Written by Eric Fleischmann
With a horribly mismanaged epidemic, economic downturn, more and more cases of police brutality against POC, and a coming election that has left many young people disillusioned, this is quite a time to come of age as a politically minded young adult in the United States. Frankly, the whole thing is utterly strange and disturbing. But at the same time there is a hopefulness in the sort of politics that is coming to the surface in defiance of the conventional understanding of separateness of the spheres of politics, economics, and daily life. More and more people are realizing that meeting the daily needs of food, shelter, safety, and other basic necessities are themselves political in that both their denial by the powers that be and the struggle by everyday people for them are both deeply political dynamics.
The latter of these, in my view, is the “political” work that the Cooperative Development Institute is doing. They are attempting to change the structures within which things are produced and people live, making them more participatory, equitable, and need-meeting. This is loosely how I first interpreted CDI’s work when Jonah Fertig-Burd, former director of CDI’s cooperative food systems program, visited my class “Life Beyond Capitalism” to discuss cooperatives. Although I had previous experience with cooperative-related work by doing small-time volunteering for Democracy at Work, I felt deeply dissatisfied with my engagement in politics (in the broader, aforementioned sense) since coming to college. However, in Jonah’s presentation of CDI and cooperatives in general, I saw an opportunity to finally engage politically in the northeast.
Fortunately interning for CDI turned out to be so much more than that. I unfairly expected—solely because of the cultural stereotype of the intern—to be treated as pretty much just a faceless task-doing kid. Although there was certainly a lot of work to be done,I have never enjoyed work more. In the face of my short-term class “Encountering Community: Ethnographic Fieldwork and Community-Engaged Learning” being cancelled due to COVID-19, I had a chance to do community based research ranging from learning qualitative coding to conducting interviews; in the face of an economic system that cares more about a line on a graph or a number on a screen than about human life and wellness, I was able to explore real-world models that offer a viable alternative; and in the face of the genuine dangers of boredom and loneliness entailed by returning home from college abruptly and being quarantined, I found a sense of purpose and a worthwhile effort to put my time towards.
And I cannot emphasize enough how my expectations of being seen as an underling were so wildly far from reality. I met and formed relationships with some of the nicest people I have ever met in my life; people whose dedication to the betterment of other human beings is demonstrated in as large and as abstract of ways as planning for the community food center to as small and as intimate as caring for their child while on a Zoom call. Empathy, nurturance, a belief in the essential goodness and deservingness of everyday people, these are the elements that I have seen demonstrated by the folks that work at CDI. It has been an honor to work with them, and it is an honor to be able to continue doing so into the fall of my sophomore year.