.jpg){kind=small}
Thoughts on This Side of the Tour
10 November 2019
I was given a definition of success that truly resonated with me at the Repaired Nations Cooperative Conference in Ghana. The workshop was put on by Mazin Jamal-an amazingly thoughtful man. He said, to paraphrase slightly, that success is doing what you say you are going to do consistently with focus, ease, and grace. With this definition in hand I can proudly say that my tour was a success. Still, it’s difficult to think about summarizing the experiences I have had over the past four months. As a good friend of mine said, this tour was an extension of me and so it is ever-evolving. This tour was letting the world in on the mind of Malikia Kayinyemi and it has been a blessing for it to be received so well.
I must admit that there is no large and righteous reason behind this project. It does not spring from my desire to cure any diseases or solve world hunger. It springs from the truth that relating in a cooperative fashion (in all the ways you might think of) is the way I intend on living my life. This work is not to convince anyone to become an anti-capitalist or that being in harmony with the land is the only way to happiness. It is sharing my journey in finding a community of people who also intend on living their lives in a cooperative fashion. I recorded this journey so that others after me have access to this worldview and these ways of knowing.
One way to summarize what this tour meant to me is to highlight quotes from each interview that resonated deeply. Here they are:
“Our destinies are tied to each other.”
-Ajowa Ifateyo (Washington,DC)
“This work is for you. It’s a gift to the future. We’re not going to see the benefit of any of this…and [still] are trying to live in a place of joy and abundance around this.”
-Cheyenna Weber (Brooklyn,NY)
“Your ability to learn, and love, and be love, and be nothing but that, is so powerful that it eclipses everything else. Everything else so pales in comparison-it’s like who needs it?”
-Pamela Boyce Simms (Swathmore,PA)
“It’s just the point of inspiring people enough so that they can believe it can be done.”
-Ali Dirul (Hyde Park, MI)
“Dopeness is your best self to your best friends, so as a guiding principle it’s something that no one has to actually learn they just have to allow themselves to inhabit it.”
-Onyx Ashanti (Detroit, MI)
“Let’s cooperate around our creative and cultural assets and from there we will see how to generate money together.”
-Bryce Detroit (Detroit, MI)
“Joy is not something that should be separate from work.”
-Seneca Price-Kern (Chicago, IL)
“If we can get folks excited about building for each other and with each other, it would be a win for everybody.”
-Brian Haynes (Chicago, IL)
“Be honest with love.”
-Angelica Delacruz (Bronx, NY)
“We are people of abundance and we just want to continue to grow, and share, and be in unity with one another.”
-Noa Watford (Bronx, NY)
“Our biggest principle is abundance.”
-Bianca Shaw (Bronx, NY)
“The archive, to me, is about the children who have experienced the spaces, who’ve grown up learning again how to grow food, and how to play outside, and about being kind to the land.”
-Susan Weber (Columbus, OH)
“A lot of things are both/and, as well as there’s a lot room for negotiation and a lot of need for flexibility and adaptability.”
-Jamila Medley (Pennsylvania, PA)
“Every human being is really already born complete and has genetic memory.”
-Malik Yakini (Detroit, MI)
“The key is to go back to the soil and to understand the power.”
-Diane Hoye (Detroit, MI)
“When you’re sick you can grab a plant and there’s your remedy…it’s a lost art and we’re thankful to our ancestors that we can connect and get back to what they used to do.”
-Keith Hoye (Detroit,MI)
“The only answer to what is happening is to build with other people so that’s just what we have to keep doing.”
-Raina Kennedy (Brooklyn,NY)
“It’s really about making sure people understand the why.”
-Julialynne Walker (Columbus, OH)
“Our community is vibrant and dynamic and we got this…we can do it together and it can be rooted in kinship.”
-Beatriz Beckford (Chicago, IL)
“We bring the table to the table.”
-Beaux Johnson (Columbus, OH)
“If you have the resource within you, you have to release it.”
-Keith Johnson (Columbus, OH)
“To plant a seed is a prophecy.”
-Terrence Topping-Brown (Philadelphia, PA)
“Start with seeds we have confidence in.”
-LaNoana Odom (Chester, PA)
“All limits and impossibilities are possible through communication.”
-Lida Shao (Brooklyn, NY)
“There is power in being able to think together.”
-Josh Davis (Hot Springs, MT)
“Thoughts or ideas can be composted to create more things.”
-Janell Clarke (Hot Springs, MT)
The other way that I can attempt to explain what this tour meant to me is to answer two of the questions I asked each of the people I interviewed. The first question is: “What are your wildest dreams for the work you are doing?” The second question “When you hear the phrase ‘Take Care of Each Other’ what do you see, taste, smell, hear, and feel? Can you describe it?” The answers to these questions will illuminate why these topics matter to me in the ways they do. I hope you enjoy.
My wildest dreams for the work I am doing:
I imagine it will lead me to a community that co-creates a strictly local cooperative system. Each home will be cooperatively owned by the community and bound within a land trust to ensure its access to our children’s children. There will be fruit trees and small gardens in the backyards. There will be weekly meet ups that allow us to learn and create with one another around a specific topic. I imagine sci-fi days where we “future ourselves” into charming and ethereal worlds that don’t include robots or zombie apocalypses. They could also include cozy comedy days where we sit and foster joy together by watching comedy shows. There will be potlucks where we sit around and listen to the elders share stories. Sometimes there will only be days for children ten and below and elders sixty and up. The elders and youth will mingle endlessly and there will be infinite loops of learning and teaching. Lastly, these events will allow the youth to participate in renewing our traditions. The houses in the community will be a sublime design made of multi-functional materials that stand strong. Possible materials that come to mind are mycelium, chitin, or silk.[1] Everything we use is reusable and has a purpose until it returns to the earth.
My specific purpose in this community is to be one of the caretakers for the space that houses the physical materials of our history. I would be the creator and co-facilitator of the events that I’ve described above, and maybe even a glass blower. Specifically I would create beautiful pieces that would hold the community’s history (akin to a message in a bottle). Glass is my medium of choice because of the dance between liquid and solid during creation (and because of its compatibility with land after its use).
My glassblowing would be done in a cooperative makerspace that I co-create with other engineers and makers within the community. This makerspace would be intentional in offering space for collaboration between makers. There would be maker guidelines that encourage the reusing of materials, multi-functional creations, and aesthetically exquisite designs. We would provide a collective internship with tech-minded youth (18-26) to build a project or tool that solves a problem or innovates a solution with the guidelines mentioned above. Any revenue yielded from the product would be distributed to the youth accordingly. They are only allowed to apply the internship in teams.
There is a lot more to this but we will leave it here for now.
The Take Care of Each Other phrase:
When I close my eyes and think of the phrase “Take Care of Each Other” I imagine vibrant blues and purples and turquoises and greens. These are the dominant colors that inhabit the world because when we Take Care of Each Other the world will be more vivid. Everything will feel empowered to be what and who it’s meant to be. We will allow ourselves to inhabit our dopeness. I see folks with dope hairstyles that look mad moisturized. The most intricate designs and textiles adorn their bodies. These textiles seem to be made just for their body types. It smells like outside (as some of our mothers might say). I feel deep seated joy and hear harmonies. The wind is harmonizing with the waves of the ocean and the blow of the trees. Everything feels in sync. There will be choice but not without the weight of responsibility. I personally feel a smile beaming across my face as I stand there and look at it all.
[1] This also implies our ability to manufacture these materials into useful tools.