Oral history of my trip to the Indigenous conference in Quito, Ecuador in 1990, which initiated the movement to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day in place of Columbus, the first European colonizer in the Americas. (1991)
We all descend from Indigenous people. Our ancestors, if we go far enough back, were all indigenous to somewhere. But over the centuries there have been great population movements, resulting in large numbers of people residing in areas where their ethnic groups have no historical claim to indigenousness. Who has a right to be where? This article first appeared in The Terrain. (1993)
California Native people lived sustainably and peacefully as far back as history and traditions record, until the Spanish forced them into missions in the late 18th century. Cucunuchi, also known as Estanislao, led the most successful of all California Indian revolts. This article first appeared in The Terrain. (1997)
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY AND THE POW WOW HIGHWAY
Where the pow wow tradition intersects with the new holiday, continuing the struggle today in honor of all of our ancestors and future generations. By Millie Ketcheschawno and John Curl. Published in The Terrain. (1997)
Origins and history of pow wows, the meaning of the pow wow circle, the drums and dancers, the styles of dance and dance contests. This article appeared in the Berkeley Daily Planet in four parts. (2010)
TWENTY YEARS LATER: THE ORIGINS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY
Reflections and remembrances by Dennis Jennings and John Curl about their participation in the movement to celebrate Indigenous resistance and revival. This article appeared in the Berkeley Daily Planet (2012)
FOOD FOR PEOPLE, NOT FOR PROFIT
The revolution in the food movement of the 1970s in San Francisco and Minneapolis: the rise and fall of the People’s Food System and the People’s Warehouse. This investigative article was included in the 2nd edition of For All The People, Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America. (2011)
The conundrum of work and survival for creative people. Published in Toward Revolutionary Art (TRA) magazine. (1974)
Two articles about the 1960s Counterculture, art, and social revolution, published in The Drop City Newsletter and Inner Space magazine under my Dropper name, Ishmael. (1967)
RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN COMMONS
A quiet upsurge of cooperative activity has been taking place throughout the US, where people are turning to mutual aid, collectivity and the commons. (ROAR magazine, 2016)
WORKER COOPERATIVES AND COLLECTIVES
Two articles published by the Bay Area Directory of Collectives in 1977 and 1980. The first discusses how the structural innovation of the collective led to a resurgence of the cooperative movement in the 1970s. The other article examines the history of Heartwood Cooperative Woodshop, of which I was a founding member. (1977, 1980)
Has human society today ever really been on track? Or has it always been a train wreck? Most students of history can probably agree that there have been eras of greater and lesser social justice and accomplishments, highs and lows. Particular times and places that we can look to as role models, even though they had downsides; and other times and places that we can look to as cautionary tales. (2016)
The RISE and FALL of the BERKELEY CO-OP 1939 – 1988
In the 1970s and ‘80s, the Berkeley Co-op was the largest and most successful consumer cooperative in the US. The ranks of people who were active in the Co-op and went on to make other important contributions to the community, reads like a who’s who of the Berkeley progressive community for five decades. Yet after fifty years, it collapsed and died. What happened? This is a series of articles I wrote for the Co-op newspaper as it struggled through its final year. (Co-op News, 1987)
THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT IN CENTURY 21
This is a pamphlet I put out in connection with the publication of my book, For All The People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America. (2009)
At the height of the Great Depression, a group of unemployed Oakland workers decided to take matters into their own hands. The system wasn’t working, so they set up their own system. Money was nearly worthless, so they decided to live by barter. They called themselves the Unemployed Exchange Association and they soon went on to write a remarkable chapter in American economic history. This is their story. (East Bay Express, 1983).
Market Socialism in Yugoslavia and its Relevance to Cuba Today
The destruction of Yugoslavian socialism by the World Bank in the late 20th century is a cautionary tale as Cuba joins today’s globalized corporate economy. This is my paper, “Market Socialism in Yugoslavia and its Relevance to Cuba”, which I read on June 28, 2016, at the University of Havana. In 2016 I spent two weeks in Cuba, as a member of a 28-person multinational delegation of cooperative movement activists and academics, organized by the Center for Global Justice. We toured worker coops and conferred at the University of Havana and the Instituto de Filosofia, with many of the people involved in the reorganization of the Cuban economy and in economic/social theory. I and others of the delegation presented papers there. Cuba was trying to reinvent their economy with worker cooperatives in small enterprises, instead of the government trying to run the entire economy. They were still in the experimental stage, with most of the pilot programs located in Havana. They were giving over some of the existing enterprises to the workers already there, and also opened the economy to new self-organized coops, and to self-employed businesses. In one vision, if these were successful, Cuba could generalize the system throughout the country. Under this new plan, the government would directly operate only the heights of the economy. Cuba would continue socialist planning to promote social justice through market regulation and worker coops. In my paper present a cautionary tale of Yugoslavia. (2016)
Tom Bates and the Secret Government of Berkeley
How progressive Berkeley politics came to be dominated for sixteen years by a career politician intent on large-scale development, how Berkeley ultimately rejected his vision, but the struggle and repercussions continue. The article follows successes and failures of the progressive movement in the city government. (2012)
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