The Kresge Garden is the only garden on campus that identifies as a student-run cooperative. While the garden was constructed in the 70's, the cooperative was later formed in 2007 when some students and staff decided the garden needed some organizational structure in order to take care of it. So, what is a cooperative? and what does it mean to work as a cooperative?
What is a Cooperative?
Cooperatives are most formally recognized by its history of worker cooperatives, which are organizations or businesses that are owned and managed by its members (https://cdi.coop/coop-cathy-coops-and-collectives-difference/). For the Kresge Garden, we identify as a cooperative because we are completely student-managed, and students, rather than staff or administration, are in charge of funding and the handling of it. The garden is funded by grants that student-workers must apply for every year, so while it's not formally "worker-owned" since it's located on campus property, the co-op was created by students and continues to function autonomously from the school.
History of Co-ops on Campus
UC Santa Cruz has been historically known for its on-campus co-ops, but over the years, the school has since gained ownership over these co-ops and integrated them into the university, including the bike, photo, music, and pottery co-ops. However, the Kresge Garden Co-op and Kresge Natural Foods Co-op are the last remaining student co-ops to have retained their autonomy. In the recent years, especially prior to the rebuild of Kresge, the two co-ops have refused the university's coerced offers to give up student ownership. Our choice to remain autonomous from the university is rooted in our desire to maintain a space where student leadership, learning, community, autonomy, and radical politics are centered, unlike the university whose accumulation of wealth is systematically organized upon histories and strategies of violence, extraction, and exploitation.
How We Are Organized
"To argue that in the context of crisis everyone has something to offer, that we are all valuable and we can work to include us all, is a significant intervention on the disposability most of us are taught to practice toward one another and the passivity we are encouraged to feel about direct engagement to remake the world. MADR offers the slogan, "No Masters, No Flakes." This simultaneous rejection of hierarchies inside the organizing and commitment to build accountability based on shared values asks participants to keep showing up and working together not because a boss is making you but because you are working together on something that matters..." (145)
Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid for Mobilization and Survival, Dean Spade
- Decentralized power, i.e. no bosses
- Using consensus to make decisions instead of "majority rules" voting
- Equal distribution of work
- Working collaboratively with each other, including interns, volunteers, & visitors to the space
- Encouraging participation in garden planning and work from non-members
- Having shared and collectively agreed-upon goals and projects
- Choosing our roles/tasks
- Prioritizing the well-being of the members over productivity
- Welcoming flexibility in scheduling, tasks/roles, work hours
- Respecting strikes and picket lines
"At best, everyone who comes into contact with a collective ends up both participating and benefiting in some way; that's the whole idea of thinking and acting collectively...
In this way, affinity groups and collectives provide a foundation for individual autonomy in collective action. For this to be possible, though, they must themselves be built on a foundation of supportive and liberating relationships...
Rather than increasing the resources or power of individuals, collectives build shared power. In a competitive system, life is a zero-sum game, in which one can only prosper at the expense of others; in the cooperative system collectives seek to employ, on the other hand, the more everyone invests, the more everyone benefits. Likewise, in establishing and nurturing a collective, individuals do not amass power for themselves alone, but instead build a structure from which all might benefit. The wealth a collective generates is not the kind of currency one can use to purchase an insurance policy; it is, rather, the long-standing emotional bonds and networks of mutual aid that can provide for people's needs even when insurance policies fail. At their best, collective projects are contagious, spreading collaborative spirit and structures to all who encounter them. They may do so by welcoming new participants into their ranks, or by demonstrating the advantages of methods others can make use of themselves..." (191-192)
Role of Community Gardens
"Resistant left movements seek to reignite people's imaginations about not just what they can demand but also what tactics they can use to win. Such movements model three kinds of work that change material conditions rather than just winning empty declarations of equality: (a) work to dismantle existing harmful systems and/or beat back their expansion, (b) work to directly provide for people targeted by such systems and institutions, and (c) work to build an alternative infrastructure through which people can get their needs met.Work to create an alternative infrastructure based in left values of democracy, participation, care, and solidarity includes many of the prior activities, which establish community connections and put in place structures for meeting needs. It might also include things like creating food, energy, and waste systems that are sustainable and locally controlled, building methods of dealing with conflict and harm that do not involve the police or prisons, and building health, education, and child-care infrastructure controlled by the people who use it..." (134-135)
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