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Cooperative Journal Media
Multimedia archive spotlighting stories of how people are collectivizing to meet their needs beyond the extractive economy.
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Contributors
Cooperative Journal Media is all of us
Our contributors 5
Thank you for supporting Cooperative Journal Media.
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Budget
Transparent and open finances.
-$853.12 USD
Paid
Invoice #208192
Credit from Maisie Richards to Cooperative Journal Media •
+$5.00USD
Completed
Contribution #545899
+$5.00USD
Completed
Contribution #635823
$
Today’s balance--.-- USD
Total raised
$1,243.90 USD
Total disbursed
$1,243.90 USD
Estimated annual budget
$79.45 USD
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Connect
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News from Cooperative Journal Media
Updates on our activities and progress.
2022 Year in Review
Hello! I hope you all are embracing rest and joy! Thank you so much for supporting us so far! We've created a very in depth year in review if you are interested to learn about our collaborations last year, challenges, and questions we are h...
Published on February 10, 2023 by Ebony Gustave
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About
Cooperative Journal Media is a source for remembering through storytelling, visualizing, and practicing a collectivized economy. We are gathering the stories that expand the edges of our imagination of what is possible - where money is just one form of capital, workers are the owners, neighbors are meeting each other’s needs, and local communities are reclaiming their power to cultivate regenerative systems.
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What would it look like to treat our art and storytelling work as gifts in the commons? To step towards gift economics and away from commodification? To be exchanging multiple forms of capital to meet our needs, decentering the role of finance? We are experimenting with these questions through:
- Facilitating Offers and Needs circles for exchanges beyond money
- Engaging our core team of collaborators in monthly reciprocity check ins
- Stewarding this pool on OCF where we can receive gifts from our audience and redistribute money to the artists we collaborate with.
- We know transparent budgeting is an important step in that, so we’re glad we can start that here on OCF and expand on a fuller spreadsheet soon
- Factoring equity over equality when it comes to distributing the income we (Ebony and Robin) receive through commissioned projects and contracts
How this pool will be distributed.
The money we gather through OCF will serve as a common pool we use to pay the artists we collaborate with. This is an experiment, so if it starts feeling exploitative, transactional, or unreciprocal we will adjust, trusting in relational feedback loops (aka we are so open to hearing your suggestions and responses!)
We will compensate our core collective members first - a social media engagement designer, a podcast audio editor, and a website designer. We will be in conversation with them about what amount of money feels good each month based on how much is in this pool, their monetary needs, and honoring how much time they want to put in.
Here’s the breakdown of how we plan to distribute:
- 25% of this pool will go to Ebony for producing the podcast, the core storytelling offering of CJM that has been a labor of love so far.
- Ebony’s financial context: Ebony lives in New York City with a precarious housing situation, several self-funded community organizing projects, commitment to fresh organic food, and a frugal but high cost of living. First generation American with Panamanian/West Indian ancestry.
- 0% of this pool will go to Robin. They are receiving enough compensation from the other contract and commission work Cooperative Journal is doing (link to list of current paid projects/partnerships here).
- Robin’s financial context: Robin lives in an intentional community with relatively minimal living expenses (around $2k per month). From an intergenerational lens, they descend from European ancestors who have profited off racial capitalism.
- 75% of the pool will be distributed to our collaborators and collective-members as gifts, honoring their contributions to art-making, co-facilitation, interviews, and accessibility support.
De-centering money:
Ways to plug in beyond money - fill out this form for folks who want to contribute in ways beyond donations here (like time, skills, collaborations, etc), we honor multiple forms of wealth.
Our team
Ebony Gustave
Admin
Robin Bean Crane
Admin