I’m tired of going to work and making
money for other people and who are those
people anyways those people that make
money from your work well they’re
capitalists they have capital and they
use your labor to make more capital so
if you’re tired of going to work and
making money for other people then
you’re probably likely just tired of
capitalism which is ironic because I’m a
capitalist I own a small business
our CEO tires in Compton a few years ago
when I read Van Jones and he wrote let’s
make green collar jobs in the hood I
took him really seriously so I
co-founded own and operate a tire
recycling company and I’m really proud
of what we’ve done so far we’ve recycled
a hundred million pounds of rubber
that’s 21 million gallons of oil
diverted from landfills into new
products we also employ about 15 guys
mostly people of color most of whom are
felons and we pay above the minimum wage
and we are now proud members of the
now our CEO is not a cooperative now a
privately held company with community
minded ownership but I would like it to
become I would like for them to fire the
boss that’s me and I’m gonna tell you
why but first let me tell you how we got
started so a lot of people ask you know
how did our CEO come to be and I have to
be really honest I leveraged my white
privilege so here’s how white privilege
worked for me and our CEO my white
grandmother was born on her family’s
plantation in Arkansas in 1918 she
traveled with her white father west
following the oil boom and he held
various Union oil jobs jobs which would
have never been given to my black
great-grandfather had he lived here at
the time
granny became a hairdresser and then
used Oh then got a loan with her husband
to build their home in West Los Angeles
alone which would never have been given
to a black family at the time and after
my grandfather passed away my granny was
able to keep that house because she had
his pension and his health care from a
state job which he held which again
would have never been given to a black
man before the anti-discrimination act
of the 1960’s so you fast forward 30
years and I graduate and I want to start
my own business with a pallid debt and a
credit card and no experience in the
tire industry but I had what most people
didn’t have I had a clean safe free
place to live
I moved in with my grandmother and I was
able to rent our first warehouse buy our
first truck pay our first employees
because I didn’t have to worry about
paying myself because I didn’t need to
feed myself because I am the direct
beneficiary of generations of white
privilege now telling the story of white
privilege is important because very
often people say oh we want more
companies like yours we want more our ce
o–‘s we want more black owned
businesses female-led triple bottom line
ban the box green manufacturing
companies right but the question we have
to ask is where is the wealth where is
the money where is the capital
communities to build the type of
businesses that we want and in telling
the story of the white side of my family
I named a dozen ways where blacks were
excluded from the economy whereas the
white side of my family was able to gain
access and traction and build wealth
primarily because racism and capitalism
are best taught me but but what that
means is that when we ask ourselves you
know why are our communities broke like
we’re not just broke because we’re broke
or broke for a reason historical context
really does matter but our history tells
another story as well there’s this
incredible book called collective
courage which is the story of how
thousands of African Americans have been
able to build businesses and schools
hospitals farming cooperatives banks
financial institutions entire
communities and sovereign economies
without a lot of capital and they did it
by working together and leveraging their
community assets and trusting each other
and putting solidarity first not just
profits by any means necessary and they
didn’t have to wait around for
celebrities and athletes to bring their
money back to the hood however if you
are a celebrity an athlete and you’re
listening to this please feel free to
bring your money but they did it through
cooperative economics because they knew
that capitalism was never going to
finance black liberation so there’s so
many great examples in this book and I
suggest that everybody just read it
because it answers the question I asked
earlier which is where we’re gonna get
the wealth to build the types of
businesses that we want and the answer
is gonna have to be cooperative
economics there’s a lot of different
versions of co-operativism what I’m
talking about today is worker ownership
so you may not have heard of worker
ownership yet but it’s been an
incredible tool for black economic
liberation for a century and it’s also
working all over the world right now you
may have heard of black Wall Street or
maybe the zapatistas but I’ll give you
an example that’s a little bit closer to
home right now today in South Bronx is
the country’s largest worker owned
company it’s called cooperative homecare
associates and it was founded by black
and Latina homecare workers who are now
able to pay themselves living wages they
have full-time hours they have benefits
and a pension through their membership
as a unit of SEIU and these women owners
now receive a dividend back on their
ownership every year that the company
has been profitable which has been most
years so they’re able to really enjoy
the fruits of their labor because they
fire the boss they don’t have any big
investors they don’t have fat cat CEOs
or absentee owners taking the profit out
of the company they each pay in about a
thousand dollars over time in order to
gain ownership and now they own their
job now there’s hundreds of more
examples of companies like this bringing
up all across the country and I’m so
inspired by by what they’re doing
because it really represents an
alternative to the type of economy we
have now which exploits all of us
it also represents an alternative to
waiting around for big investors to
bring chain stores or big box stores to
our communities cuz honestly those types
of developments these steal resources
from our communities they put our
mom-and-pop shops out of just out of
business they make our entrepreneurs
into wage workers and they take money
out of our pocket and send it to their
shareholders so so inspired by all of
these stories of resistance and
resilience that I got together with a
few people here in Los Angeles and we’ve
created Lucy Lucy stands for the Los
Angeles Union cooperative initiative and
our objective is to create more worker
owned businesses here in Los Angeles so
far the last year we’ve created two
Pacific Electric an electrical company
and Vermont gage carwash which is right
near South Central some of you guys
might be familiar with it this longtime
car wash is now owned and operated by
it’s 20 workers all of whom are union
so you might be wondering why the focus
on union worker ownership but there’s a
lot of good reasons why the labor
movement is a natural ally to the worker
ownership movement in order to build
these companies that we want in our
community we’re going to need a few
things we’re going to need money we’re
gonna need people and we’re gonna need
training unions have all of those things
America’s working classes and paying
union dues for decades
and with it our unions have been
building dignified decent and democratic
workplaces for us
however Union jobs are on the steep
decline and it’s time for us to start
calling on our unions to really bring
all of their financial and political
capital to bear and the creation of new
Union were living wage jobs in our
communities also Union halls are full of
union members who understand the
importance of solidarity and the power
of collective action these are the types
of folks that want more union businesses
to exist so let’s build them with them
learning from our unions learning from
our past learning from our peers are all
going to be very very important to our
success which is why I’d like to leave
you with one last example and a vision
for the future and that vision is
Mondragon Spain Mondragon Spain is a
community built entirely around worker
cooperatives there’s 260 Plus businesses
here manufacturing everything from
bicycles to washing machines to
transformers and this group of
businesses now employs 80,000 people and
earns more than 12 billion euro in
revenue every year and all the companies
there are owned by the people that work
in them they’ve also built universities
and hospitals and financial institutions
I mean imagine if we could build
something like this in south-central
the actual thought the late mayor of
Jackson had a similar idea he wanted to
turn his entire city into a Mondragon
like cooperative economy calling his
ambitious plan Jackson rising and when I
look at WonderCon I see really what
working-class people can do for
ourselves when we work together and make
decisions for ourselves and each other
and our communities and what’s really
incredible about Mondragon is that why
we are dreaming about them they are
dreaming about us this community in
Spain has decided to launch an
international initiative to create more
communities like it all over the world
by linking up with unions by supporting
organizations like Lucy and by educating
folks about the worker ownership model
now here’s what you can do to be a part
of it if you are a union member go to
your union meetings and make sure that
your union has a worker ownership
initiative and become a part of it if
you’re an entrepreneur if you have a
small business or you’re interested in
starting one then link up with Lucy or
another organization like us to help you
get started on the co-operative model if
you’re a politician or you work for one
or you just like talking to them please
get the city state federal and County
legislation passed that we need in order
to fund and support worker owned
businesses and for everybody else learn
about our history learn about our models
and seek us out so that you can support
us you can buy from us invest in us lend
to us and join us because it’s really
going to take all of us in order to
build the more just and sustainable and
resilient economy that we want for
ourselves and our children and with that
I would like to leave you with a quote
from Arundhati Roy and she writes our
strategies should not be only to
confront the Empire but to lay siege to
it to deprive it of oxygen to mock it to
shame it with our art our literature our
music our brilliance our joy our Sheila
let lessness and our ability to tell our
own stories not the stories that were
being brainwashed to believe the
corporate revolution will collapse if we
refuse to buy what they’re selling their
ideas their version of history their
Wars their weapons their sense of
inevitability because know this they be
few
and we be many they need us more than we
need them another world is not only
possible she’s on her way and on a quiet
day I can hear her breathing thank you [Applause]