The Ujamaa Hour S3E12 (Design Thinking, The Commons, And Our Cooperative Future) w/Malikia Johnson
Channel: Mike Tekh Strode
Date: 2021-02-05

MOVEMENT MONDAY: Tune in on Monday (11/9) at 7:30 pm CST as we interview Malikia Johnson of Take Care of Each Other World Tour, Design For The Commons, and Grassroots Economic Organizing. Malikia is community builder, dancer, and oral historian whose biographical sketch invokes her lineage including Vanessa Howell, Eric Johnson, Claretha & Willie B. Johnson, Patricia Caver & Charles Johnson. She is grounded in the principles of Kwanzaa and Ma’at locating her work at the intersection of placemaking, design, and the brilliance of the commons.

As the co-creator and curator of the Take Care of Each Other World Tour, Malikia has built an archive of interviews with architects, engineers, farmers, and cooperative business owners about their sustainable visions of the future. Recently, Malikia has joined Ebony Gustavo and Ajowa Ifateyo in launching Design for the Commons, a worker cooperative that is building a world where care and connection happen by design.

On this episode, we explore the launch of the Take Care of Each Other World Tour and harvest some learnings from Malikia’s journey; compare interview notes between the the Ujamaa Hour and the Tour; investigate the new skills Malikia is building through her current work with Design for the Commons; and find out what comes to mind for Malikia when she remembers the future.

On the recap, we glance at a developing digital collage for “Freedom Farmers” developing within Coop 4 Lib; revisit the Kola Nut Collaborative experience during Repaired Nations Virtual Pan-African Solidarity Economy Conference; talk timebanking as a disruptive economic organizing strategy; and preview a written piece which explores the intersection of afrofuturism, anti-capitalism, and the solidarity economy. Tune in.

*Initially broadcast November 9, 2020 via Facebook Live to Kola Nut Collaborative at 7:30 pm