Summer 2022 Message from the Board

An ode to our elders: I am only able to digitally compose these truths because of the outpour of investment that has been entrusted to me. I pay homage to those that have and continue to struggle towards actualizing revolutionary values while being forced to navigate (let alone attempt to thrive) within these systems of oppression. The best way I know how to honor this, is to continue becoming a truer version of myself while reinvesting in others and our communities.

Who here is a revolutionary?

As serendipity would have it, I was voted onto Seward Co-op’s board the same day I transitioned from working at a cooperative development entity. This past work was to establish minnesota’s* third [diasporic] black*-led credit union. Personally, I had intentions of (a) mobilizing New Afrikans throughout the twin cities* towards group economics and (b) co-creating a landing place to divest from capitalism. Shout out to the current team leading this effort forward. In my past lives as a movement organizer, I’ve been forced to meditate on and practice principled struggle (which entailed heartache, individual and communal accountability). I’m reminded many times over that revolutionary work requires a collective response—no individual saviors are needed. With those experiences and learnings on my heart, I offer loving challenges to our Seward membership:

Shopping at a natural foods cooperative is a dope start, yet not enough. We must remember that expanding whole-food access goes beyond shopping and donations. Abolition is a necessary mechanism needed to materialize revolutionary values with shared accountability. These values must be actualized in an organization’s (1) bylaws, (2) internal and external operations, (3) human resources policies, and (4) culture. We must place value in the utility of shifting alongside our communities as demographics and needs change. Principled solidarity across communities has proven to be the only way forward.

To accomplish this, there must be a reckoning. These glorious ideologies will require us to reinvest in education and resource redistribution towards revolutionary self-embodiment, praxis, and solidarity.

The last time I wrote to y’all, I encouraged us to dig into cooperative abolitionist history and become active and informed members. The conditions of everyday people are still being fought for, from Fong Lee to Amir Locke. From the #Fightfor15 to the closing of HERC, we are winning! At the board level, after the state sanctioned murder of George Floyd, up the street from our Friendship store, we committed ourselves to ensuring SCC board’s actions would speak for themselves.

As members, let’s continue to ask:
1. What do we want to accomplish with Seward Co-op’s buying power?
2. What innovative strategies can we use to accomplish our Ends without strengthening capitalism?

I hope you will join me as I continue to ask myself:

3. What’s the most we can do to revolutionize the food system, from seed to storefront?
4. What is required of each of us to materialize our cooperative values?

Our path forward may seem daunting, but don’t worry fellow students of abolition, I won’t leave y’all hanging. See below for calls to action for households, cooperators, and aspiring revolutionaries, to get movin’ and groovin’!

Again, I’ll pose the question: who here is a revolutionary?

“A fall in the pit, a gain in the wit” (Mao) — a luta continua (the struggle continues) … venceremos (we will win) in the long run.”— Jalil Muntaqim, We Are Our Own Liberators.

With revolutionary love, my heart and soul, towards our collective liberation.
Free the people, free the land, Tamil Eelam and the Republic of New Afrika, forever!

* euro-colonial names are intentionally not capitalized in this letter

Below are the Calls to Action (CTAs) referenced in the above letter.

“Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow” —Funkadelic
1. Do a self-assessment:
  1. What are your actual and perceived privileges; where do these stem from; what is the cost, from others that don’t share these privileges, for you and your family to maintain these societal benefits?
  2. How can these privileges be used towards expanding revolutionary thought and embodiment?
2. Study and share knowledge
  1. Use a critical analysis while studying historical accounts of revolutionary thought and practice
  2. Research social, economic, political, and environmental future forecasting to comprehensively understand what’s at stake
  3. Ensure that while you’re doing any type of work it’s within an intercultural and an intergenerational space
“Identity your tf issue” —AUC Shut it Down, circa 2015-2016
1. Work smarter and harder: use the “FROLINAN Handbook”, outlined in “We Are Our Own Liberators” by Jalil Muntaqim
2. Put your theories to work and see if they hold up in practice, present day. Make necessary adjustments to ensure revolutionary outcomes, then do it again. Do it at least once more, per the scientific method.
“Organize! Organize! ORGANIZE!” —Kwame Ture
1. Revisit CTAs 1 and 2 in your chosen and/or biological family units
2. Do this work back in with your hometowns and ancestral lands
3. Use your amassed skills, capacity, and resources beyond incremental change and towards global indigenous sovereignty, reparations, that upholds natural law.

It truly will take a diverse village, utilizing various tactics and strategies to materialize our values and dreams for our shared futures. Below are additional CTAs from local and global comrades:

From Eva, an international food sovereignty organizer based in Chaing Mai, Thailand

interrogate what food sovereignty means to you: spend intimate time educating yourself of the black and indigenous led struggles for food sovereignty in the states
use your resources to materially resource marginalized leaders in community building dual power — black farmer co-ops, local indigenous land back movements, mutual aid projects. redistributing your wealth is critical, but also redistribute your time, your access to mobility, your platforms, your connections to others with dominant power.
divest divest divest. research your food. not just what you buy in the grocery store and the farmers market, but the contracts held by your employer, the catering company you contract, etc. are their linkages to the prison or military industrial complex? how can you divest your food dollars from there and invest them into local fights for liberation.
support marginalized folks who are learning to grow their own food

From the Wild Path Collective:

Divest and Disrupt: We can boycott and pull funding from companies who repress liberation; and we can also invest in projects that disrupt their attempts to monopolize/centralize the food system in the hands of small groups of shareholders. This is particularly important where seeds, farming equipment, and distribution chains are concerned. Investing in cooperatives is an opportunity for people to ensure that their shares are not just lining the pockets of people detached from the labor of growing and distributing the food–it goes direct to the workers and buyers.
Redistribute your wealth: donate your annual dividends from your household to mutual aid food redistribution projects. Check out, Cocoa Butter Futures, Divine Natural Ancestry and the Grease Pit, to start!