Interview by Firoze Manji of Daraja Press

Conducted Sunday, January 26, 2025

Kali describes a more effective and organized Trump regime implementing policies that are creating significant contradictions and challenges, particularly around immigration and labor. He highlights how deportations and anti-immigrant policies are already impacting food production and elderly care. Kali argues that Trump is attempting to reset the terms of the global empire and reshape American society, potentially moving towards more authoritarian governance. He warns of increased militarization of police and the empowerment of right-wing militias. However, Kali also sees opportunities emerging from these crises. He emphasizes the growth of mutual aid networks and community-based solutions, particularly around food production and distribution. He advocates for expanding these efforts, suggesting slogans like "every yard a farm, every garage a factory" to encourage local production. The conversation touches on the potential for civil conflict given widespread gun ownership, with Kali cautioning that right-wing groups have already been well-trained with arms and firepower. Progressive forces will never match their military might, nor should they do so. Overall, while acknowledging the serious challenges ahead, Kali emphasizes the importance of building alternative systems and solidarity networks to meet community needs in the face of systemic crises.

Learning from ‘La Revolución Bolivariana’: A Conversation with Kali Akuno

An in-depth discussion on how the Bolivarian Revolution inspired the Mississippi-based project Cooperation Jackson.

Cira Pascual Marquina

November 22, 2024

Disrupt the Chaos: Build and Fight Formula Kick Off

Kali Akuno and Rosa Clemente kicked off the first Build and Fight Formula kick off on Tuesday, October 29th, 2024.

Kali and Rosa will be doing a dialogue series about the Build and Fight Formula, which is a transformative dual power strategy being developed by Cooperation Jackson. Kali is in the process of writing a book on this strategy and aims to publish it in 2026 via Pluto Press. The dialogue series will be the 1st Tuesday of every month on Disrupt the Chaos and all of its platforms.

Kali Akuno interviewed by revolutionary Catalanian journalist, Jesus Rodriguez for the Catalan journal, Directa.

The interview was conducted on Wednesday, October 23rd. And published on Friday, October 25, 2025.

Kali Akuno, Cooperation Jackson Executive Director, speaking on Catalonia Television, 3CAT MES 324. This program was aired live on Tuesday, October 22, 2024. 

The Transformative Potential of a Union-Coop Alliance

he following is an audio excerpt and transcript from a point raised by Kali Akuno from our webinar “Remaking the Economy: Escaping Corporate Capture.”

Disrupt the Chaos: Interview with Kali Akuno

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Check out the first Disrupt the Chaos show with Rosa Clemente featuring Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson. And be on the lookout for a monthly feature of Kali on Disrupt the Chaos the first Tuesday of every month as he breaks down the Build and Fight Formula being developed and promoted by Cooperation Jackson.

Build, Fight, Transform: Building a Regenerative Economy through the practices of Solidarity, Decolonization and Degrowth

Thursday, September 19, 2024

The Tishman Center hosted our Senior Fellow, Kali Akuno, for a ‘lunch and learn’ on campus. Akuno is an organizer, educator, and writer for human rights and social justice. He is also the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Cooperation Jackson, an emerging network of worker cooperatives and supporting institutions. Kali shares his ideas on building participatory democracy from the grassroots level and altering the commodity form of production to regenerate social relations. He also engages in dialogue with attendees on Check out his upcoming book, The Build and Fight Formula and his recent book, “Jackson Rising Redux: Lessons on Building the Future in the Present.

Remaking the Economy: Escaping Corporate Capture

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

What is “corporate capture” and how can people escape its effects—in our politics, our culture, our daily life, and in the nonprofit sector? How do people, in short, build an actual everyday politics and economics of liberation?

This was the organizing question for the summer 2024 issue of Nonprofit Quarterly. To addresses this question and expand upon their contributions, three authors from NPQ’s summer economic justice magazine will explore the concept of corporate capture and how movement-based groups can build viable escape routes to advance economic justice.

Participating in the webinar conversation are the following people:

Kali Akuno is the cofounder and executive director of Cooperation Jackson, based in Jackson, Mississippi.

Hannah Appel is cofounder of the Debt Collective, a professor of anthropology, and associate director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, based in Los Angeles, California.

Arlene Martinez is deputy executive director of Good Jobs First, based in Washington, DC.

Sara Myklebust is research director for Bargaining for the Common Good, based at Georgetown University's Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor in Washington, DC.

This article is from Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine’s summer 2024 issue, “Escaping Corporate Capture.” Written by Kali Akuno, Executive Director of Cooperation Jackson

The fundamental premise of the Build and Fight Formula is that we must abandon our deficit-based perspective of scale and pivot to a perspective of bounty—one that appreciates the value of a multitude of autonomous organizing projects.

Land Back and Liberated Zones: Building Power and Reworking Relations through Community Land Trusts

Dialogue with Kali Akuno and Ethan Miller

In late February of this year, Kali Akuno from Cooperation Jackson and Ethan Miller from Land in Common took part in a public conversation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. With over 200 students, faculty, and community members in attendance, Kali and Ethan shared with each other and the audience the history and politics of their organizations, the relationship between place-based and global politics, and the role of community land trusts and solidarity economies as part of a process of decommodification.

The association of organizations K.AL.O Attica "Coordination" invited Kali Akuno from Cooperation Jackson to speaker at two events in Athens, Greece. The first event was Monday, July 1st in the garden of the Immigrants' Shelter, Tsamadou 15, Athens entitled " From self-management of work in the self-organization of life”. The second public event was Sunday, July 7th at the 25th Anti-Racist Festival of Athens, entitled " Why self-management? Experiences of solidarity economy from our own nearby America .'

The reason for this invitation is obvious: Cooperation Jackson, in which Kali participates, is a powerful example of connecting the Solidarity Economy with social movements, in a region plagued by the consequences of both capitalist management and systemic racism.

In the interview that follows and which he gave to Syntonismus, he talks about everything: the rise of the extreme right, the Social Solidarity Economy as a weapon for workers and marginalized social strata, but also the immediate need for its deeper politicization.

Mold, July 8, 2024

Interview by Jaime Tyberg with Kali Akuno

I first met Kali Akuno in 2018 — the same year that the “Deep Adaptation” paper was published1. Despite a lack of wider circulation, the paper went viral in climate movement circles. For many of us, the paper validated our years-long campaign to declare the current era as the sixth mass extinction, while also urging us to abandon our standard way of life and form alternative ones. Kali’s work with Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi takes this urging to the task. As detailed in his latest book, Jackson Rising Redux2, building the future in the present demands new designs, new formulas, and a new definition of how to be human. Catching up with Kali six years after, I believe we are closer to the future than we think.

The Marc Steiner Show: Racism and Jackson’s water crisis

Jackson, Mississippi, remains gripped in an ongoing water crisis. The task of distributing water to local residents has been largely taken up by community organizations like Cooperation Jackson and Operation Good. Organizer, writer, and educator Kali Akuno joins The Marc Steiner Show to explain how the current crisis is a reflection of capitalism's failures and decades of institutional racism. Though Jackson today is more than 80% Black, this is a recent demographic development created by white flight and capital flight from the city. The state's prolonged neglect of Jackson's infrastructure is a consequence of an entrenched far-right politics in Mississippi's public institutions. And what's happening currently in Jackson is a sign of things to come around the country. To fight back, Akuno emphasizes the need to build mass movements and grassroots networks capable of exercising real political power.

A few scenes from our second Really, Really Free Market, which was held on Saturday, June 15, 2024.

The objective of the Really, Really Free Market is to create a culture and process of mutual exchange, that is exchanging the goods and services we need to both sustain ourselves and improve the quality of life in our community without monetary exchange. But, through negotiated exchange through barter, trade, and mutual credit systems.

This second Really, Really Free Market was a critical success. The word is spreading and the model and practice of mutual exchange is gradually taking hold. The next phase is getting more people to produce items to directly exchange, rather than merely donate things they are no longer using. It's going to be a struggle, that will take some time, but it's a struggle worth engaging. "Every yard a farm, every garage a factory". This is where we're heading.

“Ujamaa, Ubuntu, and New Pan Africanisms: The Future of World Peace Conference” Conference

Saki Hall and Kali Akuno spoke on a plenary on Friday, May 24th entitled “Community Movement Builders Bridge Building”. Additional speakers included Edget Betru, from Community Movement Builders, and Shannon Jones, from the People’s Senate Northeast/Spirit of Mandela Coalition.

On Saturday, May 4, 2024 we celebrated 10 years of organizing for and building of the solidarity economy in Jackson, MS. Our 10th anniversary was on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, i.e. May Day or International Workers Day.

These pictures capture just snippets of the great day that we had that was filled with great food, great music, great company, and good politics.

Going forward, we need your support to ensure that the next decade is even more transformative and impactful than the first one. Please donate today and spread the word to your family, friends, comrades and cooperators!

Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson and Bernard E. Harcourt reimagine the university as a multi-stakeholder cooperative of faculty, students, staff, and community on Wednesday, May 1, 2024. The university, as a collegium of scholars and students, is under threat across the globe and in the United States. State governments are interfering with academic freedom and knowledge, dictating what can and cannot be taught. Private donors are interfering with the scholarly project and the discourse of learning. Whether at public universities or private universities, the climate of learning has become intolerable.  Join us for an exploration with Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson of another model: a multi-stakeholder cooperative university run by and for those who want to learn–the faculty and students. The model dates back to the Middle Ages at least, when universities were first born as cooperatives of faculty or of students. Let’s explore together a new model for learning in the twenty-first century! Welcome to Coöperism 13/13!

Jackson Rising Redux Book NYC Book Launch at 1199 SEIU

The NYC book launch of PM Press' Jackson Rising Redux (2023), edited by Kali Akuno and Matt Meyer, was held at the main union hall of SEIU 1199 as a means of building new alliances across community-labor and geographic lines. Akuno and Meyer were joined by 1199 Vice President Shaywaal Amin, Cooperative Economics Alliance of NY co-director Maria Alex Garcia, 1199 senior advisor Bruce Richards, contributing author Sophie Gonick, and others.