The Era of Collaboration

From housing issues to cultural appreciation, JASecon is a collaborative movement inspiring a better tomorrow.

Originally born out of the need for good produce in a low-income housing neighborhood of Oakland, California, the San Fransisco bay Wiki is helping grassroots projects succeed. Specializing in bring people together, JASecon is, “an informal grouping of folks active in the social justice and worker co-op communities. Our goal is to facilitate communication amongst the activists developing economic alternatives in a variety of arenas.”

A member of the inspiring group, Bernard Marszalek, was kind enough to answer some questions focused on the importance of collaboration. Here’s what he had to say…

EC: What was the spark that set the people of West Oakland into activating a collaborative betterment of life and the creation of JASecon?

BM: The JASecon project developed from a discussion at a December (2007) NoBAWC meeting where the limitations of the Green Festival of 2007 was generally recognized as becoming too commercial and irrelevant for the Network to participate in. For several years some of the cooperatives (I always mean the worker co-ops in the SF area… most of which are members of the Network) tried to encourage more coop participation in the green festival for marketing and outreach (the political side) to the larger community. But participation peaked in 2005 and began to decline since then, partly because of the expense and partly because the coops where lost within the hugeness of the event and so had little impact.

The idea was thrown out at that meeting that Network should have its own festival. That idea was discussed through the beginning of 2008 and in the summer the idea of extending the invitation to the large community of non-profits and volunteer groups, etc., that contributed to the economy surfaced. The Network had discussed an outreach to folks working in other areas of the economy under other organizational forms for some time and this idea of pulling folks together to talk about collaboration on some level seemed right. A critical mass of projects was apparent but not much communication between projects was happening.

The Network already was a template for that kind of collaboration amongst the co-ops and it was a natural model for expanding the Network informally. The Network called a meeting for Oct 2008 to discuss this idea and you will find the “Call” on the JASecon wiki.

At that meeting 30 groups were represented from all areas of the emerging economy: non-profit advocacy groups, a dance collective, a local on-line journalist project, clothing designer, bakery with farm that grew the ingredients for their pies and employed kids from la raza to both work in the store and on the farm (one of my fav projects), an advocate of free-exchange, and many more, with seven co-ops represented. After four hours of getting acquainted and discussing what folks could get behind the idea of a “trade fair” got everybody excited.

The idea was to present to the public what was somewhat hidden from public view – people working on a rich diversity of projects that taken together demonstrated that “another world is possible” to use the phrase from the World Social Forums.

I think with this background you can better appreciate the content on the wiki.

EC: Where are you seeing the largest growth in collaborative movements?

BM: Latin America is way ahead of the world in terms of the Solidarity Economy. I know that the recuperated factories in Argentina have as an aim more collaboration to sustain them beyond organizational assistance to economic alliances. I mean this is the aim of all our work – to create synergies of economic relationships between alternative economic projects.

EC: What components are vital to a cooperative business idea succeeding?

BM: Besides the same components of any business succeeding: excellent plan and financing the level of agreement among the parties creating the co-op and the community support.

EC: In your opinion, what is the key factor of taking an alternative business dream, such as a cooperative, to reality?

BM: The commitment of those who have the dream. The reason I have a dim view of the whole idea of social entrepreneurship is that it is based on the illusion of one person with a great idea. Sometimes that works, but most often a sustainable project requires getting others on board… and of course one person might play an excellent role in sparking an idea, the project won’t succeed unless that person can find a crew to work with.

Charisma can charm others, but collaboration is so much more satisfying for all involved and prefigures what I like to think of as a “society of friends.” Mondragon adopts this approach. They encourage collaboration because they know that any project they support must use the talents of more than one person and will thrive if the origins are based on peer relationships, not hierarchical ones.

EC: Do you believe that collaborative business practices will eventually become the norm?

BM: What’s the alternative? Avatar? I think that the research I just wrote about that gives scientific verification to the old belief that people are naturally cooperative is one of the building blocks to a worldview that is developing. This empathetic worldview is evident in the amazing support for the people of Haiti.

EC: You wrote in response to the Conference of Parties at Copenhagen (COP-15) that, “Given the crisis we face, and the institutional inability of the oligarchy to respond in a meaningful way, as witnessed in Copenhagen, we have no choice but to create true cooperative and democratic communities to sustain us in our fight for “system change.” What can we as individuals do to help create cooperative and democratic communities?

BM: You know I think tons of people are working towards these ends but never conceptualize what they may be doing in their lives as related to the larger, global issues. I think the first step is for that realization to sink in. Specifically, and here I am speaking about the cooperative ski area business model you and your husband are activating, you are steps down the road to creating livable communities. It seems now that you are searching for both grounding in a clear way to conceive of what you want to do and for a venue… a community of peers to work with. My heartfelt appreciation of the worthiness of your intentions and my best wishes that they can be realized with others.

Thank you Bernard for sharing your knowledge and time for the good of collaboration…and your kind words in regards to the ski area cooperative movement.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.