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In celebration of Asian & Pacific Islander Heritage Month, this week we’re talking about the history of solidarity economics in Asian immigrant communities, COVID collective care practices, and feminist resources for Black and Asian-American solidarity. Plus, a big win for the cooperative housing movement, demands to support Black farmers and food sovereignty, and stories from the Just Transition.
Stories From the Field
Asian American Solidarity Economies: The histories of cooperation, care, and mutual aid in Asian & Pacific Islander communities are rich and long-standing. Read this great piece from the Yes! Magazine archives about the history of cooperative economics in Asian American immigrant communities. Then, dive deeper and learn about examples of solidarity economics from Asian American immigrant and refugee experiences in this webinar with Emily Kawano of the US Solidarity Economy Network and Julia Ho of NEC member organization, Solidarity Economy St. Louis.
‘Āina Aloha Economic Futures: In the wake of COVID-19, a new group in Hawai’i is looking to “reboot the entire operating system of the economy” from an extractive tourism economy to one rooted in the Native Hawaiian value of ʻāina aloha — a deep and abiding love for the land and communities. The four-part ‘Āina Aloha Economic Futures Declaration has been endorsed by over 550 individuals and organizations and was sent to Governor David Ige this week.
Tenants Win Cooperative Home Ownership: This week, 38 families in Minneapolis won cooperative ownership of their five apartment buildings after spending years battling with their landlord who had been trying to evict them. The residents, who had collectively gone on a rent strike and pooled resources to pay for groceries and medical bills, plan to own the buildings as a cooperative and allow more families to move in. Hungry for policy solutions like cooperative housing? Check out our “Pathways to a People’s Economy” policy toolkit!
Challenging the Prison Industrial Complex through Co-ops: ChiFresh Kitchen is a new worker-owned kitchen cooperative on the West side of Chicago, launched by formerly incarcerated women to build economic independence and resilience in their communities. Likewise, Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard writes how incarcerated people in Puerto Rico are challenging the logic of the prison industrial complex from within by demanding co-op business education and the right to own their own co-ops.
Solidarity Economies Abroad
The Future is Public: The Transnational Institute has identified more than 1,400 successful cases of (re)municipalization of services like water and power in recent years, involving more than 2,400 cities in 58 countries around the world. Download TNI’s new book The Future is Public to learn how democratic public ownership can provide a way forward in a post-COVID world.
Mutual Aid in Hong Kong: Globally, Hong Kong has had one of the most effective coronavirus responses, recording only four deaths in the city of 7 million people. The success is being attributed not to government actions, but rather to the people quickly self-organizing to distribute information, masks, and supplies. Read how the 2019 protests in Hong Kong laid the groundwork for people to take swift collective action to protect themselves from COVID-19.
Calls for International Debt Cancellation: Calls are increasing for global financial institutions like the IMF — which has aggressively rolled out neoliberal structural adjustment policies and austerity measures in the Global South — to provide large-scale debt cancellation for poor nations. For more, read this breakdown of why debt relief will be crucial for a just COVID-19 response across Africa by Francisco Pérez of NEC member organization, the Center for Popular Economics.
Asian American Feminist Antibodies
A new zine from the Asian American Feminist Collective (AAFC) features an amazing collection of essays, resources, and artwork on how to “make meaning of the coronavirus crisis through long-standing practices of care that come out of Asian American histories and politics.” Download Asian American Feminist Antibodies: Care in the Time of Coronavirus, and also check out this reading list and webinar about Black & Asian-American Feminist Solidarities during COVID19 from AAFC and Black Women Radicals.
Demands to Support Black Farmers & Food Sovereignty
Last week, a network of Black farmers at the forefront of the U.S. food sovereignty movement in the U.S released an important set of demands to support Black farmers and cooperatives — read it and share widely! Check out this webinar from the Network of the Social Solidarity Economy (RIPESS) for more about how food sovereignty can help us build resilience in the face of the vulnerabilities and inequities of our global food system.
Movement News
- Americans Support Suspending All Rent Payments
- Building an Economy That Works Again
- Community Food Co-ops Are Thriving During the Pandemic
- COVID-19: Inequities Are More Visible — the Climate Justice Movement Has Solutions
- COVID-19 Requires More Democracy, Not Less
- Economic Justice and System Change: How Should Nonprofits Respond?
- First to Feel COVID-19’s Impact, Chinatown is First to Deliver Aid for Small Business
- How the Coronavirus Exposes a Crisis of Care Work
- Indigenous Leadership Points the Way Out of the COVID Crisis
- Mutual Aid And Physical Distancing Are Not New For Black And Racialized Minorities In The Americas
- North Dakota Businesses Dominated the PPP. Their Secret Weapon? A Century-old Bank Founded by Radical Progressives.
- "Normal" is Why We Ended Up Where We Are. "Normal" is the Last Thing America Should Be Going Back To
- Now Is the Time to Take Radical Steps Toward Housing Equity
- Letting Corporations Profit From a COVID-19 Vaccine is a Terrible Idea
- Pandemic Crash Shows Worker Co-ops Are More Resilient Than Traditional Business
- #ShareMyCheck: Social media users reveal where they're donating stimulus money
- Why We Need Cooperatives for the Digital Economy
Podcasts of the New Economy
Tune into the latest episode of Stories from Home from Climate Justice Alliance to learn about the incredible community resiliency, people power, and strength of the Just Transition movement we are seeing during the COVID-19 crisis. Hear from a roundtable of climate justice leaders, including NEC member organizations Cooperation Jackson and the Labor Network for Sustainability (LN4S), as well as the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), Urban Tilth, the East Michigan Environmental Action Council (EMEAC), and the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN).
Additional listens:
The Next World: Just Transition and Viral Superhighways
PolicyLink’s Radical Imagination: Housing is A Human Right
New Economics Foundation: How to Organise Under Lockdown
NEC on The Gram
Follow NEC on Instagram – @NewEconomyCoalition – where we’re sharing mutual aid and financial solidarity organizing resources from NEC member organizations the Fund for Democratic Communities and Solidarity Economy St. Louis.
Jobs
New Listings!
Associate Director: Media Strategy, Demos – New York, NY
Creative Action Organizer, Sunrise Movement – Flexible
Deputy Director, Bloc By Block News: Maryland – D.C./Maryland
Director of Communications, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance – Remote – June 8
Editorial Director, Bloc By Block News: Maryland – D.C./Maryland – June 1
Editor in Chief, Real News Network – Baltimore, MD
Fed Up Campaign Deputy Director, Center for Popular Democracy – NY, Oakland or Remote
Fundraising Manager, New Media Ventures – San Francisco/Remote – May 25
Senior Manager: Individual Giving, Demos – New York, NY
Senior Communications Coordinator, Grassroots International – Boston, MA
Solidarity Philanthropy Director, Grassroots International – Boston, MA
Various (Movement Support/Admin/Instructors) – Social Movement Technologies – Remote
All Jobs
Communications Coordinator, Northern Plains Resource Council – Billings, MT
Communications Manager, Project Equity – Multiple Locations
Co-op Developer Fellowship, Philadelphia Area Coop Alliance – Philadelphia, PA – June 1
Director of Development, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders – Boston, MA
Director of Investment, Boston Ujima Project – Boston, MA
Education Team Coordinator Highlander Center – New Market, TN
General Coordinator, Cooperative Economics Alliance of NYC – New York, NY
Grants Manager, Highlander Center – New Market, TN
Green Business Network Renewal Caller, Green America – Washington D.C./Remote
Innovation Network Manager, Climate Safe Lending, Green America – Washington D.C./Remote
Legal Apprentice, Sustainable Economies Law Center – Bay Area, CA
Media Coordinator, Indigenous Environmental Network – Remote
National Organizer: Green For All, Dream Corps – Oakland/Remote
Network Director, Powershift Network – Remote
Partnership Engagement Director, Green America – Washington D.C./Remote
Political Director, Center for Economic Democracy – Boston, MA
Program Manager, Capital Strategies Program, Transform Finance – New York City
Senior Director, Climate & Agriculture Network, Green America – Remote
Senior Forest Campaigner, Rainforest Action Network – San Francisco, CA/Remote
Web Developer, Foundation for Intentional Communities
Upcoming Events
Mutual Aid: Building Communities of Care During Crisis and Beyond
Learn from longtime mutual aid organizers Kali Akuno of NEC Member Cooperation Jackson, Mariame Kaba, Dean Spade, and Klee Benally, on how to protect each other during coronavirus and how to build long-term, liberatory, and resilient communities beyond this pandemic and the death cult of capitalism and settler colonialism. (Today! May 21 8PM – Online)
Friday Night Forums: China & US Relations/ Abolition & COVID-19
The Red Nation in partnership with the Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC) and the Center for Political Education is hosting a series of critical conversations on settler colonialism, US imperialism, and decolonization. The COVID-19 pandemic is global, and so our response to it must also be global. Friday Night Forums feature anti-imperialist perspectives and lessons on organizing from around the world, with an eye toward decolonizing Turtle Island. (Online – May 22 & 29)
Global Sociocracy Conference 2020
NEC Member Sociocracy for All will be hosting a day of 32 online presentations and over 200 participants to highlight the sociocracy community with presenters from 16 countries and from sectors as different as they can be: medical, education, activism, business, community, legal, sharing their experiences and thoughts about frameworks and concepts and their relationship to sociocracy. (May 28 – Online)
Continuing Revolution 2020 Online: Transformative Conflict and Justice
Join Yahya Alazrak of NEC member organization Resource Generation and other conference leaders to look at and practice conflict in a different way. This program embraces a vision of just peace, where harms are uprooted, and taken on despite what cultural norms of niceness might pervade. It will draw from the work of the prison abolition movement to explore community accountability around harm. (June 5-9 – Online)
The Pandemic, the Economic Crisis and Just Transition
Join as the Labor Network for Sustainability and partners launch the Just Transition Listening Project. The JTLP will launch with an amazing panel that will include renowned linguist, historian and philosopher Noam Chomsky and economic experts Thea Lee, President of the Economic Policy Institute and Robert Pollin, Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute will offer their perspectives and projections of how the economic crisis will unfold in the months and years to come and what we must do about it. (May 27 – Online)
NASCO Staff and Student Leadership Conference
In lieu of North American Students for Cooperation’s usual spring conferences, including the Staff & Managers Conference and the Student Housing Co-op Leadership Convening, NASCO will be hosting a virtual Staff and Student Leadership Conference on May 27th- 31st. The conference will offer programming to both student leaders and co-op staff as well as joint workshop offerings. (Online – May 27-31)
Rent, Debt, and A Just Recovery: A Town Hall on Economic Justice in New York
Join the NYS Community Equity Agenda Coalition for a Town Hall with Senator Jessica Ramos, Senator Julia Salazar, Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, and organizers from across the state, as we discuss how we can #CancelRent, #HaltDebtCollectionNY, and build a just recovery and future for all New Yorkers. (May 28 – Online)
Hasten Slowly Book Release Event
Join NEC member North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO) to celebrate the release of "Hasten Slowly and You Will Soon Arrive" — a new book by Jim Jones about how the cooperative housing model has grown from renting rooming houses to ownership of property worth millions of dollars, and even greater potential. (May 28 – Online)
Detroit Community Wealth Fund Tools for Building Black Wealth Part 2
This session will pick up where the last session left off covering examples of co-ops and collectives used to build wealth. Exciting concepts to follow-up on: Land ownership, Emergency preparedness, and community education. (May 29 – Online)
PCC & Mondragon Online Course to Incubate Platform Co-ops
Join Trebor Schultz and Jose Mari Luzarraga Monasterio for an introduction to platform capitalism, post-pandemic visions of economic alternatives, (platform) cooperatives, and case studies of platform co-ops. So far, over 300 prospective participants from 46 countries asked to join this course. The cost of this 8-week certificate course for you is $150 and an expected 4-5 hours/week on materials and meetings. (June 1- July 24)
Cooperation Buffalo's COVID-19 Response Collaborative Webinar Series.
In Buffalo and around the country, communities have come together to take care of each other during the COVID-19 crisis. Mutual Aid efforts, built on the premise of "solidarity, not charity", have connected community members to the resources that they need. How do we transition from Mutual Aid to a Solidarity Economy that prioritizes cooperation, equity, health, and sustainability? (June 3 – Online)
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