The alt is community organizing which hacks traditional systems of IP and displaces focus on formal property rights.

For Malik Yakini of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and the Detroit Food Policy Network, D-Farm is not just a project for growing healthy local food; it also helps grow collective consciousness and reframe the kind of agriculture that works for the community. Yakini considers urban farming an act of self-determination as opposed to globalised industrialised agriculture, which exploits black labour for the accumulation of land and capital for wealthy white men. Yakini insists on repeating the three terms “wealthy,” “white” and “men,” as he believes this is what capitalism has produced: a racist and patriarchal society where the majority is neglected in favour of the accumulation9 of capital, as suggested by Walter Rodney and Samir Amin. CREATING NEW MODES OF PRODUCTION Marx’s influence has persisted in the form of one particular imperative, namely the need for the workers to take back control of the means of production. What black radical emancipatory practices are teaching us is that communities can reinvent new means of production, ones that are more connected to their needs and more connected to nature. One of the unique innovations of its kind comes from the Incite Focus digital fabrication laboratory (commonly referred to as the “Fab Lab”) in Detroit, where all the business processes were inspired by observing the regenerative features of nature. The makers’ lab includes high-tech 3D printers, a sophisticated machine to make prototypes out of cardboard, various machinery for creating electronic circuits, and a myriad of tools. Director Blair Evans – whose early activities as an organiser started with his uncle founding the Shrine of the Black Madonna Church – explained how they used permaculture as a model and a framework for organising their activities, thereby revolutionising how they operated. Evans explains that traditionally the business community prioritises profit, and therefore the starting point for all entrepreneurial endeavours is one individual’s idea. This capitalist culture encourages us to use marketing strategies, cheap labour, and so on to extract maximum profit. There is no consideration for the social or ecological consequences, let alone whether there is any real need for the product/service. This neoliberal culture is constantly driven home by the education system and also by global media propaganda surrounding patriarchal business entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, who is considered to be a genius of his time, when in fact, his initial wealth was inherited from his father who stole an emerald mine from the people of Zambia. Wealth accumulated from colonial theft and slavery is hidden by the myth of the American Dream.

The counterculture advocated by Incite Focus proposes a new relationship between the community and nature and radically distancing ourselves from the growth paradigm. It suggests that the natural world must stop being perceived as an infinite source of raw materials to be exploited. Instead, nature must become a source of knowledge and guidance that includes an intelligent consciousness that is available for us at all times, providing us with inspiration. Evans attributes the success of this community production centre to the fact that the starting point has always been the community and its needs.

Elandria: Can you tell us what the production centre is exactly, and I would be interested if you could share with us what you believe are the invisible assets, be they network- or knowledge-related, for example, that helped support the fab lab?

Blair Evans5 : The most critical part of that is experiential [...] You’ve got to make the shift incrementally, as the people involved are willing to put more time and energy into it when they feel the power that goes with it. It spirals up. From a business perspective, you have the classic development process: you have an idea, then you draw a business model, you assess the market, and make a business plan... [Instead] you actually: (1) select a community that you’re actually going to be serving; (2) seriously engage the community to seriously understand what the needs are; (3) identify [...] a specific problem and you develop a specific solution; (4) test that idea in the community. There is a tremendous opportunity not just in terms of having productive work to do but […] to pivot the whole mindset of people of being involved in the creation of their life in addition to just consuming stuff. That gives them the opportunity to actually be an agent in [their] future, which is new.

The Fab Lab’s most experienced staff help people validate their ideas, but not from a market perspective but from the standpoint of the community, thereby reinforcing the latter’s engagement in decision-making with a view to adopting the appropriate solutions proposed by the lab. The natural system forms the basis for this organic and scientific approach. The process of creating solutions becomes a commons and therefore is based substantially on organising skills instead of selling capacity.

Evans considers that the financial cost of the automation that has deprived people of their jobs is low enough to make sure that Detroiters will not have to wait for another wave of industrialisation to happen – which is unlikely to materialise anyway. Instead, he believes they have the ability, just like nature, to adapt to their environment and create work for themselves, especially in light of the technological knowledge shared on open-source platforms. New industries, if they are brought back to the city, will only perpetuate an “unhealthy, imbalanced system from which they were ejected in the first place” (Piper 2013). Evans explained how the community production lab sees nature echoing the struggles of the black community, saying that “in permaculture, you’re not a slave to the process. You’re a participant in the process.”

In a similar vein, the Jackson-Kush Plan highlights the devastating effect of timber extraction in Mississippi, which has left the state dependent on global capitalism and external capital. To avoid reproducing such extraction/dumping, Cooperation Jackson, along with other black-owned cooperatives in Mississippi, has developed a strategy geared towards creating regenerative projects to minimise extraction. In Jackson, cooperatives are interrelated, and this interrelatedness is the mainspring for a local economy. For example, Freedom Farms provides produce to community members at low cost and used to supply the former Nubia’s Place Café and Catering Co-op, which was previously located in the Lumumba centre’s kitchen. Freedom Farms sells vegetables and herbs to a ‘cash and carry’ in Jackson, a retail market that sells pesticide-free and fresh produce.

BUILDING COMMUNITIES WITH KNOWLEDGE, CULTURE AND ART

An increasing number of black communities have responded to food apartheid and the generally racist food system by growing their own produce. Many black farmers we met consider themselves not only farmers but also food justice activists, as their work encompasses the actual technical skills required to prepare and care for soil and to grow and harvest food. They use the land to create a space for learning, sharing and building communities, bonding with nature and educating communities with African knowledge, heritage and culture.f

KNOWLEDGE IS A COMMONS

The way knowledge is produced and disseminated is very much inspired by an indigenous understanding that it is not enough to simply be a good member of the community – being a good ancestor is just as important. Therefore, building communities requires actions that both encompass the present moment and foster intergenerational solidarity. This aspect was very much on show in Detroit. For example, the Boggs’ summer school serving young Detroiters started with free gardening programmes in collaboration with the Garden Angels, a group of elders with southern roots who were teaching younger generations how to grow food. Similar educational programmes exist in Birmingham, where young aspiring gardeners can benefit from the guidance of mentors. The Cooperative New School for Urban Studies and Environmental Justice in Birmingham is an online school offering courses on history, theory, and practice of social movements and community organizing.

Knowledge, when cooperatives disseminate it, is not treated as a commodity but as a commons to be expanded and nurtured and made free, accessible and shareable. On the other hand, this does not prevent cooperatives from resorting to paid training to reinforce their internal capacities. Community production labs such as Detroit’s Incite Focus, for their part, defy intellectual property by “hacking” or tweaking products such as tools and machines for which most designs can be found on open-source platforms. The website farmhack.com is an example of an open-source design used by Incite Focus. Detroit is a city where there are many vacant homes and plots of land. People just occupied plots and started gardening, thereby creating a new culture around commons and the opportunities it can offer to a community. Detroiters maintain a belief that they are the makers of their own history, a philosophy that stems from decades of struggle and Detroit’s industrial history. Most importantly, as music producer Bryce Detroit explains: “this culture is due to the southern rural roots where black communities had to create their own economy from scratch.”

Cooperative networks are more preoccupied with building a local economy for the communities to thrive than making a profit. This particular business model reinforces the culture of commons. In Detroit, the Cass Corridor Commons hosts the offices of several organisations, which then have a common shared space, which helps create new synergies and strengthen the culture of commoning. For Daryl Eley Jordan, a senior organiser with the East Michigan Environmental Action Council: “Cass Commons […] [is] the people’s place and almost everyone can meet here. People using the building is how it can be sustainable.”

Even though it is not institutionalised per se, Detroit’s regular Commons Social Gathering is innovative as it creates a space where a culture of commons can thrive. However, the gathering does not depend on the goodwill of institutions.

Perhaps the most critical aspect is that the political organisations and their connections are also relevant to each of the commons projects, providing support to each other and interconnections. For example, due to the Great Migration, black people in Detroit have southern roots, and some of them, such as the late Lumumba, do return there.