Feb 6, 2024  on Redneck Gone Green will be joined by Kali Akuno, founder of Cooperation Jackson. We will discuss how serious, practical revolutionaries can engage in electoral politics without compromising our vision or values.

We broadcast live at  6pm Eastern 3pm Pacific every Tuesday. You can join us here on Youtube. You can also join us on Rumble.  Please subscribe to our Rumble channel and keep an eye out for when we post our livestream 24 hours before our broadcast. 

Below my signature is a thought piece that puts the topic into a deeper context. As always, we ask you to participate in this growing community by liking, commenting, and sharing our content.

Onward to the world we deserve,
David Cobb (he/him)
Why I put my pronouns in my email signature

Build & Fight

People who want transformational change tend to fall into one of two categories when it comes to elections. 

One group says “If electrons could change anything they would be illegal.” This group advocates building mass movements that can make systemic change. 

The other group says “ If we want a peaceful, just, democratic, and sustainable society we must elect people who will enact legislation to do those things.” This group advocates engaging in elections to make systemic change.

They are both right, which means that they are also both wrong. It isn’t an either/or proposition. It must be a both/and.

What if there was a way to engage in electoral politics from an explicitly transformational perspective, and was also rooted in mass movements? What if that effort was explicitly transpartisan?  In other words, actively supported and engaged with candidates from multiple parties.  Such a  formation would need to identify, recruit, and support candidates who make a public commitment to an unapologetically Left/Progressive agenda. 

That formation would also need to require that candidates make a public pledge to never  seek or accept corporate money. And that formation would need to be willing to work with Greens, Socialists, Independents, and progressive Democrats.

Kali Akuno and I are in the early stages of building that formation. We are calling it “Build & Fight.” To be clear– we know that the kind of systemic change we advocate for will never be led by politicians. Only a broad, deep and politically educated mass movement can do that. So we insist that the movement must drive the process. That means learning to engage in electoral politics without becoming an electoral fetishist.

We imagine Build & Fight has a place where we go beyond merely raising money and giving it to candidates, or running “get out the vote” efforts. We do anticipate endorsing candidates, drafting Model legislation, and lobbying elected officials. But we want to go deeper and include trainings for candidates, and using participatory process of People's Assemblies to build local power that transcends candidates.

We are also clear and unequivocal about our commitment to integrate political education into electoral work. We will  talk in plain terms about White Supremacy, Heteropatriarchy, Imperialism/Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism. As Kali often says “Break it down without dumbing it down.”

We want to build a cross-sectoral democracy movement, that has a systemic approach to:

Democratize Economy

• Public Banking

• Participatory Budgeting

• Community Land Trusts

• Worker-Owned Cooperatives

• Municipal Energy

• Universal Basic Income

Democratize Elections

• Publicly Funded Elections

• Proportional Representation & Ranked Choice Voting

• Felony Re-enfranchisement

• Immigrant Voting Rights

• Same Day Voter Registration

• Election Day as Holiday

Democratize The Law

• Abolish Doctrine of Corporate Constitutional Rights

• Abolish Doctrine of Money Equals Speech

• Advance Self-Rule initiatives

• Advocate for Quo Warranto actions (Corporate Charter Revocation)

• Pass Corporate “Three Strikes” laws

• Require Shareholder Vote Before Political Donations Made with Corporate Funds

• Prohibiting corporations from spending any money in elections

I invite you to join this conversation live on Tues, Feb 6 at 3pm pacific, 6pm eastern. Kali Akuno is a leader in social change work, and this is an opportunity to engage with him directly. If you cannot join us live, you can go to our Youtube account and watch the recording.

Kali Akuno

Kali is a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, and served as the Director of Special Projects and External Funding in the Mayoral Administration of the late Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. 

His focus in this role was supporting cooperative development, the introduction of eco-friendly and carbon reduction methods of operation, and the promotion of human rights and international relations for the city. 

Kali has served as the Co-Director of the US Human Rights Network, the Executive Director of the Peoples' Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) based in New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. He is on the Board of Directors of the US Solidarity Economy Network and was a co-founder of the School of Social Justice and Community Development (SSJCD), a public school serving the academic needs of low-income African American and Latino communities in Oakland, California.