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North Star 2021: Cooperative Finance

Fred

Cooperatives are a key part of transitioning to a just economy, and cooperative finance is a crucial piece of the process. But, with banks’ and lenders’ histories of racism in lending to Black and Brown communities, applying for loans can be daunting. The North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship exists to help Black-led cooperatives navigate these processes in community and with support. 

Last month, the North Stars dove into finance with our partners at Shared Capital, Jessica and Samantha, Social Impact Strategies, Elaine Rasmussen, E Coco Consulting and Nexus’ own Christina Nicholson, the Worker Owner Initiative Program Manager. Our speakers and teachers were thoughtful, supportive, realistic as they shared their expertise and answered fellows’ questions. 

Shared Capital is a CDFI (community development financial institution) that finances cooperatives across the nation. Jessica and Samantha walked the fellows through the loan application process, the different types of investments they can make in cooperatives, and the ways the cooperative principles guide Shared Capital’s work. 

Afterwards, our partners had a panel discussion about their experiences with cooperative finance, including different opportunities and obstacles Black-led cooperatives can face when raising capital. Elaine talked about how to get connected to and build relationships with investors. Coco talked about opportunities to raise money to support cooperatives in an unexpected place—philanthropy. She gave fellows insights into how to navigate spaces with funders and find opportunities for funding that might not be obvious. 

Fellows and speakers supported each other in this conversation about financing. Together, they unpacked how banks, lenders, and foundations have extracted wealth from Black communities while also denying them support—this historical and present discrimination can make financing an exhausting process. It was powerful for fellows and speakers to talk about these barriers together and find support in their shared experiences. Black people have built cooperatives throughout history to support each other and thrive, and there is a tight community of folks ready to dig in and help other cooperators out.

Do you want to learn more about North Star? Mark your calendars for graduation next Wednesday! Learn about our incredible fellows, and hear some of our keynote speaker Noni Session’s wisdom (East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative). Click here to RSVP. 

Congratulations to the 16 graduates of the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute’s 8th cohort! On April 1st, 2021, we gathered virtually with BCLI fellows, their families, and community members to celebrate all they learned and accomplished in the past 7 months. These graduates join a community of 99 BCLI alumni. 

The first all-virtual BCLI cohort, these fellows navigated the unique personal, local, national, and global challenges of the past 7 months with grace and determination. It was truly an honor to witness their dedication to community and justice, and to join them on their journey.  

As is BCLI tradition, two graduating fellows, Shawn Sorrell and Stephannie Lewis, shared their personal experiences and biggest takeaways from the fellowship. For Shawn, he spoke on the different roles different people have in making change, and how wherever fellows show up, “we need to demand change or risk maintaining the status quo.” Stephannie Lewis emphasized the importance of reflection, and how central reflection is for effective and just governance—”to make sense of messy and confusing policymaking, reflection is not placating or appeasement, it is wisdom. It anchors us to our community and our why.”

Our keynote speaker, Hennepin County Commissioner Angela Conley, delivered a message about collective leadership, the importance of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and marginalized folks being at the table, and bringing their communities with them. She said, 

“We’re living right now in a moment in our society where we have the possibility to reimagine and transform so much. I want to remember where you came from so you can always remember where you are going.”

As the first African American elected to the Hennepin County Board, Commissioner Conley knows how difficult it can be to navigate those spaces, and how much pressure there can be to fix things—“for real transformational change to occur, the onus is not on any one individual. It is our collective responsibility to lock arms and GET IT DONE!!!”

All the speakers expressed gratitude for the fellows and how much they learned over the course of the cohort. The evening ended with Terri and Chai honoring each graduating fellow. Celebration packages including certificates and original art by BCLI Alumnae PH Copeland on the way. We also want to give a HUGE thank you to Three Sisters Event Rentals for their tech support, event coordination, and courier services. Check them out here!

Nexus is truly humbled to be able to share space with such powerful people, and we thank the fellows, alumni, friends, family, and funders for making this happen.

*The Nexus Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute (BCLI) brings together Black people, indigenous people, and people of color (BIPOC) and other community members who have been shut out of governing to support, train, and help place them on city, county, metro and state boards and commissions. Alumni of the program challenge current systems by bringing their full selves, their responsibility to their communities, and their distinctive cultural perspectives to these governing positions. Learn more here.

 

Art by @JohnLeeDraws

First and foremost, we ground ourselves in our love of George Floyd, his family, Black life, and Black futures. 

We sit in this moment with many feelings—joy, grief, anger, love, relief, tension. This is a historic conviction that comes out of months of organizing, mutual aid, collective care, protest, uprising, rebellion by people in the streets. A conviction that also comes on the heels of police killings of Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, Ma’Khia Bryant. Justice is no one being murdered at the hands of the police ever again. Justice to us means safety for everyone, and a world where people have everything they need.

Our work is to repair and heal our individual and collective trauma, knowing those are interconnected. As we endure trauma after trauma on so many levels, we invite you ground and settle as you can. 

 

Grounding tools (@traumaawarecare):

FOR PANIC

  • explore the texture of your clothing
  • smell something comforting like hot tea or lavender
  • touch your thumb to each finger while counting: 1-2-3-4, 4-3-2-1
  • wrap yourself in a warm blanket
  • move your body in a way that feels good to you – stretch, walk, shake

FOR COLLAPSE

  • drink something cold or chew on ice
  • gently turn your head to look around the room
  • run cool water on your wrists
  • count by color – how many blue objects do you see?
  • take a brisk walk or shake your limbs/hands/body

Big news for a big leader at Nexus! Terri Thao is taking a sabbatical! For the past 16 years, Terri has helped shape the organization with her vision, dedication, love, warmth, 80’s ringtones, and strong Virgo vibes.

For the next 3 months (April 12 – July 12), Terri will be taking time to reflect and rest. Ever the avid learner, Terri will be taking a deep dive into different governance models and tackling her ever-growing reading list, including Adrienne Maree Brown’s “We Will Not Cancel Us,” and Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ “The Undrowned.” She hopes to use writing as a creative outlet to express herself and to unpack what she has learned over her time in the leadership development field. In between the learning, Terri looks forward to doing sticker puzzles, spending time in nature, and getting out of her house!!

By taking a sabbatical, Terri not only hopes to come back renewed and rejuvenated, but also with a new sense of what is possible! She shared that “so much of the work is supporting others, but we can’t do that if we aren’t also being supported.” This time dedicated to herself and inward reflection will help her come back with a huge well to support others.

At Nexus, we know that people working hard for community, inside or outside of organizations, need and deserve time for themselves. As an organization, we believe in supporting our staff with ample time to rest and reinvest in the work. Expanding our wellness practices to include staff sabbaticals is aligned with our values of learning, reflection, and rest.

Learn more about Terri and her journey with Nexus

Huge congratulations to graduates of our 8th BCLI Cohort! It is an honor to work with such powerful people who deeply believe in community leadership, accountability, and justice.

Leading up to graduation, the BCLI fellows took a deep dive into health equity. Antonia Wilcoxon, longtime community leader and former MN Dept of Human Services staff, shared her experiences about tackling institutional racism in health. Fellows learned so much from her experiences advocating with confidence for equity in a system as huge as the MDHS.

In their second March session, fellows got hands on experience in a simulated Planning Commission discussion. In this simulation, a fictional company was trying to develop a piece of land. While fellows debated the future of this parcel, they raised important issues and values at the intersections of health and environmental equity, economic development, and land use. Each fellow was able to practice using Robert’s Rules of Order, advocate for local hiring clauses, ask for environmental impact studies, and more. It was so engaging that the fellows asked for an additional simulation later this month!

Look out for some photos and stories from graduation next week! Until then, check out this health equity video from the BCLI curriculum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56ZKfSNkcJc

At our last session, Mapping Prejudice set the context of racist and Anti-Black housing discrimination in the Twin Cities, while Angela Dawson of 40 Acre Coop showed us an alternative: Black cooperative ownership and land reclamation.

After learning more about racial covenants and the rigged rules that barred Black communities from building wealth, we had a vibrant discussion about what culturally-rooted home ownership can in Black communities. In the context of hundreds of years of oppression, focusing on the individual alone is not enough—we need a village of folks who rely on each other and work together.

Angela Dawson, President & CEO of 40 acre coop and 4th gen Midwest Farmer, shared a vision of cooperation. Existing and taking up space as a Black person in Rural Minnesota, in the white-dominated hemp industry, is challenging because many systems are not designed for us. However, 40 Acre Coop is thriving and relishing in the power of reclaiming ancestral knowledge and Black folks’ ties to the land, farming, growing, and plants—and making those opportunities accessible to other Black farmers in Minnesota and throughout the US.

On day 1 of the Chauvin Trial, we ground ourselves in powerful projects that invest in and nourish Black life and joy, like 40 Acre Coop. Justice is transformation and radically reimagining how our world can and should look. The courts will not and have never given that to us—community is building the future we need, now and always.  #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd

Art by Mr. Johnson Paints

As the trial of former MPD Officer Derek Chauvin gets underway, we anchor ourselves in our vision of a world where everyone has what they need, where we honor our responsibility for one another knowing that we are all connected, a world where we all feel safe. We know that for everyone to be safe, we must usher out the rigged rules, attitudes, and practices that concentrate wealth and power in ever fewer white hands.

Last summer, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, community demanded transformation, real safety, and investment in the resources that keeps us alive, not those that kill us. In response to our calls for justice, the police brutalized protestors, the national guard occupied our city and terrorized us on our doorsteps. And now, months later, government leaders have only gotten better at protecting themselves, mobilizing millions of dollars to put up barricades and deploy the national guard, the opposite of what Black, Indigenous, and POC communities have been asking for.

We protect us. The police do not. We know this truth deeply within our bodies and intergenerationally. While we hope for a fair trial for Chauvin, the legal system cannot provide the justice George Floyd deserves or the justice Black and Brown communities need.

At Nexus, we stand firmly with our communities, in rage, grief, and love, and in our collective power. We will keep doing our part to usher in ways of living, working, and making decisions together that will nourish communities now and into the future.

We need safety for everyone, now. Residents of Minneapolis can sign the people’s petition, a petition to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public of Safety. Learn more and find more places to sign here: https://yes4minneapolis.org.

Watch the Issue Series Here!

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6eHyhlQkrA[/embedyt]

 

“Freedom is not a secret. It is a practice” – Alexis Pauline Gumbs

As we think about this practice of democracy, how have Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities done the work of co-governing at different government levels? Where are examples and values from our communities we can bring to disrupt cycles and operationalize racial equity? Come hear from current leaders about their experience at state and local levels and from a leading governance organization, the Native Governance Center about how they have done this work. What can BIPOC communities do to affect policies where you live? Please join us to explore the many ways we all can make an impact!

RSVP Today!

Goals for the Evening

• Listen to learnings from how Native Nations have practiced governance models and trained leaders in this work
• Hear from current BIPOC leaders about representing communities and creating policy to address racial disparities
• Build community

Agenda 6 – 8 PM

Welcome & Virtual Agreement
Ice Breaker – Zoom poll
Panel

Panelists:

Ana Vergara, Vice Chair, MN Council of Latino Affairs & BCLI Alumni cohort 7, 2019-2020
Adrian Perryman, Member of the St. Paul Planning Commission
Wayne Ducheneaux, Executive Director, Native Governance Center

This November, the Worker Owner Initiative, a part of Nexus Community Partners, officially became a technical assistance provider with the City of Minneapolis’ Cooperative Technical Assistance Program (C-TAP).

In this role, we help business owners with succession planning, share information on forming a cooperative business or refining a cooperative business model, and more. The Nexus Worker Ownership Initiative (WOI) team specializes in exploring the benefits of employee-owned business models for restructuring or as an exit strategy.

This information and training is provided free of charge, with costs covered by the City of Minneapolis. For more information on ways that WOI can support your organization, please reach out to the WOI at btsai@nexuscp.org or cnicholson@nexuscp.org.

Learn more about C-TAP below (excerpted from City of Minneapolis):

City of Minneapolis B-TAP | C-TAP Program

In 2016, the City of Minneapolis expanded its Business Technical Assistance Program (B-TAP) to include services aimed at supporting the development of new Minneapolis co-operatives by launching the Co-operative Technical Assistance Program (C-TAP).

The City desires to leverage the co-op model for maximum community benefit to:

    • Act as an economic development tool to reduce poverty and promote social cohesion.­
    • Increase racial and ethnic diversity, and community ownership.
    • Support innovation, community building, and local investment by encouraging a more collaborative business model.

The North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship (NSBCF) has extended it’s deadline for applications to Friday, November 27th. You can find the application to apply here.

Also, the North Star Information Session zoom recording and the powerpoint presentation are both now available.NorthStar2021InfoSessionPPT  If you have questions regarding the North Star 2021 Fellowship please feel free to reach out to Nkuli Shongwe Nshongwe@nexuscp.org or Danielle Mkali at dmkali@nexuscp.org

In who we are and through what we do, Nexus Community Partners builds engaged and powerful communities so that each and every person can flourish in a joyful and abundant life. For this to be possible, we must usher out the rigged rules, attitudes, and practices that concentrate wealth and power in fewer and whiter hands, and usher in ways of living, working, and making decisions together that nourish communities for this generation and generations to come.

Because we are living in historic times, through a pandemic, and in the midst of a volatile election season, we wanted to take the time to affirm a few things.

Each of us has a voice, and each of us contributes to the fabric of our communities. Whether we are Black or white, Asian or Latinx, Indigenous or immigrant, this moment shows us that now, more than ever, every one of our voices deserves to be counted. This election season has brought voter suppression tactics the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Jim Crow era — ranging from reducing polling access in predominantly Black, brown, indigenous and immigrant zip codes, to politicians encouraging outright intimidation from white supremacist militias in an attempt to scare us from exercising our vote. But the only reason they try to suppress our voices is because they know that together, we’re powerful. And we demonstrated our power by showing up to the polls in record numbers. 

But our power has always extended beyond the ballot box. Election season or not, pandemic or not, we’ve counted on one another to care for our loved ones, make ends meet, and make a better future. No matter who is elected, there is nothing that will stop the work that we and countless others have been doing and will continue to do long after all the ballots have been counted. 

At Nexus Community Partners, we work toward a future where…

… the places and spaces we share allow us to explore and express the depths of who we are – celebrating our joys, and healing our pains.

We honor our responsibility for each other, knowing that we are all connected – what affects one person or community, affects another. So, we first make sure that each and every person has their essential needs met, and we grow from there. That’s just what makes sense.

We nurture the prosperity of our communities – and in this prosperity, our health, joy, peace, love, safety and the needs of future generations come first. We foster our relationships with each other and with the land, and work cooperatively to cultivate and share this prosperity in our communities. 

We relish our distinctive cultural practices, traditions and needs. For our world to work, we all need each other. When we nourish each of our unique contributions, our world is a better, more interesting place, and we are more powerful together. 

When we make decisions that affect all of our lives, we share the power in making those decisions. We create and maintain processes of collective decision making that ensure that power continues to be informed by all of us, and the structures we use to make decisions actively repair and heal the harm from hyper-individualistic white supremacist structures. 

We repair and heal our individual and collective trauma, knowing those are interconnected. Each person gets to heal on their own terms, and collectively we confront oppressive systems that get in our way. We honor the trauma and resilience of generations that came before us.*

We count on each other. Whatever the outcome of this election, Nexus Community Partners will keep striving for the world that we all want and need.

Look at the statement here.

 

* Adapted from Young Women’s Empowerment Project and the Chicago Healing Justice Learning Circle by way of Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators

Please check out the Housing and Land edition of the North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship. The North Star Black Cooperative Fellowship is a five-month fellowship focused on Black American Cooperative Economics. North Star is centered on the history of Black cooperative economic thought and practice. Our 2021 North Star Fellowship will focus on housing cooperatives and land trust models for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. As a cohort, fellows will explore the power and landscape of resident-controlled community ownership models that are permanently affordable and provide dignified housing options for our communities. We are forming a cohort of fellows that have a vision of collective living, permanently affordable, and community-controlled land and co-operative housing that will provide a space for our communities to have access to spiritual, cultural, and economically sound options.

Also, new this year, we are only accepting applications in groups of 2 or more. Apply here! And for more information please contact Danielle Mkali at dmkali@nexuscp.org or Nkuli Shongwe at nshongwe@nexuscp.org.