better. Incite Focus aims to use technology that’s a little bit ahead of what’s economically practical right now. We are working to organise ourselves to understand how to use it, knowing that the technology is catching up with us. As we know the trajectory of the technology, we’re involved in pushing it in that direction.
If we don’t understand what to do with this emerging technology, it is going to be done to us. There are already a lot of plans on how to hijack these technologies in a way that will further existing mechanisms of concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Everything has an ability to empower people, as anybody who’s looked at history understands, though it doesn’t always manifest that way. It seldom does unless we’re extraordinarily intentional about grabbing the technology and learning what it’s about and how we can use it.
Another aspect of this technology is it allows us to replicate itself. A tool set can allow us to build another tool set. This then allows us to adapt those tools for multiple purposes. If we are in the mindset of how the planet can work more effectively and get access to those tools on a broad basis, we can change the trajectory. If we’re at the margins, that’s not going to happen. Our point is not just to do a good job, but to integrate all these technologies, social and engineering, in the same place, propagate and scale it out as aggressively as possible.
Native Roots Network 44
Miki‘ala Catalfano, is a Hāwai’i expat and co-director with Native Roots Network, an Indigenous-led organisation with 20-plus years advancing the well-being of Indigenous lands and people with Wintu, Pit River culture bearers and other Indigenous folks and allies in far northern California in Bella Vista. She talked about Native Roots Network’s decision to become one of the nodes of the People’s Network for Land and Liberation at the Decolonizing Economics Summit 2024.
We share the values of rematriating Mother Earth, of plurality, equity and believe that achieving that vision takes all of us and is our responsibility. When there’s a lava flow in Hāwai’i, parts of the forest are often left in small sections. These “kīpuka” seed and grow new life in the surrounding lava. We are building kīpuka as islands of sanity for the community and moving into the future together.
Native Roots Network bases its work on the foundation of five core values. The value of plurality is one that creates space for many diverse solutions and makes many worlds possible, as the Zapatistas say. Equity is a very important value, coupled with critical consciousness, when working towards justice for those who have been harmed. Native Roots Network utilises the Hawaiian word for all of us, “kākou” as it holds a collective orientation to community-building. This value highlights Indigenous cultures as responsibility-based societies as opposed to liberalistic notions of personal rights-based societies. Native Roots Network recognises the value of intergenerational work knowing that the labour that is put in today for change may not be realised in our lifetimes, though the groundwork for changes to happen has been laid.
Central to Native Roots Network is the understanding that the earth is our mother. Native Roots Network honours the sanctity of her life-giving force and strives to do no harm beyond what we already do as humans who have impacts. Without the earth, they acknowledge, none of the rest of the work matters. In the Decolonizing Economics Summit presentation Miki’ala shared the following thoughts and reflections on the work of Native Roots Network and how it relates to PNLL.
How does our work relate to the solidarity economy? Our work over the past 20-plus years has been involved with projects focusing on cultural practice, community-based arts, cultural exchanges, advocacy, protection of sacred sites, land preservation, and more recently values-based economic and workforce development and community self-provisioning. Arts have helped our community articulate identity, pride, and placemaking where we live. We’ve networked with communities, such as in Hāwai’i and Hopi-Arizona.
Our more recent community-building work included trips to visit other communities to gain ideas and learn from each other. What are they doing to self-provision? What are they doing to build their workforce? What are they doing, to survive what’s coming in these times? We work with the youth and take them to places like Detroit to learn about new models of community-building, and more.
Through our learning and reflecting on our own community’s knowledge and place in the world we have developed our “Acornomics Framework”. This is our traditionally informed and value-centred, holistic, economic development strategy to build, foster and support a healthy, resilient, empowered community and landscape. The basic idea here is that if we take care of the land, the land will take care of us. We understand the need to build our community through reestablishing our symbiotic role as caretaker of the natural world.
Escrow has closed on our first piece of land that will be the site for our Indigenous-led community land trust. This is our first foray into decommodifying and rematriating land. We call this place “Əl Kulus” which is the Wintu word for an acorn granary. The vision for Əl Kulus is to build an Indigenous-led community resilience centre and solidarity economy hub of our community upon which we could be growing food, propagating events, native plants, and building a traditional ecological knowledge land management team. It will be a community centre for gathering and learning. Some of the things that we hope to achieve here will be organic food gardens, native plant gardens, cooperative workforce development and digital manufacturing.
We’ve been on a PNLL trajectory for some time now. We found that solidarity economy is a terminology that helps describe some of the work that we’ve already been doing. It helps us to articulate what we do and provides a toolkit for mechanisms and frameworks to apply our visions.
Miki’ala proudly states, “We are not changing our trajectory; we’re translating and equipping it. We are planning for abundance!”
Wellspring Cooperative 45
Emily Kawano is the co-director of Wellspring Cooperative, and one of the founders of the US Solidarity Economy Network. She is excited about the vision and potential of the People’s Network for Land and Liberation to provide replicable models to build local solidarity economy ecosystems. This is one strategy to scale up and out the solidarity economy, which is critically urgent given this historic moment of multiple convergent crises. Scaling up means growing the size and number of solidarity economy practices while scaling out means connecting up already existing practices—these are ideally complementary processes. PNLL is a strategy to do both by building local solidarity economy ecosystems that can provide the inspiration and learnings for other local ecosystems to build on. The six organisations that are part of PNLL are all working towards this same vision of building a solidarity economy ecosystem in their local region, though each node articulates their goals in slightly different ways.
Wellspring Cooperative works to build a mutually supportive network of worker co-ops in the lower Pioneer Valley. While the upper valley has an abundance of co-ops, and likely has one of the highest densities of worker co-ops per capita in the country, when Wellspring started up there were virtually none in the lower valley. This contrast is to some extent explained by the upper Valley being home to the five colleges of UMass, Smith, Amherst, Mt Holyoke and Hampshire Colleges. The culture of the upper valley is very progressive, relatively affluent, well-educated, and predominantly white. As such, it has been a hotbed of experimentation with “alternatives” such as worker co-ops, food co-ops, community land trusts, community-supported agriculture, eco-villages and co-housing. In the lower valley, demarcated by the Holyoke Mountain Range [sometimes affectionately called the tofu curtain in reference to the “earthy crunchy” vibe of the “Happy (upper) Valley”] are the struggling urban centres of Springfield and Holyoke, both deindustrialised cities where the majority of people are Black and Brown, where immigrant communities are concentrated and where typical inner-city challenges are ubiquitous.
From its founding Wellspring’s commitment was to say that if co-ops are all that great, they need to be relevant in these hardscrabble, struggling communities. Wellspring initially focused on building and supporting a network of worker co-ops that would be mutually supportive. We currently have ten cooperatives in the Wellspring Co-op Network, including two of which we incubated—developing the concept, business plan, capital raise, finding the site, site development, etc. One is a quarter-acre hydroponic greenhouse and the other is an upholstery cooperative that reupholsters furniture, mostly for the institutional market of hospitals, and colleges.
Wellspring built on the anchor institution model of Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, which takes inspiration from Mondragon, a network of close to 100 mutually supportive co-ops in Spain. Evergreen’s innovation was to leverage the support and purchasing power of anchor institutions—non-profits that are anchored in places such as colleges and hospitals—that have a stake in seeing surrounding communities thrive. Both the greenhouse and the upholstery co-ops serve those anchor institution markets. Over time, we realised that the anchor institution model is constrained by the needs of those institutions.
In order to support the development of bottom-up co-ops, we started up a Co-op Boot Camp that we’ve run since 2017. We also provide one-on-one technical assistance for any group that’s interested in starting up their own cooperative. Our third strategy of co-op development is conversion, looking at existing, traditional capitalist businesses where the owner is interested in selling their business to their workers.
Small business development, including co-ops is really hard work, especially in communities where people are already facing all kinds of barriers. Sometimes they have language barriers and/or limited formal education, which makes filling out the most basic forms difficult. Folks living in precarity can be thrown off track by any number of challenges from childcare to transportation to health issues. The road of accompaniment in these communities for co-op development is very long and slow and it’s not for everybody. We wanted to create other on-ramps to cooperative and collective initiatives beyond a co-op business.
Roughly three years ago Wellspring broadened our mission to not only do co-op development, but also to engage in solidarity economy initiatives. One of these initiatives is to develop a Lower Valley Community Land Trust (CLT) to build a local solidarity economy ecosystem that includes five components: affordable housing, regenerative food system, production including both worker co-ops and community self-provisioning, spaces for culture, connection and learning, and a centre for community production that provides the tools and technology, including digital fabrication, to support all of the above. We are partnering with the City of Holyoke and American Rivers to apply for a $20 million EPA Climate and Community Change grant which would, in addition to the City’s infrastructure projects, support elements of the vision of the Lower Valley CLT, including the development of a Center for Community Production, cooperative community initiatives, cultural and educational programming, and co-op development.
Originally, PNLL was intending to go for that grant, and split it six ways, until we found out that the EPA wouldn’t accept a multi-site application. Wellspring Cooperative is grateful that the other nodes agreed that Wellspring was in the best position to go for the grant, and we have benefitted from peer support on various fronts. If we get the grant, we will house the Center for Community Production, the co-op development hub, and cultural/educational programming in the Gateway City Arts building, a four-story old mill building that has theatres and kitchens and it already has a makerspace, co-working spaces, places for artists and studios. The building has been purchased by Light House Holyoke, an innovative non-profit charter school that works with students who have struggled in a traditional educational setting. We look forward to involving their students in various aspects of this work. Wellspring also co-manages Gran Cocina, a commercial, shared-use community kitchen where we’ll host regular community meals and workshops to explore a range of cooperative community initiatives.
There’s a strong foundation upon which to build a local solidarity economy ecosystem. In addition to local resources, the other nodes of PNLL are a constant source of peer learning, expertise, thought partnership, encouragement and inspiration. Wellspring is grateful for the incalculable benefits of being part of this network and looks forward to continuing to work together to build local solidarity economy ecosystems.
A Butterfly’s Emergence: The People’s Network for Land and Liberation
Each of these organisations has a theoretical framework, a shared unapologetic vision of transforming society. Each node is applying it in the real world in real time, grappling with all the inherent contradictions of the people, the inherent contradictions of a government which claims to be democratic, but is instead plutocratic.
—David Cobb
David shared that the metaphor of “imaginal cells” captures the transformative power of innovative and visionary ideas within social change movements. Just as imaginal cells in the chrysalis of a caterpillar hold the potential to drive its metamorphosis into a butterfly, these metaphorical cells represent the nascent, creative forces within society that challenge the status quo and envision new possibilities. They embody the seeds of transformation, quietly yet persistently working to reshape and revolutionise existing structures. By nurturing these imaginal cells—embracing their potential and fostering their growth—individuals and communities can catalyse profound systemic change, ultimately emerging into a new and more vibrant social reality.
As with the metaphor of imaginal cells, PNLL represents the coming together of local projects founded on solidarity economy principles and values, to build strength and community in the process of developing self-determining, land-based autonomous zones within the belly of the beast.
Themes running throughout these organisational formations include a recognition that land can and should be collectively owned, cultivated, and harvested to the benefit of the community. Note that this includes the full community of all life, not merely humans. There is a related commitment that ecosystems can be restored to full balance sustainability, and that people can live in harmony with all living beings. Lastly, a conviction that technology can and should be developed in the interest of all people.
Miki’ala shared the experience that
As we move from project-based work to community development, values are central to how we operate and what we do, unapologetically. We are like an educational facility for others who want to learn, because that’s what’s happened for us. We’ve learned so much from each project. While we know we want to decolonise, how do we build the systems that we need? PNLL creates an island of sanity as we are able to see others doing this work as well.
Continuing this line of thought, Emily explained that embedded in the work of the PNLL is an emphasis on self-provisioning instead of purchasing. There’s no pushback about worker co-ops from the powers that be, because we talk about workers co-owning and controlling. We don’t necessarily wave a post-capitalist flag; we do a lot of code-switching. We have a long road to go to do some education, and build some champions, and lots of action.
Edget stated that “now is the time for us to be bold and imagine what can be and how we will survive the next period”. She continued “On our own, we’re on our own. Doing this work doesn’t seem as daunting being part of the network”.
Each project is an experiment to genuinely create a level of best practices and share with one another. Facing the myriad of crises and violence of end-stage capitalism, with a looming ecological crisis and societal collapse, the struggle is intensifying. Capitalism’s inherent contradictions are crashing around us, with no way to resolve them.
We need the courage and, and boldness to say out loud that we need a completely new system. With fascism rising, more people are understanding that the systems are failing, and things are getting increasingly more challenging and brutal.
We are building lifeboats of survival in our local communities. We intend to operate those lifeboats like pirates, not like members of Her Royal Majesty’s navy. Empire is part of the problem so imperial lifeboats won’t work for us. We’re building pirate boats, and we’re going to confederate those boats and build supply and value chains for one another. We’re going to protect each other; we’re going to defend each other. We are here for each other. We are all we’ve got.
—David Cobb
Building the capacity to serve and to provide for ourselves is resistance. Confronting oppressions is something that we can do collectively. We are not going to wake up tomorrow and fight the state, if you haven’t been able to coordinate yourselves into making something or creating this minor supply chain. Everything goes back to building relationships, aligned values, and clarity of vision, bold, clear vision. With that, we have a chance to confront the oppressions.
This summary of the experiences of the People’s Network for Land and Liberation makes clear that solidarity economy practices are not “new” nor is it an isolated or marginal practice or idea. It IS how people are surviving and have always done so! There are many historical examples of community-based efforts to meet the needs of populations, where formal structures either do not exist or are insufficient, and where the capitalist-colonial-imperial state and economic systems are not concerned with the well-being of all living beings.
Whether one describes these as everyday forms of “resistance”, “survival” or with spiritual principles of being one’s brothers’ keeper, the power of exploited and oppressed communities has always been expressed through creative means that value human life and include caring and collectivity. The intensifying contemporary crisis of the modern world-system—perhaps even the collapse of capitalism in this century—is at a new stage.
The People’s Network for Land and Liberation is a vibrant example. While the projects are distinct, the values and central purpose are aligned toward the goal of addressing immediate human need, en route to a full radical transformation of the system. Building connective networks, relationships of trust, and active collaboration and community matters. People having food, shelter, clothing, shoes, water, and support matters. Mutual aid matters.
At the same time, politics matter. These projects not only fill an immediate need, they engage participants in thinking about the root cause of why they are struggling. Community-building can be part of movement building though the processes are not the same. Activism and organising are critical, though are also not necessarily movement building of the sort that leads to radical social transformation of historical systems that have been in place for centuries.
In each of these formations, people articulate a desire for their projects to actualise dreams for a better tomorrow and in different ways these efforts contribute to the community’s capacities to move in that direction. They are actively thinking about and creating new structures and democratic processes as a priority. Solidarity economy projects can be part of the means and the ends, but they are not necessarily.
Hopefully you draw tremendous inspiration from the hard work and collective process that those in the People’s Network for Land and Liberation have engaged (Figure 9).
¡Hasta la victoria, siempre! 46
Special appreciation to:
All who are cited here, visible and/or not visible in the struggle.
Most importantly to all those fighting the good fight not only to survive and resist but also to build a world where every living being is treated with dignity, love, care and respect, and has all basic needs met.