Kali Akuno

Day 15 of #BlackHistoryMonth Black Theory:

Kali Akuno

“But what it speaks to is, I think, a deeper lack of strategy, particularly on the side of the Democrats and progressives, which says, we have to turn out folks, and we have to reach folks, you know, the new kind of silent majority who don’t vote, who don’t see anything to vote for, because nobody’s speaking directly to their issues, to their material interests and concerns. And if you just keep playing the middle, you’re going to keep alienating those folks, and they just see, in their day-to-day reality, Democrat or Republican, I’m still feeling the burden of there not being any jobs, there not being any social services, there not being much by way of educational access for my children or for the future, so why should I turn out? It’s just the same thing over and over and over again….And what we’ve been arguing for, you don’t reach them by just doing the same old same-old. You have to reach them by actually trying to develop a program that speaks to their direct interests and will put them as the central actors in the transformation and the change of what’s going on. And that’s easier said than done, but I think it speaks to an orientation that we would like to see, you know, new forces on the political scene take up throughout this country. And I think it will lead to some profoundly different results of what we’ve gotten the last 16 years.” Democracy Now! Interview with Amy Goodman, 2017

[in regards to Cooperation Jackson] “I’m one of the—I’m one of the people. It’s a collective, but one of the co-founders of it. On our end, we have, I think, a bit more freedom to experiment. But we have the challenge of where do we—you know, how do we access resources to do the development projects that we’re trying to do? So, we’ve been very clear that, first and foremost, we’re trying to draw existing resources within the community, first and foremost, for us to pay our own way, because we don’t have, you know, progressive philanthropies in Jackson that are willing to support working-class black folks doing almost anything. And there’s not a lot of capital wealth. But there is a tremendous amount of talent. There’s a tremendous amount of energy. So, it’s like, how do we balance our assets?And so, trying to organize folks to do autonomous development, starting with the basic skills that we have, first around agriculture and around, you know, other food, but we’re also trying to be as forward-looking as possible and getting into digital fabrication, what we call community production, and really trying to link those two to be able to create, as much as possible, a solidarity economy, which can be mediated as much through mutual exchange and trade as it is by cash. And that is a very important element for us, in a place where it’s a cash-starved economy, but there’s also a thriving solidarity economy that already exists, that we don’t have to organize. The question is: How do we formalize some of those relationships that we’re working on? And how do we build them and extend them so that they’re not just little pockets of people who are helping themselves, but how can we build the scale so that we’re doing this citywide. We haven’t figured it all out, but we’re working on it.” Democracy Now! Interview with Amy Goodman, 2017

“But we looked at that ‘what if’ and say there’s a generation that was coming of age basically since Barack Obama was President that has a very different worldview than many of the previous generations of white people in the state that we could work with and ally with, but we have to figure out – and been working and struggling to figure out – how do we stay in consistent dialogue in relation with each other? How do we create as many opportunities of collaboration as possible? These are the ‘what if’ questions that really structured our project and it’s not like these questions ever stop. Even when you accomplish one, it just really opens up in many respects more questions that need to be tackled and solved. But that’s a good thing, and I know one of the things that you’re investigating is the imagination. Why I like it is that if you don’t ask yourself that question, then it keeps you in a static view of the world, “I’m going to play by the rules as they exist and I’m going to just try to deal with the terms and the alliances that presently are”, which is very limiting from a political space. To be able to think about, “what is it that we might actually be able to do to move a particular force?” Just to see things differently. That would speak to both, you know, its interest but also its aspirations. We think both of those things are possible. Just organising along self-interest we find to be very limiting. This is a lesson that many black organisers have found. If we look real deep in trying to build multi-racial alliances in the United States, you know, that the way the narrative is often constructed and lived, you would think that black workers and white workers have a lot in common, but there are clearly a bunch of cultural constructs and edifices that are put in place which gives us to see our interests quite differently. We say we also have to work towards people’s aspirations, not just self-interest, because in our case, historically, that can lead to some very reactionary destructive things directed towards the black community. It’s that aspiration piece that speaks to the imagination question you have. How we tap into people’s dreams and aspirations is a critical thing that we at least speak to as part of an aim and objective that we are pursuing and have to then plan our strategies, actions and how we engage, how we factor all those different things in so it’s not just one-dimensional work.Having a vision and staying on course with that vision is very key to a long-term organising and a long-term trajectory, and keeping the morale of the different social forces that you’re engaging up, so that people understand it’s going to take a while for us to get to where we’re going, and that there can be and there should be and there must be, reforms along the way, but we have to always stay consistently orientated towards the north star to know clearly the end goal maybe far away and may seem like a moving target, but let’s not be distracted and just prop up the existing system or change little things here and there, when ultimately we’re trying to change relationships and hierarchy and exploitation and how do we stay focused on that….One of the things that we always tell people is that what you’re witnessing over the past ten years in Jackson really is the accumulation of decades of groundwork that was laid, that took persistence, determination and perseverance, chipping away. Even when certain ideas weren’t popular. Even when certain oppositions were not popular. People sticking with it. Staying true. Staying committed.” Interview with Rob Hopkins, 2018

“We believe that we should openly and aggressively present our best ideas, programs, strategies, tactics and plans to the working class and to our communities in open forums, discussions, town halls, assemblies and other deliberative spaces, and debate them out in a principled democratic fashion to allow the working class and our communities to decide for themselves whether they make sense and are worth pursuing and implementing.” Jackson Rising

Links:

Books -

Jackson Rising

https://archive.org/details/jacksonrisingstr0000unse

https://dokumen.pub/jackson-rising-the-struggle-for-economic-democracy-and-black-self-determination-in-jackson-mississippi-978-0995347458.html

Jackson Rising Redux

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/67076814/downloadpdf-jackson-rising-redux-lessons-on-building-the-future-in-the-present

Purchase -

Jackson Rising Redux

https://firestorm.coop/products/17997-jackson-rising-redux.html

https://burningbooks.com/products/jackson-rising-redux-lessons-on-building-the-future-in-the-present

https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1188