Last month Kia Gregory did a piece on Maj Toure for the Philadelphia Weekly called Prophet and Loss that follows him as he sells cds on the subway, runs a multiproduct stand at Temple University and shares his thoughts at Dowling Palace. One concept he discusses is what he calls “cooperative economics”:

“The first trick, they try to make you think you’re not unified. That’s not the case. We just gotta spin our unity on the other tip. The second trick is, you in America. You gotta support black businesses because the black dollar is really, really powerful. We spend $60 billion a year. That’s a lot of cheese. You got to unify that way primarily.”

“When you’re doing business with the people, and you interact with them on a consistent basis, it creates what’s called camaraderie. Then what you want for that person, you want for yourself because y’all all gettin’ money together. It’s no different from hustlers selling weed, selling crack, selling CDs-all of that’s the same. You want the people who live like you, look like you, be where you be at, to all eat, because if they eat, you eat. It’s called cooperative economics.”

As writer Kia Gregory explains, for Toure:
“‘they’ is anyone-white, black, yellow or brown-who deals in negativity. ‘They’ are people who keep others or themselves down, and ‘we’ are those trying to positively overcome, the solutionaries caught between white supremacy and black nihilism.”

In many ways cooperative economics reminds me of Tahir’s concept of Hood Economics as discussed in the only edition of Talking Hip Hop Business I’ve yet to put out.

Official site: Maj Toure
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