{"id":4258,"date":"2016-04-14T14:10:04","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T18:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/?p=4258"},"modified":"2016-04-14T14:10:04","modified_gmt":"2016-04-14T18:10:04","slug":"free-the-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2016\/04\/free-the-land\/","title":{"rendered":"Free the Land"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"[image:Nia <\/a><\/p>\n

What would it take for black lives to matter in America?<\/p>\n

In this month’s issue of Vice<\/em> magazine<\/a>, I take a long look at one answer to that question in Jackson, Mississippi. There, in 2013, voters elected black-nationalist lawyer Chokwe Lumumba as mayor based on promises of direct democracy and cooperative enterprise. Lumumba died unexpectedly less than a year later, but the story of what he tried to carry out in Jackson remains a possible future for Black Lives Matter\u2014especially now that BLM spokesman DeRay Mckesson is running for the mayor’s office in Baltimore.<\/p>\n

Please share this story far and wide! You can simply retweet this<\/a> or share this<\/a>. You can also download the print spread<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In addition to the excellent editorial work by the team at Vice<\/em>, I’m grateful for the photographs by William Widmer, who also took pictures for my Al Jazeera America<\/em> (RIP) feature on transgender Catholics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

More cooperation where that came from<\/h2>\n

\"Vice<\/a>I’ve been continuing to explore the prospects for a more cooperative economy wherever I can. I profiled a co-op Internet service provider<\/a> in the mountains west of me; I argued in The Guardian<\/em> that cooperative economics might be the best way to make good on Bernie Sanders’s call for political revolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Together with a small, distributed team (join us!), I’m developing The Internet of Ownership<\/a>, a directory of cooperative online platforms and the ecosystem that supports them. This week, also, Trebor Scholz and I are completing the manuscript for our collaborative book (with around 60 co-authors) on platform cooperativism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In my column for America<\/em> magazine this month, I reflected on Pope Francis’s emphasis on process in his governing philosophy, which can help us think through the U.S. presidential election<\/a> as well as the pope’s own recent statement on family<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Speaking schedule, more or less<\/h2>\n