It is an indisputable fact that generations of Black, Indigenous, and other Communities of Color around the world have succeeded in liberating themselves through cooperative labor. Instead of hero worship, rallying around cults of personality, and competing for status, we are free to choose at different path, the power is within our hands to organize as co-operators who own the means of production, economic democracy for social democracy.
While open to all, it is a practical vision deliberately centred on the equality and equity of violently disenfranchised BIPOC Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, Agender/Non-Binary, and the Disabled struggling to thrive beyond systemic oppression promoted by law and custom.
About me
Hello to all, I’m Muirén (muir + éan) and I’m a 66-years-old Black Trans Woman (AMAB — She, Her) who lives alone in a modest apartment located near Shattuck Ave, downtown Berkeley, California. In the sense that bell hooks defines in her books, papers, speeches, I am unapologetically Queer; Gender Non-Conforming, Lesbian, ACE (Romantic Demisexual), and expressing a diagnosed Neuro-Divergence.
I’m primarily self-funding a concept of community rooted in cultural and economic solidarity, an intentional, cooperative common sense. The ends a social movement seeks to achieve are shaped by the means it employs, so we are a cooperatively organized, sociocratically managed community of creatives supported by its own efforts.
The Co-Founders’ Homestead
My proposal is the development of community in progressive, sustainable stages; beginning with a modest place for residence, learning, and making to be purchased in a re-greenable, mixed-use zoned suburban setting. With a focus on cottage industry level production that serves to ensure the self-sufficiency of our fledgling troupe while elevating visibility and raising awareness of our mission.
M3iT ∙ The Cornerstone Cooperative
The means for this non-profit community to be self-supporting by its own efforts cannot be a vague matter. Part of the cottage industry operation is intended to bootstrap the incorporation of a for-profit, our first multi-stakeholder cooperative as a California Benefit Corporation, dedicated to Social & Technological Innovation in Performing Arts, through research, manufacture, integration, and marketing of hardware, software, and wetware (culture as a technology).
This worker owned cooperative has its pro forma roles, but within a radically flattened, flexible, fluid, adaptive hierarchical structure, circles of this sociocratic ecology may be described as:
➤ Coordinators: Community Modelling and Relationship Management, DSS or Decision Support System, Critical Infrastructure and Support Staff, Intellectual Property and Patent Management;
➤ Creatives: Scientists, Engineers, Technicians, Artisans, Artists, Performers, Vloggers and Media Mavens;
➤ Patrons: We serve kindred creatives engaging with passion and discipline at the intersection of ArtScience, Hacker/Maker Cultures.
While there are a few laudable examples of technology-based companies creating user forums and Discord servers, the needs of this community demand the bar be raised to an unprecedented level, a path of co-operative personal engagement that absolutely no traditionally Incorporated business can legally follow.
We will pioneer a system of continuous Participatory Action Research and Design where the contributions of each Patron are documented, recognized by their peers, and substantively rewarded. Moreover, access to the means to create by Member Patrons will not be limited by their access to capital, what matters is their passion, discipline, skill, commitment to the art, and their willingness to co-operate.
Atypical of such proposals is the inclusion of voting power granted to representatives of the regional community where we are based, this includes their free correspondence with the independent third-party auditors who do not vote, but whose duty must be demonstrably more than a performative exercise in progressive whitewashing.
