Monday Jun 27

PUBLISHER'S NOTE – 52.1

Written by SP Editor
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I’m confident you will enjoy this spring 2022 issue, the first of our 52nd year!

This is an interesting issue for so many reasons, the least of which is that it heralds the third year of the global coronavirus pandemic.  Which is not to say that this issue isn’t being published in the shadow of the pandemic.  Many of our subscribers will be receiving this number hard on the back of 51.4, because the US Postal Service was swamped with 40 million pieces of PPE, masks and test kits to fulfill all requests made.  The last issue hit the post office on January 14th and didn’t arrive at my house three miles away until March 4th.  Others were luckier, but some of our international subscribers are sending me messages about a “lost” issue, not realizing that the vaunted USPS was overwhelmed by the pandemic as well.

All that is perhaps both an apology and an explanation, but there is no apology necessary for this issue. 

Read more: PUBLISHER'S NOTE – 52.1

EXCERPT: Solidarity Economics

Written by Chris Benner and Manual Pastor
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What do we mean by solidarity economics?

We see three fundamental and interlocking premises: (1) our economy is not some abstract  natural phenomenon driven by immutable forces, but rather created by people through collaboration as well as competition; (2) when we recognize and reinforce those collaborative elements, we end  up  with  not only better social outcomes but also better economic outcomes; and (3) because some people benefit from the current system and would seek  to  divide  us, social movements for change are critical to economic success, both because they can help shift power and because they can help build and broaden our sense of mutuality.

The first premise, increasingly emergent in the realm of behavioral economics, has to do with the conception of human nature. The general assumption by most economists since Adam Smith has been  that  people act purely (or at least largely) out of self-interest. For neoliberals, the good news is that the market will coordinate all that selfishness to a blissful outcome, and so limited government is the best recipe. On the left, there is often a similar take on what drives economic behavior, with the caveat being that bliss is not likely  to be distributed justly; as a result, the state must act  to constrain the worst instances of selfishness and so, corral our economy into serving the common good.

Read more: EXCERPT: Solidarity Economics

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORNER: The Right is Wrong on Race, Again

Written by Gregory D. Squires
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In its editorial “Race, Harvard, and the Supreme Court” (Jan. 25) praising the Supreme Court for taking up a case challenging diversity initiatives at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the Wall Street Journal argued that “the progressive zeal for divvying up people by race, ethnicity and sexuality has increased.”  But it is not “progressive zeal” that has divvied people up by race.  That was started long ago and persists to this day as a result of slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan and its progeny (e.g. Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon), and persistent structural racism (e.g. exclusionary zoning, reliance on property taxes to pay for K-12 public education, a tax system that treats capital gains more leniently than wages) and much more. Progressives wish they had the power asserted by the Journal. 

Read more: COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORNER: The Right is Wrong on Race, Again

EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS: Conflicting Goals at Starbucks

Written by Philip Mattera
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More large corporations are said to be signaling their commitment to environmental and social goals by including those targets in the incentive packages offered to their chief executives.

That’s the message of a recent article in the Financial Times, which highlighted the example of Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, whose $20 million compensation total in 2021 was based in part on reducing the company’s use of plastic straws and lowering methane emissions at the farms producing the milk for its lattes.

Those are laudable goals, but they may also amount to another form of greenwashing.

Read more: EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS: Conflicting Goals at Starbucks

Electric Cooperative Board Diversity is a Failure in the South

Written by David Thompson
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5 Years Later, Rural Electricity Co-Ops Are Still Stuck in the Past

Introduction

Rural cooperatives deliver electricity to some forty-two million Americans. These cooperatives were launched by the government during the New Deal to bring electricity to rural areas, where it wasn’t profitable for private companies. But, as was the case at the time of our previous investigation into these cooperatives, their elected leadership woefully fails to reflect the membership.  

Co-Op Boards Remain Overwhelmingly White…

The states of the South are more racially diverse than America as a whole. Taken together, according to the latest figures from the Census Bureau, their population is just 56% white. Meanwhile, whites make up 93.1% of the boards of these states’ electricity co-ops. While fully 20% of the South’s residents are Black, only 6.3% of board members are. The discrepancy is even worse for Hispanics. At 19% of the South, they make up no more than 0.5% of boards. Our investigation, in fact, found that Texas was the only state with any Hispanic representation at all. In 2016, 6 of 3051 identified board members throughout the entire South were Hispanic; that number went up by just 7 in the intervening years– 12 out of 3127.

Read more: Electric Cooperative Board Diversity is a Failure in the South

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