Written by Noemi Giszpenc, Executive Director
As I’m writing this, it’s June 1, 2020 — the first day of hurricane season — and I’m wondering, what’s it going to take? The Amazon burned, Australia burned, Paradise burned. Minneapolis and L.A. burned. George Floyd and countless other Black lives ripped forever from their family and friends by casual, callous cruelty.
If this is sick, what is the illness? And is there a cure? What must we do to be well?
Racism, obviously, festering and oozing, seeping into every facet of existence, wearing away life and peace and joy. Below and within that, where does the wilful neglect, the easy condemnation come from? What makes us act as if being irresponsible is right?
It comes down to a belief, a scientifically and morally wrong belief, that we can somehow exist outside and above of anything at all. There is no outside, there is no above; there is no away, there is no other. There are only relationships, and we can make them beautiful or hideous. But we cannot unmake them.
King said: “In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be…
This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
I am bound to each person torn by grief or shaken by terror. I am bound to the evicted, the homeless, the caged. I am bound, though it repulses me, to the predators, profiteers, and propaganda purveyors. The same world that made them, made me. I have been molded, and I can shape what happens around me.
Here is what I choose. To be responsible: if I harm others, I seek to repair the damage. If I fear something, I seek the courage to face it. If I need help, I seek to accept it with gratitude. I do not do this alone.
Being responsible is more work and more difficult than being irresponsible — until you factor in the costs of irresponsibility. We see those costs piling up and up and up. As a society, we cannot escape them. But we can slow down the mounting tab and begin to work at paying down this debt, responsibly — if we work together.
Within a group that’s dedicated to responsibility, every member can do more than they could alone. They can be more green, more kind, more brave. They can be smarter and wiser, too.
A cooperative is only as good as its members ask it to be. But that can be astoundingly good. And when co-ops work together, practicing the sixth principle of cooperation among cooperatives, they are world-changing. So let us ask, and let us try, and let us sustain each other as we remake relationships, work for healing and peace, and enjoy the results.
James Baldwin said: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
So let’s face it: whether we want to be responsible or not, the bills are coming; they are (over)due. I don’t want to push to the very bottom. Do you?