The idea goes against everything our country stands for — or at least seems to stand for most of the time. Profit is what it’s all about here in the great U.S. of A. We’ve reached a point — from health care to tough to fathom things such as private military operations — where a thing isn’t worth doing if it won’t make a buck. This is the American Way, we’ve been led to believe. Anything else tiptoes on Commie Socialist Sissy-ism.

Profit is our mantra, our religion and our very way of life. Reminders of that fact are everywhere. The mighty dollar is our carrot, and we love to chase it.

However, there are places, few and far between — bastions of hope and decency — where dollars and cents aren’t the only motivation.

Enter The Tacoma Food Co-op or, more accurately, the grassroots effort to create The Tacoma Food Co-op. Since 2006, a group of dedicated locals have been working to establish a place where fresh, local, non-chemically raped food can be found by all interested in looking, and, better yet, a place for the community to come together, connect and grow. They’re hell-bent on providing for Tacoma what so many other places of equal size and stature already possess. 

A place where profit — in the traditional sense of the word, anyway — isn’t the carrot at the end of the stick.

“Profit is not the motive. Cooperation is,” says Amber Englund, a steering committee member of the constantly evolving Tacoma Food Co-op group. Englund has a history in social work, for lack of a better term, with organizations such as Trinity House. “Profit is the sidecar,” she says.

“It’s about social profit,” adds Julio Quan, the former executive director of Tacoma’s Centro Latino and a self-described Co-op supporter “since the womb.” Another member of the Tacoma Food Co-op steering committee, Quan is relatively small in stature but carries a commanding presence; he gives off a sort of “Damn, this dude is wise” vibe that’s earned and deserved from decades of social activism. The three of us share a table in the back room of the Mandolin Café, discussing the progress made by the people pushing for a Tacoma Food Co-op and the challenges that still lay ahead.  So far the Tacoma Food Co-op, which officially incorporated last summer, has over 200 official members, 20 to 30 active committee members and a mailing list of more than 1,500 interested folks.  Anyone can still become a member by putting $100 towards the cause.

Still, there’s a lot of work yet to be done before the Co-op vision is a reality, and sometimes people don’t realize that an ever changing, democratic body like the one necessary to power a food co-op takes time to develop. A storefront doesn’t pop up overnight, and — for success — the groundwork has to be laid properly, which requires a lot of community building elbow grease. Businesses are easy to start, says Quan. Co-ops aren’t.

The Tacoma Food Co-op is well on its way yet far from the finish line. And those behind the Tacoma Food Co-op are tired but relentless. My impression is they won’t be denied, and they want to recruit you.

“We have the instruments, the foundation, the technical parts,” says Quan. “We are responsible for this pregnancy. It’s about to be born. Now it has to be developed by the community.”

Throughout our discussion, Quan regularly turns the spotlight in my direction, quizzing me — to some extent — on just how much I actually know about co-ops.
 
It’s a good place to start.

Before I moved to Olympia to borrow way too much money to attendat The Evergreen State College, studying things such as Greek mythology and beat poetry that have proved next to useless when it comes to earning actual money in the actual world, I had no idea what a co-op was.  I shopped at Safeway and enjoyed Red Baron French bread pizzas.

I still eat Red Baron French bread pizzas, of course, but now I just realize what I’m doing.

Olympia has two food co-ops — one on either hill, east and west — which is fitting for this left leaning town that’s tiny compared to Tacoma. By nature, the idea of injecting democracy into capitalism, as a co-op does, has been painted as hippy dippy. But that’s just because those in power run the non-democratic form of capitalism, and in case you haven’t been keeping score, that’s been working out pretty well for them. The String Cheese Incident and white kids with dreadlocks may have marginalized the “hippy” movement into societal joke — and that stereotype may be utilized by those profiting off the unabashed capitalism that defines our country to marginalize anything but the unabashed capitalism that defines our country — but that doesn’t mean some “hippy” ideas aren’t good ones.

The co-op, my friends, is one of them — though it’s been around far longer than Wavy Gravy.

To simplify, a co-op is when a group of people, with common needs and varying skills, come together and work as one — democratically — to meet those common needs.  An average dictionary will give you a good starting place: “working or acting together willingly for a common purpose or benefit; pertaining to economic cooperation: a cooperative business.”

Wikipedia, naturally, gets more specific: “an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.”

What you really need to know is this: There’s power in numbers. When a group of people who needs something comes together that need something, they can leverage that power. A co-op can be for anything, from health care to a credit union. In the case of a food co-op, like the one being created in Tacoma, the leveraging of power results in members having access to fresh, largely local, non-plastic food that’s not found in major stores, and local farmers and producers having business — earning a fair price for their product and labor. Co-op members decide what they want to buy, whom they want to buy it from and what’s fair to pay for it. It’s a system where everyone benefits and no one gets screwed.

Now, if that’s not some hippy shit I don’t know what is.

It’s also exactly what Tacoma needs.

“It’s not about the lowest prices,” says Quan. “It’s about a fair price.”

“This is onions, potatoes, democracy.”

That sounds fantastic, of course — onions, potatoes, and democracy — but this is Tacoma. It’s one thing for a food co-op to flourish in Olympia, Seattle or Portland, but Tacoma has rarely been confused with those places. Does it take a hippy-dippyhippy dippy community to support a food co-op, or can regular old blue-collar gritsters do it too?

As it turns out, Tacoma has done it before. Old school Tacomans tell me in the ’80s there was a food co-op on Sixth Avenue in the building that later became the Victory Music Club and presently houses Jazzbones.

Tacoma Food Co-op 1.0, let’s call it, closed after a fit of mismanagement, but Dan Hulse, a third member of the present day Tacoma Food Co-op steering committee whom I spoke with by phone, says the reason Tacoma doesn’t have a food co-op is simply because the previous one failed, and — quite frankly — co-ops take a long time to germinate. There’s no telling what the previous Tacoma Food Co-op might look like today had it survived, says Hulse, but he firmly believes there’s a community in place ready to support Tacoma Food Co-op 2.0.

“Based on demographics, population, you would expect Tacoma to have a co-op,” says Hulse. “Tacoma should have a co-op.”

“It’s a long, arduous process,” Hulse surmises. “I think we’re very close to something tangible.”

The Tacoma Food Co-op will hold its Summer Benefit Saturday, Aug. 29, at Wright Park, 801 Division Ave., Tacoma, from 4 to 9 p.m. Anyone interested in becoming a co-op member or learning more is encouraged to attend, as are current members. Expect a “big announcement” as well as some solar powered music, free eco lightbulbs from Tacoma Power, and a whole bunch of community building goodness. More info can be found at www.tacomafoodcoop.com.