Jessica Gordon Nembhard will be presenting her new book right here in DC and at the awesome Impact Hub DC. 

Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice

More info:

http://www.eventbrite.com/e/jessica-gordon-nembhard-presents-collective-courage-tickets-11219542955

Doors open for meet-and greet at 6:30pm, local updates and book talk starts at 7pm, followed by a booksigning and reception.

In Collective Courage , Jessica Gordon Nembhard chronicles African American cooperative business ownership and its place in the movements for Black civil rights and economic equality. Not since W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1907  Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans  has there been a full-length, nationwide study of African American cooperatives.  Collective Courage  extends that story into the twenty-first century. Many of the players are well known in the history of the African American experience: Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph and the Ladies’ Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Jo Baker, George Schuyler and the Young Negroes’ Co-operative League, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party. Adding the cooperative movement to Black history results in a retelling of the African American experience, with an increased understanding of African American collective economic agency and grassroots economic organizing.

To tell the story, Gordon Nembhard uses a variety of newspapers, period magazines, and journals; co-ops’ articles of incorporation, minutes from annual meetings, newsletters, budgets, and income statements; and scholarly books, memoirs, and biographies. These sources reveal the achievements and challenges of Black co-ops, collective economic action, and social entrepreneurship. Gordon Nembhard finds that African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefitted greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation’s history.

Jessica Gordon Nembhard is Associate Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Department of Africana Studies at John Jay College, City University of New York, and a member of the Grassroots Economic Organizing Collective.

The deadline to input your co-operative’s data to the World Co-operative Monitor is fast approaching! Don’t miss this opportunity to reveal your contribution to the cooperative movement. It will take only few minutes. 
http://www.euricse.eu/en/monitor/quest

“When Chokwe Lumumba, Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, passed away in February, he left behind a blueprint for combating poverty and promoting sustainability in America’s post-industrial cities.

In his brief tenure as the mayor of a red state capital, Lumumba projected a vision that drew on green futurism, urban resilience
planning, the co-op rich Mondragon region of Spain and the tradition of participatory democracy. Lumumba rooted his plan for Jackson in the same radical democratic analysis that guided his decades of activism. He was determined to build a city with clean water, community-owned renewable energy, racial justice, a transparent budgeting process and a wealth of green jobs.

Lumumba’s vision, summarized in a document called Jackson Rising: Building the City of the Future Today , elevated unglamorous sectors with huge potential to impact the economic realities of the urban poor and working classes, like sewer infrastructure, energy efficiency and food. For Lumumba, economic growth was a process of creative experimentation in which rare corporate forms like worker cooperatives were combined with staid sectors like public works to create a political-economic reality that departed from the norm.

In Jackson Rising, Lumumba stated his commitments unequivocally, promising that his administration “would govern in accordance with human rights principles and standards… to create equity for all.” He cited a litany of ills underlying the urban condition, including, “decades of economic divestment, deindustrialization, suburban flight, a declining tax base, chronic under and unemployment, poorly performing schools, and an antiquated and decaying infrastructure.”

Continue: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-bartley/realizing-mayor-lumumbas-sustainability_b_5185933.html

See Also: http://sfbayview.com/2014/jackson-rising-building-the-city-of-the-future-today/

Yes, there is a new version of the evolving history of DC cooperatives!

Washington, DC has had a long history of cooperatives. In part, this was because African Americans have sought to form cooperatives as a way create economic and political freedom. As Jessica Gordon Nembhard has argued, “African Americans have used cooperative economic development as a strategy in the struggle for economic stability and independence.”  In 1907,W.E.B. Dubois spoke in favor of a wide range of cooperatives and alternative economic institutions. Cooperatives would remain a key institution in the toolbox of African American social movements. These attempts were supported in DC by people like Arthur Capper, a Kansas senator who headed the District of Columbia Committee, and Cornelius “Cornbread” Givens,  a national advocate for cooperatives, who moved to DC when Marion Barry became mayor.  Washington, DC remains a central location for these social movements and thus would have a rich cooperative history.

Johanna Bockman has been slowly writing an evolving history of DC cooperatives. Here is the newest version of this history, which she presented at the 2014 DC Historical Studies conference: http://tinyurl.com/lck8j5d  (The earlier version: https://coopdc.org/evolving-history-of-dc-cooperatives/)

She is going to revise this paper significantly. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to contact Johanna Bockman: johanna.bockman@gmail.com

Cooperative Housing University of Maryland will be actualizing the pillar “Concern for the Community” with our kickstart program Calvert Hills Tomato Garden, where we envision to plant a ton of tomatoes and then give them out to people at need within the community. We have been donated 50 seedlings, and are on our way to get a truckload of compost from Public Works. Please help us make this a reality! We need donations for building supplies, be it in the form of money or simply pvc pipes, cedar wood, bird netting…etc.. Any help is great. Saladarity Forever!  http://www.gofundme.com/8bmux4

My business Zenful Bites has been working with a group of AU students to develop a business plan for a commercial kitchen cooperative in order to foster small food entrepreneurs and create a sustainable food system in DC.

The students submitted the business proposal to Ag Prize and have been accepted to the second round. The students will travel to Madison April 24-27 to compete against 24 other teams for prizes up to $100,000.

Additionally, the team with the most votes will win an audience prize of $15,000.

If the idea of supporting small food entrepreneurs and sustainable farmers sounds good to you,

Please VOTE for Squash the Boss by using this link and encourage others to do so as well!

You can vote once per day until April 24th by ‘liking’ Ag Prize on Facebook and voting for Squash the Boss Kitchen.

For more information about Squash the Boss Kitchen, see the abstract below and contact us at squashtheboss@gmail.com if you have any questions or are interested in getting involved!

ABSTRACT: With today’s food industry dominated by agribusiness and consolidated food manufacturers, local farmers and small businesses are failing to compete. A channel must be opened to develop local economies and communities around local foods to achieve food security and agricultural sustainability. Squash the Boss Kitchen (SBK) provides a model for this to be accomplished. SBK is a cooperatively-owned shared commercial kitchen located in Washington D.C.. For a monthly fee, business startups become member-owners, receiving access to a licensed commercial kitchen and a vote in the decision making process of SBK. Bridging the gap between small business and local farmers, SBK provides reliable year-long access to local and healthy produce to each member. By centralizing businesses to one location (SBK), a large demand is concentrated, allowing farmers to supply a greater quantity of goods per trip, creating more cost-effective distribution and allowing the farmer to sell at lower wholesale prices. Auxiliary services provided by SBK, such as cooking and educational classes, instill value in local agriculture and business throughout surrounding communities. Thus, SBK connects all aspects of the industry – the producer, preparer, and consumer – creating a food enterprise ecosystem that fosters strong relationships and responsible outgrowth.

Josephine Chu

There is a possibility that Johanna will be talking about Coop DC on WOL this morning at 10:30am: http://tunein.com/radio/WOL-1450-s21725/

Cooperative Housing University of Maryland is hosting a workshop and discussion on the economic of cooperatives this Friday, April 11th 2014 at 7 pm in the Nanticoke (Rm: 1238) of STAMP Student Union in College Park, Maryland. The workshop is being led by Jessica Gordon Nembhard, an associate professor of community justice and social economic development in the Department of African-American Studies at John Jay College, CUNY. She is author of the book “Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice,” and she has conducted extensive research in the fields of race, economic inequality, and cooperative economics. This event is FREE and open to the public so everyone come join us in learning more about cooperative economics.

You can see the facebook page and RSVP for the event here! https://www.facebook.com/events/674122069310914/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

You can read more about the Speaker Jessica Nembhard here:http://socialeconomyaz.org/research/video/jessica-gordon-nembhard-ph-d/

GRITtv: Jessica Gordon Nembhard: Cooperative Economics and Civil Rights