Youth Realities & Responses

COOPERATIVES REFERENCED

STATEMENTS REFERENCED

MOVEMENT ORIENTATION 

The various international coopyouth statements consistently conceptualize and call for the interpretation of cooperativism as a philosophy that supports an active social movement with radical and transformative aims that extend beyond creating cooperatives. All coopyouth statements were written collectively by youth from all different parts of the world, and they include youth from large, wealthy cooperatives that are arguably capitalistic, as well as youth from less wealthy cooperatives with more resolutely radical politics.1 Overall, contemporary coopyouth have consistently stated that the Cooperative Movement is about much more than just cooperatives, and that working outside the Cooperative Movement proper and aspiring beyond the current societal and economic context is cooperativism’s full expression.

Solidarity Beyond Cooperatives

For many coopyouth, solidarity with those outside the Cooperative Movement but that share transformative aims pragmatically translates into a responsibility to share their cooperative specific skills and resources with other progressive people and groups. Youth Cooperative Hub (MSC, South Africa) is a member of a networked social movement community, and they focus their contributions around building “democracy skills” through cooperative training that teaches people how to work, live, and play together in a way that is truly democratic, whether they are doing so within a formal cooperative enterprise or not. Similarly, Sheffield Student Housing Cooperative (User, UK) understands that the physical property they both live in presently and steward for the longer term benefit of many is a valuable resource. As such, they consistently offer use of their common spaces to area social movement groups, so they can comfortably conduct meetings and prepare for actions or events. Both Knowledge Worker (Worker, Denmark) and Gencisi (Worker, Turkey) gift a great deal of labor to other youth with aligned values, specifically by aiding them in setting up their own cooperative systems. Skillsharing is a common practice among cooperators in the movement, though these coopyouth have specifically chosen to include as part of their regular work the sharing of cooperative skills with others outside the movement but with similarly transformative values. 

Name Internal & External Foes

The 2014 statement, Cooperate to Transform Society, calls for the movement to be reorganized into one that is “bottom-up rather than top-down,” as well as one that is explicitly and openly committed to the end of capitalism. The first part of that sentiment comments on inequalities within the movement that have created a “top” and a “bottom” in terms of wealth and power, and youth call for all those within the movement to acknowledge and address this reality of internal inequity and dysfunction. One of the key ways in which to reorganize the movement accordingly is via the practice of the Redistribution of Wealth to marginalized cooperators, as more fully outlined in “Capital” and “Relationships of Solidarity.” The latter portion comments explicitly on the primary external foe of cooperativism and humanity - capitalism. All of the autonomous cooperative youth statements, recorded from 2012 onward, identify capitalism and/or neoliberalism as the major external foes of the Cooperative Movement that, accordingly, need to be abolished. The movement orientation that names foes and calls for their transformation also involves maintaining an ethic of “non-participation” with those named coercive and destructive actors within society, as outlined in both key issues sections on “Relationships.” The strongest examples of intentional non-participation and participation are demonstrated by Vio.me (Worker, Greece), Green Campus Cooperative (MSC, Canada), and Knowledge Worker (Worker, Denmark) which all have organizational ethics that guide them in which partners they should and shouldn’t engage with, specifically along ecologically lines, as is outlined more below in the subsection on the “Survival.”

• 1 Attending the international events at which these statements have been authored is challenging and costly and often includes:expensive international air travel and lodging, visa requirements, significant time commitments for travel and attendance. As a result, most attendees typically are funded by their cooperative employers, meaning that those who attend are often staff (i.e. not members) from wealthy cooperatives who often adopt a passive role for fear of misrepresenting their employer. Youth deviate from this pattern more so than other groups, as there are scholarships for youth to attend cooperative events in some countries, and there are reduced registration rates for most events. It is, therefore, more likely a youth from a small cooperative can attend these events than a non-youth from a small cooperative. Further, when youth are funded by scholarships rather than by an employer, they are more likely to voice their own views rather than to act as a spokesperson for the entity that financially supports their participation. As a result, the coopyouth statements are arguably more representative of the global movement than those of adults in those same spaces.

FIRST-NEXT STEP 

Father Arizmendiarrieta’s work with local youth ultimately manifested in the largest federation of worker cooperatives in the world, Mondragon, as well as a university system sharing space and support with the federation. He believed “the ideal of the Mondragon Youth is to make this town the model for [other] industrial towns” (1999, 5). This mentality is shared by contemporary coopyouth, as they actively conceive of the work they are doing on a small scale with their friends can and will have much greater impact beyond their immediate context. Sheffield Student Housing Cooperative (User, UK) has a twofold vision for the ultimate impact of their hyperlocal cooperative work. By living in the cooperative while a student and likely entering into the housing market for the first time, they become equipped with real, lived knowledge that they do not have to submit to exploitive rental housing situations for the rest of their lives, no matter their economic standing. It is quite common within student housing cooperatives that individuals become effectively empowered through the experience and often go one to pursue or create other kinds of non-extractive types of housing in subsequent life phases, sometimes in the same or different towns. Additionally, SSHC specifically names that they seek to use their skills and equity from their first property and house to create additional cooperatives in their local housing market to the point that they would effectively overpower for-profit developers and landlords in the marketplace, thereby shifting control of the community’s housing and its regulation to the people who live in the housing and community everyday. In other words, SSHC seeks to create a housing commons in their area, in which all property is held in common and stewarded by those using it at any given time. This commons-building strategy hinges upon the cooperative’s common equity model, in which all assets are collectively owned, which protects them from being demutualized, i.e. distributed or sold.

Homo Cooperativus

Just as the Cooperative Identity is not just a structural checklist, being a cooperative person goes much deeper than being a dues-paying member of a cooperative enterprise. A cooperative individual is someone with emotional intelligence, self-confidence, social skills, and capacities to foster strong interpersonal relationships. If these kinds of emotional and relational skills were present in more of society, explicit cooperative values and training might not be necessary. Red Root (Worker, Philippines) trains and educates their members in issues of mental health, which they feel allows them to be better teammates and to be a stronger cooperative. By valuing the holistic wellbeing of their members, as well as understanding how mental illness functions and how mental health can fluctuate for a variety of factors, they are able to support each other in their wholeness and complexities. This then facilitates each person to fully contribute and participate in the cooperative as their whole selves - which is especially important in a creative context; it rejects compartmentalization of personality or feeling guilty or ashamed for very common human experiences and conditions. Youth Cooperative Hub (MSC, South Africa) have regularly scheduled group dynamics and relational skillbuilding trainings for all members, as they feel the skills taught in those sessions underpin everything they do within and beyond their cooperatives. Albanyan CICS (User, Nigeria) explores topics about leadership, relationships, and personhood in their regular meetings that take the form of group conversations, often with an elder mentor present. Even when the cooperative does not have any conventional “business” to conduct, the membership still convenes to share time and space in order to sustain relationships and support on another - which is an integral part of their cooperative work. Woodcraft Folk (MSC, UK) educates children and youth in a variety of topics via their grassroots learning groups. A key intention behind their work with very young people is to impart and offer experiential application of cooperative values in a way that can shape a person’s personality for the rest of their lives. Teaching children how to live out cooperativism is a very literal first-next-step in creating and sustaining a cooperative society. 

SURVIVAL 

The main way in which the survival of humanity is taken into account by those coopyouth interviewed is via the priorities and guidelines each of their cooperatives has developed to guide its selection of activities, partners, and materials. Red Root (Worker, Philippines) states that all projects they take on as contract work must benefit humanity. They will sometimes take on government contracts, despite some of the harmful practices of the current regime, because they feel confident those projects have potential to be accomplished in a way that benefits people much more than it contributes to harmful systems; in fact, their conception is akin to reducing harm, as they know if another group took on the contract, they might impart non-cooperative values or practices through the work. As partially outlined above, three of the cooperatives interviewed - Knowledge Worker (Worker, Denmark), Green Campus Cooperative (MSC, Canada), and Vio.me (Worker, Greece) – demonstrate an explicit commitment to ecologically sustainable work. Green Campus Cooperative works in the area of textiles and garments, a historically ecologically exploitative industry, and Vio.me manufactures ecologically sustainable cleaning products. Both cooperatives mandate exclusive engagement with cooperative and fair trade chains, as well as only sourcing products that are organic or otherwise sustainably created. Knowledge Worker only takes on projects that align with their views on sustainability (e.g. developing a carsharing cooperative). The overarching guiding principle for all of these coopyouth is that of intentional participation with values-aligned actors and explicit non-participation with suppliers, distributors or others that prop up the economic, political, and social systems that are harming humanity and the earth.

Legality is Not Morality

Ventanilla (Worker, Mexico) was faced with a conundrum following a hurricane that decimated the mangroves in their community watershed. Government regulations following the disaster dictated that no mangroves could be planted until a formal process had been evolved. Six years passed by the time such a process was successfully legislated. Ventanilla knew that, if they waited out the government’s bureaucracy, the watershed and their community would be lost. Their priorities were the life and wellbeing in their community; they struggled with the dissonance between legality and morality, given that the legal route ensured death and destruction. The survival of humanity is more important than respecting governmental bureaucracy, just as legality is not morality.

Healing & Repair

In order for an organism to survive an injury, logically, they must experience healing and repair of that harm; the same is true for systemic harms that have occured and persisted through the history of humanity. The topic of healing as a prerequisite for social transformation is a common thread among the coopyouth statements referenced and outlined in the “How We Got Here” section. During the 1995 Congress of the Alliance, Ian MacPherson publicly acknowledged that many of the cooperative legacies throughout the world are rooted in colonization and imperialism, broad-scale systemic harms that reverberate still today. It is imperative to address these histories and to rectify harms as much as possible if the Cooperative Movement is to be successful in creating an economically, ecologically, and socially sustainable society. Repaired Nations (MSC, United States) speaks to the necessity of repairing those harmed by colonization, particularly African people who were violently enslaved and trafficked away from their lands and people. Repaired Nations views cooperative development as a method of self-help and self-responsibility, both cooperative values, to repair communities which have suffered enduring harms. This empowered orientation towards repair can be both embraced and supported by the Cooperative Movement at large, specifically via the practice of reparations, by giving Repaired Nations and other cooperative memberships negatively impacted by colonization and imperialism. More pragmatic applications of the ethics of repair and reparations are discussed in more detail in the key issue section on “Capital.”