Jackson Rising Redux: Lessons on Building the Future in the Present

Mississippi is the poorest state in the US, with the highest percentage of Black people and a history of vicious racial terror. Black resistance at a time of global health, economic, and climate crisis is the backdrop and context for the drama captured in this new and revised collection of essays. Cooperation Jackson, founded in 2014 in Mississippi’s capital to develop an economically uplifting democratic “solidarity economy,” is anchored by a network of worker-owned, self-managed cooperative enterprises. The organization developed in the context of the historic election of radical Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, lifetime human rights attorney. Subsequent to Lumumba’s passing less than one year after assuming office, the network developed projects both inside and outside of the formal political arena. In 2020, Cooperation Jackson became the center for national and international coalition efforts, bringing together progressive peoples from diverse trade union, youth, church, and cultural movements. This long-anticipated anthology details the foundations behind those successful campaigns. It unveils new and ongoing strategies and methods being pursued by the movement for grassroots-centered Black community control and self-determination, inspiring partnership and emulation across the globe.

What People Are Saying

“Jackson is one of the epicenters of resistance for all of us to emulate; this book lays the scene.” Chris Hedges, journalist, Presbyterian minister, and Princeton University lecturer; author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

“Jackson Rising is the rarest of things: a real strategic plan. You will not find a simple wish list that glosses over the hard questions of resources, or some disembodied manifesto imploring the workers forward, but a work in progress building the capacity of people to exercise power.” Richard Moser, author of The World the Sixties Made

About the Contributors

Kali Akuno is a cofounder and codirector of Cooperation Jackson. He was the director of special projects and external funding in the mayoral administration of the late Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. His focus in this role was supporting cooperative development, the introduction of eco-friendly and carbon reduction methods of operation, and the promotion of human rights and international relations for the city. Akuno has also served as the codirector of the U.S. Human Rights Network, and the executive director of the Peoples’ Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) based in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina. He was a cofounder of the School of Social Justice and Community Development (SSJCD), a public school serving the academic needs of low-income African American and Latino communities in Oakland.

Matt Meyer is a noted educator, author, and organizer currently serving as Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association. As former national co-chair of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and former chair of the War Resisters League, he is second only to A.J. Muste— “dean of the US peace movement”—being elected to the top position of both historic organizations. Based in New York City, Meyer has led seminars, courses, trainings, and conferences in over sixty countries throughout five continents, focusing on themes including the strategies and tactics of revolutionary nonviolence; political imprisonment; decolonization and the cases of Puerto Rico, Palestine, West Papua, Western Sahara, and Ambazonia; and the connections between militarism, white supremacy, patriarchy and imperialism. Meyer is Senior Research Scholar at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst Resistance Studies Initiative, noted by South African Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu (in the foreword to his book with Bill Sutherland, Guns and Gandhi in Africa), as having “begun to develop a language which looks at the roots of our humanness.”

Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor at the New School University in New York. Wolff’s recent work has concentrated on analyzing the causes and alternative solutions to the global economic crisis. His groundbreaking book Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism inspired the creation of Democracy at Work, a nonprofit organization dedicated to showing how and why to make democratic workplaces real. Wolff is also the author of Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism and Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do about It. He hosts the weekly hour-long radio program “Economic Update,” which is syndicated on public radio stations nationwide, and he writes regularly for The Guardian and Truthout.org.

Table of Contents

Foreward: Richard Wolff

Prologue: Kali Akuno

Part I. GROUNDINGS

1. Build and Fight: The Program and Strategy of Cooperation Jackson, Kali Akuno
2. Toward Economic Democracy,Labor Self-management and Self-determination, Kali Akuno & Ajamu Nangwaya

Part II. EMERGENCE

1. The Jackson-Kush Plan: The Struggle for Black Self-determination and Economic Democracy, Kali Akuno
2. People's Assembly Overview: The Jackson People's Assembly Model, Kali Akuno for the New Afrikan People’s Organization and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
3. The Jackson Rising Statement: Building the City of the Future Today, Kali Akuno for the Mayoral Administration of Chokwe Lumumba
4. Seek Ye First the Worker Self-management Kingdom: Toward the Solidarity Economy in Jackson, MS, Ajamu Nangwaya

Part III. BUILDING SUBSTANCE

1. Jackson Rising: An Electoral Battle Unleashes a Merger of Black Power, the Solidarity Economy and Wider Democracy, Carl Davidson
2. Jackson Rising: Black Millionaires Won’t Lift Us Up, But Cooperation and the Solidarity Economy Will, Bruce A Dixon
3. Coming Full Circle: The Intersection of Gender Justice and the Solidarity Economy, Sacajawea ('Saki') Hall interviewed by Thandisizwe Chimurenga
4. Casting Shadows: Chokwe Lumumba and the Struggle for Racial Justice and Economic Democracy in Jackson, Mississippi, Kali Akuno
5. The Socialist Experiment: A New-Society Vision in Jackson, Mississippi, Katie Gilbert
6. Casting Light: Reflecting on the Struggle to Implement the Jackson-Kush Plan, Kali Akuno
7. Reflections on 2018: A Year of Struggle, Lessons and Progress, Cooperation Jackson

Part IV. CRITICAL EXAMINATIONS

1. The Jackson-Kush Plan: The Struggle for Land and Housing, Max Rameau
2. A Long and Strong History with Southern Roots, Jessica Gordon Nembhard
3. Freeing the Land, Rebuilding Our Movements: Reflections on the Legacies of Chokwe Lumumba and Luis Nieves Falcon, Matt Meyer
4. Atlanta 2021: Radical Futures, Yolande Tomlimson
   

Part V. MOVEMENT EXPANSIONS

1. Community Movement Builders, Kamau Franklin
2. Cooperation Humboldt, Cooperation Board and Staff Collective: Argy Munoz, David Cobb, Marina Lopez, Oscar Mogollon, Ruthi Engelke, Ron White, Sabrina Miller, Tamara MacFarland, Tobin McKee
3. Afrikan Cooperative Union, Adotey Bing-Pappoe
   

Part VI. RADICAL MUNICIPALISM

1. Cooperation and Self Determination—Not Middle Management, Kana Azhari and Asere Bellow
2. First, We Take Jackson: the New American Municipalism, Kate Shea Baird
3. Looking Beyond Electoralism: the New Radical Municipalism in the UK?, Daniel Brown
4. Libertarian Municipalism and Murray Bookchin’s Legacy: A Conversation between Debbie Bookchin and the editors of Green European Journal

Part VII. TOWARDS THE GENERAL STRIKE AND DUAL POWER

1. Building the Commune, George Ciccariello-Maher
2. Towards Dual Power and Beyond, Symbiosis
3. “A Deeper Understanding of What We're Trying to Accomplish”—A People’s Strike Dialogue with Kali Akuno, Sakajawea “Saki” Hall, Rose Brewer, Wende Marshall, and Matt Meyer

Part VIII. GOING FORWARD: ECOSOCIALISM AND REGENERATION

1. Countering the Fabrication Divide, Kali Akuno and Gyasi Williams
2. Eco-socialism or Death, Kali Akuno
3. Eco-socialist Transition: Socialize Production, Democratize Society, Kali Akuno

Part IX. AFTERWORD

1. Isn’t Always Where the Hatred Is: There is Hope in Mississippi, Ajamu Baraka
2. Fight!, Hakima Abbas

About the Contributors

Additional Readings and Documentation