Transcript of Ieva Padagaite's scene-setting speech at the Coop Ways Forward conference in Manchester on 20 January 2017 - the day of Donald Trump's inauguration.
Ieva is a filmmaker with Blake House coop; a member of the Young Cooperators Network; an associate of Altgen, which works to inspite young people about cooperatives and cooperation. She served on Cooperatives UK's National Strategy Panel, and is a member of the UK Worker Coop Council.
"I’m very
glad to be here on a day like today, even though the future looks grim and
little seems to make sense. Because today is Blake House Filmmakers Cooperative’s first
birthday, and I’m surrounded by inspiring people sharing ideas about creating a
different future.
I
co-started Blake House coop as an alternative to precarious, exploitative and
unethical practices in the creative industries, because trying to win the rat
race was too hard for me. Zero hour contracts, minimum wage, 14 hour shifts,
abusive bosses, competition amongst colleagues and the complete non-existence
of purpose in my work made me disillusioned, anxious and isolated. I saw my
friends forced out of the city by rising rents, moving back with parents, in
hospital with mental health crises. We blamed
ourselves - we were not good enough, we weren’t talented enough, not beautiful
enough, not male enough. We were unwanted.
I
co-started Blake House because I wanted to create an alternative for myself and
my friends to work with dignity and purpose. I wanted to use my skills, my
craft, my time as an antidote to the reality we are conditioned into. Now, for
almost half a year, I am getting paid a living wage and I couldn’t be more
proud.
I don’t
think people quite realise the extent of the connection between economic
inequality and exploitation, and the mental health epidemic among young adults that
is driving brilliant people from my generation into depression and self-medication.
People suffer in silence because in society where everything is allowed and
everything is possible, it can only be your fault if you are not clever enough
to meet your needs and aspirations. Shame keeps people quiet.
As a
filmmaker, working mostly on campaigning films, I interview many young
freelancers, women and minorities about their dreams, aspirations and
challenges. I hear heartbreaking stories that I can relate to on a personal
level - stories about exploitation, poverty, sexism, psychological abuse and the
collapse of peoples’ sense of self-worth. Stories where people open up about their
mental anguish, and the shame of failure. One of these films, which we made for
an Altgen campaign about freelancers’ coops, will be coming out in February.
And now we
have Brexit, Trump, humanitarian and environmental crises, hitting us endlessly.
We have a situation where people don’t just want change, they see the world
going in the wrong direction - and they will not accept it. So more and more
people open up, share their stories and come out of isolation, realising that
they are not alone. They start to see their collective power, and that there is
an alternative.
Here lies
an opportunity and responsibility for cooperators and the coop movement to
inspire, empower and amplify voices and actions of people wanting and trying to
build a different world for themselves and others, one based on solidarity,
kindness and equality.
I confess
I wasn’t a natural cooperator. My whole upbringing led me to be the opposite. I
was born in Lithuania, just a year after its independence from the Soviet Union.
I grew up in a new America, where capitalism and neoliberalism seemed to symbolise
freedom and open borders. Unlike my parents, I was supposed to be able to
achieve anything, to be anyone I choose to be. I was told that if I followed
instructions, got a degree, worked hard and strove to be better than others, I
would be happy. I did everything that was expected of me. Yet I was still
failing.
And then
a slow shift started to happen. I read an article called Bullshit Jobs by David
Graeber, in the coop magazine Strike! This was the beginning of my encounter
with the coop movement, where I found a place of belonging, solidarity and
support. I heard Altgen say that I didn’t have to climb the ladder. I found young
cooperators who refused to build their success on someone else's failure. Simon
from Blake House taught me about mutual care and collective resilience. Marisol
from Cultural Coops and people from worker coops told me I had the right to be
angry, and helped me find the words and confidence to express my ideas. Their stories
and ideas played a big role in my personal transformation. I feel very privileged
and lucky to have had that.
It’s up
to us to create spaces and opportunities for more people to become cooperators,
especially now, when so many are questioning the status quo. We need to say: “how
is it people can value and defend democracy and freedom, while they spend a
third of their lives working at a job where they have neither?”
The right
says say that making a big wall, a great wall, can solve your problems; that
all the immigrants are stealing your identity and dreams. We need to tell a
better story. We need a vision of a co-operative future that people can relate
to on a personal, not just a theoretical level. We need to tell stories about
personal change, before we talk about economic change. If we are serious about
spreading cooperation and building a cooperative economy, we need to recognise
that cooperatives depend on individuals being co-operators, and that
cooperation consists of personal political acts. We can’t tell people to talk
to faceless entities, or websites, or numbers at companies house. We have to
talk to people on a personal level about what it means to be a co-operator, what
it means for me and you.
Today,
what is the state and role of organisations and institutions in cooperative and
solidarity movements that were built on desperation, honest need and a courageous
vision of equality that people were prepared to fight for? Why is it so hard to
relate to them today? Why do they seem faded and bloodless, justifying themselves
by their history and tradition, turning into museums - rather than actively
responding, progressing and transforming, together with people’s needs and
values?
People
newly discovering cooperation and their political voice need support, they need
a springboard to launch themselves and to inspire others. They have energy that
you can’t replicate. And what happens if, at this time of awakening and
creation, people are met with alien, passionless language, and yet more
hierarchy, bureaucracy, disconnection, even hypocrisy?
We need
less management and more facilitation; less top down strategy and more grass
roots culture; less branding and more platforms for people to co-create and
transition. We need to seriously rethink what cooperatives mean today.
Now, I identify
myself proudly as a worker cooperator. Why use this word, ‘worker’? It’s a stretch,
because of how most people use the word worker in everyday life. When we went
through school and university, none of us identified ourselves as wannabe
workers. Workers went into factories - now we have robots. You didn’t identify
as a worker in a service based economy because you were too busy making up
definitions of your very special and unique job title, that would add to your
personal brand and justify the £50k of debt you were getting for having an
education. The word ‘worker’ just wouldn’t do.
So, to
allow more people to recognise worker coops as the most sensible, exciting and
responsible technology you can use to pioneer solidarity economy in the 21st
century, we need to elaborate on what a worker today is, what workers are
collectively. We need to reclaim the future of work, so that people in the growing
creative, tech, freelance and other service industries can identify as workers,
without cringing. Yes we are entrepreneurs, creatives, freelancers,
technologists, developers - and we are workers. It’s a political and technical
term, and takes time to grasp. We need to put new emergent and evolving values
into our culture and expectation of work, such as our demand that work should
be meaningful; that we should have choice about how and when we work; that work
should be creative.
Young
people are not the spoiled, entitled narcissists we’re often accused of being in
media. Our values are quite in line with the culture of coops. We care more
than the world lets us express. So it is important in this time of division and
growing inequality that cooperators take it upon themselves to be storytellers,
to be an antidote, to counteract toxic narratives with courage, curiosity and
compassion. We need to say and show that the future of work is ours to build.
It’s not so
much cooperatives that are pioneers in the 21st century, as the cooperative
people in them, and beyond. To build roads forward, we need to work for a shift
in peoples’ consciousness; to show that there are many different paths to move
in a common direction, with a shared vision."
See Ieva's video statement about cooperative solidarity and the political character of cooperation.
