Welcome!
This site, Mariposa Liberation is dedicated to the collective struggle to build a better Mariposa Food Co-op in Philadelphia PA. All of us who are involved: workers, “member-owners”, and others, deserve more than we are currently getting at our co-op. A truly co-operative organization must start with informed consent and base itself in community power while rejecting excessive hierarchy and capitulation to narrow capitalist values, fostering instead a participatory process that models the world we want to live in. This website will be a part of that process, as an autonomous project that brings forward marginalized and excluded voices: sharing information, perspectives and debates that are not available from “official” Mariposa channels.
Mariposa at this time is on the road to becoming more and more of a hierarchical, centralized organization, pursuing the logic of the Marketplace above and beyond other values which are essential. As we shall see in future posts, co-operative labor and economics at Mariposa have been pushed aside by Management, so that the majority of us are now alienated from the most fundamental decision-making processes, which have gone incredibly off course.
Indeed, some of the sketchiest decisions by Mariposa Management were never transparent to us at all: Whether to support the formation a labor union by frontline staff at all and/or to continue quietly undermining it, how exactly to structure the pay scale: WHO actually decides and WHY do they decide as they do? In the most meaningful sense, we are all excluded from knowing all the details, except for Management. The System is not working for Us.
Framing and defining the ongoing labor struggles at Mariposa and many other food coops is the hegemony exercised by United Natural Foods, Incorporated (UNFI) a multi-billion dollar distributor of natural foods and other such commodities. As we shall see in future posts, labor solidarity is subverted through the consulting firm Columinate (formerly CDS Consulting), which partners heavily with UNFI and National Co+Op Grocers (NCG), currently a $2.4 billion consortium of 148 co-ops that produces the “Co+op Deals” newsletter featuring coupons for natural products. Union-busting is a language actively spoken in these circles, even though it is a dirty secret kept from the public at large.
Allegedly, member-owners have a board that represents us and would protect us from any abuses of our co-op but it seems doubtful that this system works as it is claimed to. It doesn’t seem that the majority of folks hear from the Board with regards to the big questions that are to be decided (never mind having a verifiable means of representing and measuring popular opinion), nor do we hear from the CEO (formerly General Manager) about much of anything. That there continues to be no clear way of expressing what broad opinion actually is in regards to important decisions is incredibly telling- and the question of Popular Power generally is fundamentally tied to the question of Worker Power/Worker Rights at Mariposa.
Maybe someday this will all be different and this blog will no longer be necessary. A transformed and more liberated Mariposa will make a lot of people happy. Let us hope that day is coming soon. Until then, this blog is sharing information that is effectively excluded from “official” Mariposa sources. All contributions will be considered, whether attributed or unattributed. Information and perspectives that seem interesting and useful to the process of making a truly co-operative endeavor will be considered. This blog is dedicated to Liberation for all: to the collective construction of a world much more to our liking: a world based in liberatory and life-affirming possibilities, in dignity and love, one where we work through all the hard issues and forge the way forward into a better day. Choosing a conscious direction for Mariposa Food Co-op.
Food for People not for Profit: For Worker Power, for Social Justice and for Mother Earth.
Get connected at: https://www.mariposaliberation.org