Black People : Jackson Rising: Black Millionaires Won't Lift Us Up, But Cooperation & the Solidarity Economy Might

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
“320 activists from all over the country, including 80 or more from Jackson and surrounding parts
of Mississippi converged on the campus of Jackson State University for Jackson Rising. ”

Has raising up more black millionaires been a successful economic development strategy for our
communities? Evidently not. What's the alternative to gentrification, to stadiums, to ruthless
exploitation? It's the solidarity economy. It's cooperation. It's democratically owned, worker-run
cooperatives for child care, retail, auto repair, factories, health care, you name it. It's already rising
in Jackson Mississippi, and soon, near you.

“...activists from all over the country, including 80 or more from Jackson and surrounding parts of
Mississippi converged on the campus of Jackson State University for Jackson Rising....”

For a long time now we've been fed and been feeding each other the story that uplifting black
communities means electing more faces of color to public office and creating more black
millionaires. Those wealthy and powerful African Americans, in the course of their wise
governance, their normal business and philanthropic efforts can be counted on to create the jobs
and the opportunities to largely alleviate poverty and want among the rest of us. The only problem
with this story is that it's not working, and in fact never really did work.

It was a myth, a fable, a grownup fairy tale which told us nothing about how the world and this
society actually functioned.

In the real world, we now have more black faces in corporate board rooms, more black elected
officials and more black millionaires than ever before, alongside record and near-record levels of
black child poverty, black incarceration, black unemployment, black land and wealth loss. The
fortunes of some of our most admired black multimillionaires, like Junior Bridgeman
and Magic Johnson, rest firmly on the continued starvation wages and relentless
abuse of workers in his hundreds of fast food and other restaurants.

Over the first weekend in May about 320 activists from all over the country, including 80 or more
from Jackson and surrounding parts of Mississippi converged on the campus of Jackson State
University for Jackson Rising. They came to seek and to share examples of how to create not
individual success stories, but stories of collective self-help, collective wealth-building, collective
success and the power of mutual cooperation.

Read more: http://www.blackagendareport.com/co...-lift-us-cooperation-solidarity-economy-might