Shifting Focus: the University of Vermont Session March, 28, 2023

Shifting Focus: the University of Vermont Session March, 28, 2023

Capitalism is choking the life systems of our precious planet and threatening extinction of complex species including humanity. Kali Akuno explains how EcoSocialism offers transformation from below, employing the principles of decolonization, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anti-heterosexism, and degrowth. www.CooperationJackson.org.

Kali Akuno is a seasoned activist, organizer, educator, and writer. He is co-founder and director of Cooperation Jackson, an emerging network of worker cooperatives in Jackson MS. He is co-editor of Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, MS (2017) and author of numerous articles and pamphlets. 

Read More

Shifting Focus the Schumacher Session in Great Barrington Lecture

Shifting Focus the Schumacher Session in Great Barrington Lecture

Kali Akuno delivered the First Annual Robert Swann Lecture in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in March, 2023. in 2023, we introduced the Annual Robert Swann Lectures, featuring Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson as the inaugural speaker. The lecture took place in the Great Hall at Saint James Place in Great Barrington, MA and was followed by a Q&A.

Read More

CJ and the State of Jackson Short Take from Joshua Dedmond, Part 3

CJ and the State of Jackson Short Take from Joshua Dedmond, Part 3

Check out Part 3 of Joshua Dedmond, our Program Director analyzing the impact of the reactionary legislation being proposed by the Republican majority of the Mississippi legislature that is attempting to construct apartheid 2.0 in Jackson, MS. He also highlights what Cooperation Jackson and the broader progressive social movement in Jackson are doing to combat the reactionary development.

Read More

Making Reparations: Seeding a Just Future

Making Reparations: Seeding a Just Future

As the 50th anniversary of the book Small is Beautiful, 2023 is our opportunity to advance solutions to today’s social, economic, and environmental challenges that build on Schumacher’s original vision. To meet this calling, the Schumacher Center is convening a monthly series featuring New Economic thinkers, builders and activists from a range of fields. “Schumacher Conversations: Envisioning the Next 50 Years” brings together change-makers whose work today is actively shaping a ‘small is beautiful’ future, organized around 12 key themes and fields of activism.

February’s theme is: Making Reparations: Seeding a Just Future. This online event took place Thursday, February 16th at 2PM (EST).

Read More

Fight and Build: Envisioning Solidarity Economies as Transformative Politics

Fight and Build: Envisioning Solidarity Economies as Transformative Politics

Written by Pen Loh and Boone Shear

December 14, 2022

This article was adapted from a more extensive journal article called, “Fight and Build: Solidarity Economy as Ontological Politics”, published in Sustainability Science, Volume 17, pp. 1207 - 1221. 

We are republishing here to demonstrate Cooperation Jackson’s influence on the current solidarity economy movement. 

Read More

EcoSocialism from Below Encounter Videos

EcoSocialism from Below Encounter Videos

Cooperation Jackson, the People’s Network for Land and Liberation, the Institute for Social Ecology and the Symbiosis Network hosted a work-study encounter in Marshfield, Vermont from Friday, July 29th - Friday, August 5th, 2022. The video’s assembled here capture some significant portions of the encounter that we would like to share with the world to engage, study, learn from and build upon. Enjoy!

Read More

Frontline Leaders Decry Lack of Progress for Real Climate Justice at COP27

Frontline Leaders Decry Lack of Progress for Real Climate Justice at COP27

Frontline Leaders Decry Lack of Progress for Real Climate Justice at COP27 and Call for Further Action to Protect Millions of Lives

It Takes Roots (ITR) consists of the Climate Justice Alliance, the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, the Indigenous Environmental Network, and the Right to the City Alliance. The ITR COP27 Contingent also included the Movement for Black Lives - The Black Hive, Indigenous Climate Action, Just Transition Alliance, La Via Campasina, and the World March of Women.

Read More

COP27 Report Back Number 4 - Thursday, November 17, 2022

COP27 Report Back Number 4 - Thursday, November 17, 2022

View Kali Akuno, Cooperation Jackson’s Executive Director, third broadcast on COP27, conducted on Thursday, November 17, 2022. This recording focuses on the corporate dominance of the COP space and what social movements need to do to impact the climate negotiations process going forward.

This report focused on the corporate capture of the negotiations, particularly by Big Oil and Nuclear, how they are underwriting and drafting the false solution proposals being advanced and incorporated by the nation-states. It also focuses on the extensive “green washing” that occurred at COP27. And focuses on the need for social movements to regroup and build their own initiatives and programs to combat climate change, ecological destruction, and species loss.

Read More

COP27 Report Back Number 3 - Tuesday, November 15, 2022

COP27 Report Back Number 3 - Tuesday, November 15, 2022

View Kali Akuno, Cooperation Jackson’s Executive Director, third broadcast on COP27, conducted on Tuesday, November 15, 2022. This interview features Anthony Rodgers-Wright with Black Alliance for Peace (BAP).

This report focused on some of the false solutions being promoted by the US government, the limitations of the climate measures in the Inflation Reduction Act, and the need for a global mass movement for a just transition to save complex life on our planet.

Read More

COP27 Report Back Number 2 - Thursday, November 10, 2022

COP27 Report Back Number 2 - Thursday, November 10, 2022

View Kali Akuno, Cooperation Jackson’s Executive Director, first broadcast on COP27, conducted on Thursday November 10, 2022. This interview features George Galvis, from Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, aka CURYJ (pronounced Courage).

This report focused on some of the challenges of the COP site, the limitations of the climate negotiations, and the need for a global mass movement for a just transition to save complex life on our planet.

Read More

Arte.tv International Coverage of Jackson's ongoing water crisis

Arte.tv International Coverage of Jackson's ongoing water crisis

A few days before the mid-term elections, on November 8, a team from Arte Reportage went to Jackson, a city of 150,000 inhabitants, capital of the State of Mississippi.

At the end of August, floods disrupted the operation of a water treatment plant essential for the city, but badly maintained for lack of money.


Faced with an emergency situation, this city in the South of the United States with an African-American majority, where the poverty rate is very high, spent several weeks without drinking water. This water crisis reveals the state of a country with aging infrastructure, a particularly staggering finding in the richest country in the world.


The Town Hall, run by a Democrat, denounces a flagrant lack of investment allocated to water management. The State of Mississippi, held by the conservatives of the Republican Party, denounces the negligence of the City and proposes to privatize the water to restore the network to working order.


In the meantime, daily life is turned upside down. Jackson is losing more and more people, its businesses are declining, young graduates are moving elsewhere. An explosive environment, which could lead to riots: left-wing movements are trying to mobilize the population around the defense of a quality public service for water. And the theses put forward at the national level by Bernie Sanders are making their way to the South of the United States.


Report by Vladimir Vasak (France, 2022)

available until 20/10/2052

Read More