Dear Co-op Cincy Community,
This is going to be another newsletter that’s a little different than our normal format. We promise to get back to sharing updates about the amazing work our co-ops are doing—including pivots to address COVID-19—soon.
For now, we need to pause to respect not just our deep, deep pain, but also the incredible organizing happening in the Movement for Black Lives all over the country, and especially in Minneapolis, where George Floyd died at the hands of the police.
We also believe very strongly that the organizers in this movement have opened up an opportunity that we cannot afford to miss, and we want to heed their urgent calls to action. In just one week, we saw four major victories in the fight for Justice for George Floyd: the arrest of police officer Derek Chauvin, the removal of Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman and assignment of Attorney General Keith Ellison to the case, yesterday’s vote by the Minneapolis Public Schools to cut their contract with the Minneapolis Police Department, and yesterday’s announcement that AG Ellison is elevating the charges and holding all four officers accountable.
In the coming weeks, we have an opportunity to channel our collective rage and heartbreak into real, tangible change, with lasting impact for years to come. That’s why we’re putting our usual newsletter on pause—and pieces of our usual work, as well.
We know that many of you are doing the same.
If you can create any more space in your day, in your evening, or in your heart, to support the Movement for Black Lives, please do.
If you can push yourself to make phone calls, donations or take risks you haven’t before, please do. It is inspiring to see that several leading organizations in Minneapolis have started redirecting donations to other organizations, to build out a robust ecosystem. You can find the latest updates to this list at bit.ly/fundthecommunity.
Late last week, Minneapolis NAACP President Leslie Redmond said, “What you’re witnessing in Minnesota is something that’s been a long time coming. I can’t tell you how many governors I’ve sat down with, how many mayors we’ve sat down with. And we’ve warned them that you keep murdering black people, the city will burn. We have stopped the city from burning numerous times, and we are not responsible for it burning now.”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explained further in his L.A. Times op-ed, “Don’t understand the protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge.” To say the fires hurt the Movement for Black Lives, Abdul-Jabbar says, “You’re not wrong—but you’re not right, either.”
But it wasn’t long at all before long-time activists for Black Lives, like Hennepin County Commissioner Angela Conley started reporting from the ground that violence and arson was being committed much more widely by white supremacists.
Minneapolis residents quickly banded together to organize community-driven fire response teams, and organized all-night watches on the level of their neighborhood, their block and their house or apartment building. This while also organizing the massive outpouring of donations of food and diapers all across the city—where residents don’t have access to grocery stores at this time. And continuing to show up and show out in the streets. The movement in Minneapolis is an incredible show of solidarity, intersectionality, interconnectedness and community care. This is part of the vision we have for our networked community of co-ops in Cincinnati, and for co-op networks around the country.
For more up-to-date information and calls to action from Minneapolis, you can follow the Black Visions Collective on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. For national calls to action, follow the Movement for Black Lives. Here in Cincinnati, we suggest looking to the leadership of organizations like the NAACP, the Community Economic Advancement Initiative (CEAI) and donating to organizations like Mortar, which is building out an ecosystem of black-owned businesses. If you work in philanthropy, you may be inspired by the ways Rodney Foxworth of Common Future is leveraging his experience as a black man in the U.S. to develop a radically different way to resource our communities. If you don’t find a way to tap in there, you can check out this long-term, broad list of steps for white allies, written a few years ago. Some of these are relevant for all of us. Another opportunity is to take action for meaningful police reform in partnership with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and 400 organizations.
For now, we’ll leave you with this 2015 vision poem, a true gift to us all, from Minneapolis author, artist and activist Junauda Petrus-Nasah.
--Mari Mancini,
Director of Communications and Strategy at Co-op Cincy
with the support of all the hearts and minds on the team
Could we please give the police departments
to the grandmothers ?!!!
The elders, healers, lovers and sweeteners?
Poem by Junauda
Could we please give the police departments to the grandmothers? Give them the salaries and the pensions and the city vehicles, but make them a fleet of vintage corvettes, jaguars and cadillacs, with white leather interior. Diamond in the back, sunroof top and digging the scene with the gangsta lean.
Let the cars be badass!
You would hear the old school jams like Patti Labelle, Anita Baker and Al Green. You would hear Sweet Honey in the Rock harmonizing on “We who believe in freedom will not rest” bumping out the speakers.
And they got the booming system.
If you up to mischief, they will pick you up swiftly in their sweet ride and look at you until you catch shame and look down at your lap. She asks you if you are hungry and you say “yes” and of course you are. She got a crown of dreadlocks and on the dashboard you see brown faces like yours, shea buttered and loved up.
And there are no precincts.
Just love temples, that got spaces to meditate and eat delicious food. Mangoes, blueberries, nectarines, cornbread, peas and rice, fried plantain, fufu, yams, greens, okra, pecan pie, salad and lemonade.
Things that make your mouth water and soul arrive.
All the hungry bellies know warmth, all the children expect love. The grandmas help you with homework, practice yoga with you and teach you how to make jambalaya and coconut cake. From scratch.
When your sleepy she will start humming and rub your back while you drift off. A song that she used to have the record of when she was your age. She remembers how it felt like to be you and be young and not know the world that good. Grandma is a sacred child herself, who just circled the sun enough times into the ripeness of her cronehood.
She wants your life to be sweeter.
When you are wildin’ out because your heart is broke or you don’t have what you need the grandmas take your hand and lead you to their gardens. You can lay down amongst the flowers. Her grasses, roses, dahlias, irises, lilies, collards, kale, eggplants, blackberries. She wants you know that you are safe and protected, universal limitless, sacred, sensual, divine and free.
Grandma is the original warrior, wild since birth, comfortable in loving fiercely. She has fought so that you don’t have to, not in the same ways at least.
So give the police departments to the grandmas, they are fearless, classy and actualized. Blossomed from love. They wear what they want and say what they please.
Believe that.
There wouldn’t be noise citations when the grandmas ride through our streets, blasting Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Alice Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, KRS-One. All that good music. The kids gonna hula hoop to it and sell her lemonade made from heirloom pink lemons and maple syrup. The car is solar powered and carbon footprint-less, the grandmas designed the technology themselves.
At night they park the cars in a circle so all can sit in them with the sun roofs down, and look at the stars, talk about astrological signs, what to plant tomorrow based on the moon’s mood and help you memorize Audre Lorde and James Baldwin quotes. She always looks you in the eye and acknowledges the light in you with no hesitation or fear. And grandma loves you fiercely forever.
She sees the pain in our bravado, the confusion in our anger, the depth behind our coldness. Grandma know what oppression has done to our souls and is gonna change it one love temple at a time. She has no fear.
