Equity, Growth, and Community pushed me to think about my future community engagement at Cooperation Jackson by stressing the significance of local-level processes like conflict and collaboration. Indeed, breaking down the term “diverse and dynamic epistemic communities” reveals something very close to what I imagine Cooperation Jackson’s mission and role to be. In particular, the idea of “a desire to move beyond the episodic, and a capacity to handle conflict even as they facilitate a sense of common destiny” provoked and confused me (p. 16). The importance of moving from reactive, as they say, “episodic,” organizing to the creation of a sustained, broad-based political movement has been stressed both in my study of labor history and in the political movements I’ve witnessed in my own communities. I have less clarity when it comes to the “they” of Benner and Pastor’s argument. Are the authors saying that community groups need to have the capacity to handle conflict while also endeavoring to construct a narrative of common destiny, or are they saying that the conflicts that communities deal with are part of the process of constructing that narrative? It seems to me that when the episodic is put into the context of greater structural crises like the authors describe in the first chapter, narratives naturally emerge. This is, in my understanding, part of the historical project and foundation of Cooperation Jackson, where activists and community members acknowledge and ground their organizing practices in the context of the history and legacy of American racial capitalism and slavery. I want to say one final thing on “common destiny” because I think this text does not, at least in the selection we read, do a lot to problematize the idea of growth, but rather takes it as an assumption. Even though they point out that growth has in some instances led to heightened inequality, they reposition the objective of community work to be progress towards a more equitable growth instead of an alternative measure of community wellbeing. Common destiny often includes growth, especially for communities that have been historically disinvested in or exploited, but should not be limited to or defined so strictly.
The case of Greensboro, North Carolina resonated strongly with me because of its many historic similarities with Jackson. The problem of inter-regional competition, especially with regard to courting outside investment at the municipal level, made me think about the ways in which Cooperation Jackson’s emphasis on community production disrupts the economic dependence problem for slow-to-transition formerly industrial localities. Especially in the legacies of slavery and the Jim Crow South, where black communities were intentionally forced into economic dependence on white employers and property owners, it seems painfully evident the “tepid” interventions in Greensboro that seem to secondarily target production are insufficient (p. 134). If education and skills training are the focus of community groups like Opportunity Greensboro and Action Greensboro, the problem of economic dependence at the primary level—where jobs come from and who owns the means of production—remains unaddressed. Finally, the deep fractures around racial issues and events like the Greensboro Massacre presents an enormous challenge to community healing and cooperation. I’d like to continue to think about how community organizations can play a role in mediating the traumatic events of the past and the contemporary ways they manifest and endure. Oral history comes to mind as a form of radical truth-telling and history-making that has great potential for this sort of endeavor. It was particularly interesting to me that the authors alluded to many interviews they conducted with local residents but included none of the primary source material in their analysis. This seems like a rich source of local knowledge and history that could inform the cooperative processes that the authors seek to facilitate. For my project this summer, I would be interested to pursue research with an oral history component that might be able to fill in some of these gaps in primary knowledge.
It should come as no surprise that I like your idea of bringing oral history into your research. Understanding how individuals situate themselves within broader narratives of personal, family, regional, national, or even global history helps to tease out the ways in which a “common destiny” might already be — or might one day be — theorized. It is always interesting to ask people to tell the stories of their lives because most of us are not practiced at doing so. For that reason, a more authentic (if that can be said) sense of identity and connection to other identities can emerge in oral history collaboration. To get to the question you ask in the first paragraph regarding conflict, I kind of think they are saying both. Managing conflict when it arises is part of trust-building, so I imagine that having the capacity to handle it gracefully and productively allows for more inclusive and perhaps modified narratives of progress. At CJ, I imagine this is something that happens a lot. You should ask about past conflicts, how they’ve handled them, and what the consequences have been!