Other Avenues Are Possible by Shanta Nimbark Sacharoff

Published 24 March, 2022 in Knox Book Beat, The Berkeley Times as part of "Bay Area Blues, Greys and Golds." © Wyndy J. Knox Carr  

Other Avenues Are Possible: Legacy of the People’s Food System of the San Francisco Bay Area, by Shanta Nimbark Sacharoff is a short but carefully nuanced history of food cooperative stores and systems, including the Consumer Cooperative of Berkeley (CCB) that began when Finnish Berkeley Cooperative Union groups joined with food-buying clubs in the 1930s “to supply quality food at affordable prices.”[i] 

Sacharoff covers CCB and the birth of the Bay Area Food Conspiracy briefly, which shared much in common with other food cooperatives and services in the Bay Area, in Minnesota, (where I was involved with the North Country Coops in the 1970s,) and pockets like Massachusetts, Madison, Wisconsin and Santa Fe, NM. (photo -- Berkeley Historical Society Exhibit)

At Berkeley’s height of need during the 1930s, the Scandinavian carpenter-settlers seeded owner-worker principles of the 1844 Lancaster, England's Rochdale consumer cooperative model (photo, left) to buying clubs and food pantries that expanded to storefronts, a gas station and repair, an original coop credit union and the “Twin Pine Savings and Loan” over the years.

The 1966 International Co-operative Alliance Principles (revised from 1937 version) specified:

1.      Open, voluntary membership.

2.      Democratic governance.

3.      Limited return on equity.

4.      Surplus belongs to members.

5.      Education of members and public in cooperative principles.

6.      Cooperation between cooperatives.

(from Wikipedia 18 May, 2022 retrieved 10 August, 2022)

 

Sacharoff briefs us on history first; Bay Area, “old-wave” food cooperatives in the United States; then fleshes out the main groups and forces moving behind the People’s Food System of the San Francisco 1960s and 70s in its many expressions, how it blossomed, wobbled and then thinned down to a few “new-wave” survivors in the 1980s. * (see photo NOTE below) 

 The three she focuses on are Veritable Vegetable, Rainbow Grocery Cooperative and Other Avenues Food Cooperative (OA), all based in San Francisco.

These have had “socioeconomic challenges faced by urban populations” like “rising cost of housing driving away workers” and “competition of the retail health food market.” However; she, I and a few longtime Berkeley sources agree that  

the ones who made it through the fast rise and exhilaration of the early years, tumultuous volunteer/ commercial/ political shifts and splits of the unity/ storefront/ business/ solidarity models, shared:

“1) strong connections with both their immediate neighborhoods and the food and justice community at large,

2) constant attention to pragmatic business practices,

3) a clear mission to bring healthy food to the people, and

4) a strong commitment to workplace democracy.”[ii]

The whole “Food for People, Not for Profit” ideal sounds naïve in the 2000s, but it not only made perfect sense in the 60s to the hippies, but to the Black Panthers’ Breakfast Programs as well as Frances Moore Lappé’s[iii] Diet for a Small Planet “health food nuts” and anybody wanting to eat well on a pinched penny. 

Part of Lappé’s philosophy is particularly relevant right now (Mid-July, 2022) due to the global grain shortages caused by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, terrible industry-assisted price inflation, “shrinkflation” and supply-chain consumer harassment (July-August 2022) ; and the threats to democracy here in the United States and parasitic bloom of autocracies elsewhere:

“Lappé makes the argument that what she calls "living democracy," i.e., democracy understood as a way of life, is not merely a structure of government. The three conditions essential for democracy, she writes in Daring Democracy and elsewhere, are

1)      the wide dispersion of power,

2)      transparency, and

3)      a culture of mutual accountability, not blaming.

These three conditions enable humans to experience a sense of agency, meaning, and connection, which she describes as the essence of human dignity. Democracy is not only what we do in the voting booth but involves our daily choices of what we buy and how we live. She believes that only by "living democracy" can we effectively solve today's social and environmental crises.” (ibid. Wikipedia “Frances Moore Lappé”)

Up until Ronald Reagan and the “trickle down economy” of the 1980s, Sacharoff notes that we were all for “politically and economically food-related communities… (who defied) the escalating international food conglomerates and …(defended) the rights of food workers, consumers, farmworkers, and small farmers.”[iv]

Not very popular in agribusiness-monoculture-based present-day California! But hey, small is beautiful, and “whatever works” in the ever-changing biosphere of which we are a part. 

Pinching pennies, shared child-care and communes may look pretty good when the tech/housing and other Bay Area bubbles burst again, and/or agricultural, sales and distribution monopolies continue pressure on workers, farmers and consumers alike. Inflation, "shrinkflation," excessive plastic packaging, health concerns and supply-chain slowdowns are certainly encouraging ME to "shop around" and buy as locally and organically as possible!

Part III of Other Avenues reflects on how “Food Sharing Builds Community” and part IV broadens to a horizon of  

“The Future is Now;” 

sustainability, possibility, vision, challenges, political climates and resources for the journey ahead.

She shares many asides to worker-owned coops and collective businesses along the way, with shout-outs to ACCI Gallery, Berkeley Free Clinic, Alchemy Collective Café, BioFuel Oasis, 

Cheese Board/ Arizmendi Bakeries, Food Not Bombs, Heartwood Cooperative Woodshop, Juice Bar Collective, Missing Link Bicycle Cooperative, 924 Gilman Street “Music and Art Community Coop,” 

Pedal Express courier/delivery and Three Stone Hearth Cooperative in her Appendix; but

doesn’t say much about presses, bookstores, distributors, cooperative housing (Rochdale student?) or even the food shelves and farmer’s markets that evolved through and survived the peoples’ food system days. A good starter volume for the Bay Area, anyway.

Governments, networks, coops, farmers and consumers can all learn from Other Avenues not only how to connect with and sustain existing food movement work in Berkeley, the Bay Area and beyond; but how Bay Area “successes” can be implemented further and how our identified organizational and political drawbacks can be avoided. Perhaps how to construct and cooperate on setting up entirely new systems of nourishment, reciprocity and equity that will work even better.

From Veritable Vegetable's website, some awesome advice from the past to take us into the future:

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

–Buckminster Fuller 

Right on, Sisters and Brothers, Right on!

 

*NOTE: Several of these Chris Carlsson and other photos were copied from Drew, Jesse, (1998?) “People's Food System: Historical Essay” https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=People%27s_Food_System (10 August 2022) @Found, Shaping San Francisco’s Digital History. “excerpted from "Call Any Vegetable: The Politics of Food in the San Francisco Bay Area" in Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics and Culture (San Francisco: City Lights Books 1998) Thank you for posting them @foundsf.org !

Also interesting info at Community-wealth.org (2021) “Overview, Cooperatives,” https://community-wealth.org/strategies/panel/coops/index.html

(10 August 2022) Democracy Collaborative, UK?

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[i]  Sacharoff, Shanta Nimbark, Other Avenues Are Possible: Legacy of the People’s Food System of the San Francisco Bay Area, PM Press, Oakland, CA, USA, p. 13.

[ii]  ----  p. 60.

[iii] Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, (16 January 2022) “Frances Moore Lappé,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Moore_Lapp%C3%A9    (4 March 2022)   “Throughout her works Lappé has argued that world hunger is caused not by the lack of food but rather by the inability of hungry people to gain access to the abundance of food that exists in the world and/or food-producing resources because they are simply too poor. She has posited that our current "thin democracy" creates a mal-distribution of power and resources that inevitably creates waste and an artificial scarcity of the essentials for sustainable living.

Lappé makes the argument that what she calls "living democracy," i.e., democracy understood as a way of life, is not merely a structure of government. The three conditions essential for democracy, she writes in Daring Democracy and elsewhere, are the wide dispersion of power, transparency, and a culture of mutual accountability, not blaming. These three conditions enable humans to experience a sense of agency, meaning, and connection, which she describes as the essence of human dignity. Democracy is not only what we do in the voting booth but involves our daily choices of what we buy and how we live. She believes that only by "living democracy" can we effectively solve today's social and environmental crises.

Lappé began her writing career early in life. She first gained prominence in the early 1970s with the publication of her book Diet for a Small Planet, which has sold several million copies.

In 1975, with Joseph Collins, she launched the California-based Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First) to educate Americans about the causes of world hunger.” (Daughter Anna lives in Berkeley)

[iv] Sacharoff, op. cit. p.53.