Hey all,
I’m pretty sure I got the link for this article somewhere in this forum, or at least from someone at Resonate, but never got the chance to read it until now.
A really informative peace by Mike Strode from Open Collective about how people value different things, and the relationship that is formed with how everyone values themselves in a different way.
Here’s the full article (albiet a little lengthy)
…but a few points that stood out to me were around the time-banking system, and the common definition/value of work.
Perhaps both are things that can offer additional insight into what the worker-member regulations and member class could evolve into.
P.S. I never knew that Mike did all this amazing work in the city of Chicago (just a 25min highway drive for me), so it could be interesting for me to immerse myself into more of these communities and spaces as time goes on…
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this is an interesting read! thanks for (re)sharing so more people in Resonate can have access to it.
when i first learned about Mike Strode’s work initiating the Kola Nut Collaborative, i was inspired by how many members were involved and how many hours were exchanged. i excitedly tried to sign up before realizing it was a time bank specific to Chicago. then i looked around on hOurworld, the platform that hosts The Kola Nut Collaborative, trying to find the New York City metro area version of an up and running time bank. i was disappointed to see that in a major U.S. city that’s almost 3x as populous, the listed New York time banks were all defunct.
that got me thinking about organizing labor and all the work Mike invested into ensuring The Kola Nut Collaborative was viable and impactful as well as all the support that must have been provided by people who aren’t even named in this article. what also stands out to me is that The Kola Nut Collaborative was resourced by the Offers and Needs Market.
i’ll definitely be reflecting more on the tyranny of valuelessness.
the portions of this piece i found to be most profound are:
“Resistance within these groups to a more formal structure prevents them from making visible the amount of labor required to sustain those networks… They implicitly assume that those sources of invisible human labor presently sustaining the network will always be available…”
and:
“It is important that we honor our role in changing those stories and especially building value in spaces and peoples who have been undervalued or actively devalued.”
[empasis mine]
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These passages seem particularly relevant:
“Many of these networks encounter a breakdown when they grow to a point of needing to design more formal systems of work, accountability, and valuation.”
“Resistance within these groups to a more formal structure prevent them from making visible the amount of labor required to sustain those networks. This often means that networks are overwhelmed by a tyranny of valuelessness. They implicitly assume that those sources of invisible human labor presently sustaining the network will always be available. Networks are destabilized when any of these individuals leave the group because they lose the invisible labor of that participant too.”
Thanks for sharing this.
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