Kali Akuno (4:40)

Wow.

Richard Wolff (4:40)

The global food system is broken, said Professor Tim Benton at the University of Leeds. And here's the crucial thing he the cost of damage to human health and the environment is much greater than the profits made by by the industry that produces and distributes the food. I would add the profits which are less than the damage. And so it's not efficient what we're doing. Those profits go to a small number of people, but the damage, that's for all of us. This is not the way to own and operate a food system. My next update has to do with something as hard to pin down. It's the term loneliness. More and more jobs in Western Europe, North America and Japan are situations where people cobble together a part time job here and another part time job there. They don't have many benefits that go with their jobs. They don't have much job security with all of that situation, they don't have enough time for themselves. What the Europeans call the work life battle balance is out of whack. Life gets sacrificed because work and the amount of money you don't get for working plunge you into an endless set of activities to make up for all of that. And they take away time for relationships, time for yourself. And the result is a loneliness that is a serious economic problem. Let me give you some examples. The American government estimates it spends $7 billion a year in extra health care costs associated with what it calls social isolation. People having no one to talk to, no one to be with, no one to lean on, being lonely. Doctors in the United Kingdom report 75% of doctors report that between one and five people come into their practices a day whose main ailment is loneliness. Wow. In the United States, 22 to 50%, that's the range of estimates. A quarter to a half of the US population is estimated to be socially disconnected.

Kali Akuno (7:00)

Wow.

Richard Wolff (7:01)

We are a society that calls it progress when more and more people are socially isolated and even to the point of producing serious mental and physical ailments. Reflecting the Loneliness that helps bring the disease and blocks overcoming it in many different ways. It's a reason to rethink the way we've organized our economy, isn't it? In the news this last few weeks? Raids by the German police on the largest bank in Germany, the Deutsche Bank. They have had tussles with the police before. The police are raiding the offices of the biggest bank in the country because it is accused of money laundering, criminal money laundering. I'm always struck by these efforts to grab and punish the people at the top. First I'm struck that it happens in Germany. It still hasn't happened here. Top officials of the bank are in trouble in Germany. They're not in trouble here. Somehow lower officials get into trouble, if any at all do. But there's a more important point. Going after the people at the top. Let that go. Okay, if you want to do that, fine. But you're not solving the problem that way. The problem is banks are set up in a capitalist economy to do all kinds of things that make them a lot of money, but which skirt the law or break the law or go around the law. The trick is to change the system so you're not giving rewards to the people at the top for doing what we keep catching them doing. Throwing the latest bunch in the clink is only to prepare the way for the underlings who, who've been training for this all their lives to rise up to the position where the same system of rewards and punishments will likely get the same result from them. You gotta do something more basic about your financial system. If finance is the lifeblood of our economic system, which surely it is, if it's something we all depend on, which surely it is. But if leaving it in the hands of private profiteers leads to the kind of crooked, dangerous, dangerous antisocial behavior we see, then the logical conclusion is why are we allowing profit making hustlers, excuse me, bankers, to get between the financing we need and the rest of us as a population. Why are we doing that? It's the same question as we pose to why we allow food as a basic necessity to be handled in a for profit enterprise way. Next item has to do with London. We're international. This week, London housing prices keep falling and they're now threatened if this Brexit disaster unfolds as many expect it to, to drop BY maybe another 30%. Wow. Now the people who are looking at this crisis keep wanting to blame it on this or that particular thing, Brexit or this or that. But it isn't housing prices are starting to go down everywhere in New York and California, just as in London. And it has to do with the capitalist system getting ready for one of its periodic downturns. I've been reporting on this for quite a while. It's expected by all financial professionals. It's only a question of exactly when, which is always difficult to predict. But we're due for one. Capitalism has them every four to seven years on average. We're more than seven years since the crash of 2008 and nine. So we're due for one. And one of the things you begin to see when these crises happen often is a falling housing market. The problem is the system, not this or that particular detail. Also, in recent weeks we have seen mass, not only the massive protest of the French people going into the streets to protest against high fuel pricesgas, diesel and so on, but also to protest wages are too low, prices are too high. They're angry. They're not working through the political system because they don't believe the political parties, any of them, are able or willing to become vehicles for the popular mass democratic majority demand of the economy to be met. So they're doing it themselves. The French are very famous for that, ever since their revolution. Going into the streets is what they do. And now we see it in Belgian, next door to France as well, everyone wearing those yellow jackets as the symbol. We want change in the economy. And if the existing political parties can't be vehicles for it, we're going to stop life as normal and business as usual and make it clear change has to happen. It's a remarkable politically active society, but it gets things done. The government of Mr. Macron is shaking to its foundations, unable to stop this by the police, unable to stop it by accusing the people of violence when the vast majority of these activities had no violence at all. And the violence was perpetrated by small groups of demonstrators and by the police, probably in equal measure. My last update has to do with the United States here and the continuing wondering why so many people are left behind in our economy, why the so called recovery has left so many people out. And an interesting new study carried on National Public Radio, by the way, points out that the young generation, the millennials, are simply hurting the economy because they're.

Co-host or Producer (13:05)

Not earning what the previous generation did.

Richard Wolff (13:07)

People at the same age, in their 20s, in their 30s, in their 40s, today, are not able to spend the way the last generation was when it was in its 20s, 30s and 40s. And the end result is no great mystery. They're not buying the goods and services, which means the jobs aren't there. They're not spending the money, which means the wages can't be paid. And we have developed an economy that is crippling itself. That's called the contradictions of capitalism. And it's something we better pay attention to. Well, we've come to the end of.

Co-host or Producer (13:41)

The first half of Economic Update.

Richard Wolff (13:44)

Before I introduce our guest, Mr. Kali.

Co-host or Producer (13:48)

Akuna from Mississippi, someone I think you'll find extraordinarily interesting.

Richard Wolff (13:54)

I wanted to remind you please to become a subscriber to our YouTube channel for democracy at Work for Economic Update. This program. It helps us enormously and it's an easy step for you. Make use of our website, democracyatwork.info where you can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and finally be a partner with us, make use of our.

Co-host or Producer (14:19)

Websites and our social media that way.

Richard Wolff (14:22)

And a special thank you to the Patreon community which supports us and for.

Co-host or Producer (14:27)

Which we are very grateful.

Richard Wolff (14:29)

Stay with us. We will be right back.

Co-host or Producer (14:42)

Welcome back, friends, to the second half of Economic Update. Well, it is my great pleasure and an honor indeed to bring back to you, not the first time he's been with us, Kali Akuno. He is an important person changing this country and it is a pleasure to keep up with how he's doing that. Together with all the others working with him in Jackson, Mississippi.

Richard Wolff (15:07)

Kali Akuno is the co founder and.

Co-host or Producer (15:09)

Director of Cooperation Jackson.

Richard Wolff (15:11)

He served as the director of special projects and external funding in the mayoral.

Co-host or Producer (15:17)

Administration of the late Chakwe Lumumba of Jackson, Mississippi.

Richard Wolff (15:22)

He's a human rights educator, a writer.

Co-host or Producer (15:25)

And an organizer focusing on building organizations.

Richard Wolff (15:28)

And institutions for the working class and oppressed communities. Kali is also the co editor of Jackson the Struggle for Economic Democracy and.

Co-host or Producer (15:40)

Black Self Determination in Jackson, Mississippi.

Richard Wolff (15:44)

Kali, thank you very much for joining us today.

Kali Akuno (15:46)

Pleasure to be here as always.

Richard Wolff (15:48)

Okay. Well, for the benefit of those who may not have heard about it before, I'm sure there are a few souls like that still left. Tell us a little bit about what Cooperation Jackson is and why you're working with it.

Kali Akuno (16:02)

Well, we are an emerging cooperative federation based in Jackson, Mississippi. That's right, you heard that correctly. Jackson, Mississippi. We are coming up on our fifth year anniversary. So a relatively young organization. And we build worker, owner, co ops and other solidarity institutions and practices like a CLT and working on a time bank, you name it, we're trying to do it in terms of transforming the economy on a local level.

Richard Wolff (16:30)

Well, for me and people who Watch this show and who listen to this show know that. The thing that probably most grabbed me when I learned about cooperation, Jackson, was that last point you made, the focus on cooperation, on worker cooperatives, because that economic development every city in America says it is doing. But between those who are really doing it and those who are just shelling out subsidies to companies to come there, you really stand out because of this focus on co ops. Why is that? Tell me why. Tell us why. Why is that so major a part of what you're doing?

Kali Akuno (17:11)

Well, coming from a historically marginalized and oppressed community, we've seen time and time again, city after city, state after state, all these incentives of bringing in companies like you say, that just extract from the people and exploit our people. We have talents, we have skills, and we have our own needs. And so we want to change and shift the focus and paradigm. We're at a stage now in capitalism like, look, they're not bringing in quality jobs anywhere. You all in New York, I think will be catching a whiff of that soon with some new developments. And so our thing is like, look, nobody's coming to save us. What can we do ourselves with the resources and the skills that we have to transform our own situation? So workers getting together, trying to create avenues of substance for themselves to make a little bit of money here and there, to sustain themselves, improve their own quality of life. That's what we're about. Not trying to wait for somebody else to come with some great new jobs or new ideas, but starting with the things that are within our ability to do and reaching out to allies and say, hey, support us in this effort and endeavor and we're going to create the jobs and the substance that we need with our own hands. And for us, there's a political piece to this. We do see ourselves as on a project of trying to build socialism from the bottom up. And worker co ops being a vehicle to do that based upon their democratic nature, both in terms of planning, management, execution and a division of whatever is gained and how that's distributed to those who've done that labor and put in their time and effort.

Richard Wolff (18:54)

So it'll be the workers themselves who build this and who reap whatever benefits it has, instead of a group of investors maybe thousands of miles away. That's right. Figuring out a way. That's right. You know, your story reminds me of how I explain what probably is the most successful worker co op in the world. The Mondragon Corporation in Spain. There's a story they tell if you go and visit Them, which I did.

Co-host or Producer (19:22)

And they say back in 1956 there.

Richard Wolff (19:25)

Was this priest in this northern part of Spain, guy named Father Arizmendi. And he made a famous speech to his little Catholic parish that he was the priest at. And the speech went roughly like this. It was a very poor area then. I mean no jobs. It's just really one of the poorest areas of Spain which wasn't a rich country then either.

Co-host or Producer (19:48)

And he said if we wait for.

Richard Wolff (19:50)

People to come in here and give us a job, we'll all die of old age before it happens. So everybody laughs and he says, so the only thing for us to do is not to wait. We'll be our own boss, we'll set it up. And with six workers, six in this medium sized town of Mondragon in the north of Spain, they set up this corporation which today has 100,000 workers and is one of the most successful worker co ops. It's actually a family of 200 plus worker co ops. So in a sense it sounds to me like you are following in some sense in those footsteps you are trying.

Kali Akuno (20:30)

To apply here explicitly, very explicitly. I mean Mondragon has been a driving force behind a lot of our thinking going back over almost 30 years that we've known about Mondragon. And many people within our network have gone to visit it over the years. So we've taken a lot of examples and a lot of lessons from Mandragon. You know, one of our key things that we borrow from them is, you know, this is not heaven and we are not angels. Because you know, it's challenging to do this type of, as you know, as the old saying, as long as there's two human beings on the planet, there's gonna be politics. So you have to deal with all the different types of conflicts and things that emerge. It's not easy. But they've I think blazed a path that we are trying to follow, learn from. We have to adapt to our own conditions, which we're doing. But very explicitly we draw from Mondragon, always have.

Richard Wolff (21:22)

I think there's another lesson there too because people said, well that's a poor part of Spain. It's been poor for generations and it's hopeless and it can'. And they proved that that's wrong. If you take this different approach, the worker co op approach, you can do what they thought you couldn't do. And given that capitalism in the United States has tried to overcome poverty umpteen times, has tried to be less imbalanced in which parts of the countries are doing well and which part of the country isn't. In fact, you are like Mondragon, Mississippi in general. Jackson as well hasn't been developed by the capitalist approaches to that problem. And in a way, no one's got anything to say about what you're doing and give you a chance, let's see if you can do better than what they've done, which isn't a high bar.

Co-host or Producer (22:10)

Anyway, to get over.

Kali Akuno (22:11)

Okay, no stretching imagination it is.

Richard Wolff (22:14)

Let me ask another kind of question. How have the people in Jackson, white and black, responded? What kind of reaction do you get? What kind of. How do people feel about what you're doing?

Kali Akuno (22:29)

Depends on who you talk to, of course. To be honest, it really depends on who you talk to most. So just to give folks in the audience a little bit about Jackson, if they don't know, Jackson is 200,000 people roughly, it's over 80% black. It's a fairly impoverished community. You know, the average income for a family of four is typically under $40,000 throughout the city. And so it really depends, you know, for a lot of black working class people who constitute the overwhelming majority of the city, there's a lot of love and appreciation for what we're trying to do. But there's also a kind of wait and see type attitude of, you know, let's see where this is going to go and how big and can I get a job? When is the job going to be?

Richard Wolff (23:14)

Well, so they've had their hopes stashed in the past and you can understand.

Kali Akuno (23:18)

Oh yeah, we can understand they're skeptical. There's caution. And I would be cautious too, in a lot of regards. People promise a lot of big things. And amongst more of the white community, Jackson has a fair number of white progressives, white liberals. I would say we're a concentrated area for that in Mississippi, but we have a fair number of just outright reactionaries as well. And they are bitter enemies. They target us quite frequently. Our little operation has a proportionate outreach in the political scene far beyond what its real measure is. So we're often attacking the state legislature for introducing new ideas around sustainability and climate justice and worker democracy that are constantly kind of attacked year in and year out. So we have that broad impact. So it really depends on who you talk to. You know, I would say, and it runs a fair gamut of love and appreciation and, you know, people making great sacrifices to help our work grow and develop and then those who are just utterly trying to see us destroyed. So it really runs the gamut.

Richard Wolff (24:28)

Okay, Tell me this is primarily, is it correct to say that this is primarily a project aimed at the African American community?

Kali Akuno (24:39)

Primarily, but not exclusively, not by any stretch of the imagination. And we don't, from the perspective that we come from, we have to start with the community from which we emerge, which is the black community, and try to do everything we can to empower and transform the community, to give it some actual control over its own destiny. Right. So it's very much premise on the politics of self determination, but we are very clear we're trying to transform all of Mississippi and that entails having to move the white working class in particular. And so we are very conscious and deliberate about working on a broad class base with cultural specificity. Because you got to remember, there's Choctaw who are still there in Mississippi, there's the Mississippi Chinese, which is a very unique community. And then there's a growing communities of immigrants in Mississippi. And everybody has a right to be there. And so our thing is, how do we improve the situation for working class people regardless of their ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, creed, color, et cetera, how do we do that? But the first thing we gotta do is start amongst ourselves with the knowledge that we have in the community we have, and then reach out. So right now it's primarily that, but we have a broad term and a long term aim of taking over the state, I mean as a broad political project, not just Jackson. So we know we have to build allies in the course of that fight over time and that's what we're aiming to do.

Richard Wolff (26:08)

So you're not going to be an ally of Mr. Trump in beating up on immigrants?

Kali Akuno (26:12)

Not at all. If anything, we need to be the welcoming committee.

Richard Wolff (26:16)

There we go. There we go. Okay, given the limits of time, I want to pick up on the last thing. What is your hope? And let yourself go here. What's your hope that not only will you accomplish hopefully for Jackson, for Mississippi, but what's the kind of message of your very effort for the rest of the country? What would you like to see Americans all over the country who are listening to this program, watching this program, what should they take from this, at least in your hopes?

Kali Akuno (26:49)

Let me put it this way. We are trying to build eco socialism in this country from the bottom up, starting with worker co ops and solidarity, economy, institutions. And our aim and objective is to be a beacon that helps this transformation from below and to do it as quickly as possible. We subscribe to the view that we don't have much time to avert the ecological kind of calamity that's rapidly creeping up on us. But we believe that with some focus, energy and determination and an appreciation for science, which some of our other folks are vehemently denying, that we can actually do this reversal. We can do it quick, but it's going to take a lot of will determination. So for anybody out there listening to this or viewing this, that's ultimately what we're trying to accomplish from the bottom up. That's really where we're going.

Richard Wolff (27:38)

I would only add that the crisis I see as a professional economist is as bad coming from the economic system that is breaking down as from the related refusal to see the global warming, the climate change and everything else we're heading. I want to Yes, I want to thank you for coming.

Co-host or Producer (28:01)

I want also all of you to think about what kind of a pioneer these folks in Jackson, Mississippi, are. They're trying to change the whole direction not only of their own community, but of the broader community. They're reaching out to us as well as building from the ground up in.

Richard Wolff (28:22)

The hopes that we will do it as well.

Co-host or Producer (28:24)

I want to thank you all for listening. I want to remind you that this interview will continue on Economic Update Extra for those of you in the Patreon community, and you can follow it by Simply going to patreon.com economicupdate and looking for Economic Update Extra for all of you. I say, as I always do, I look forward to speaking with you again next week.