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ROGER HAYES
BEAN COUNTERS, BLEEDING HEARTS & STINKERS
BY BRAN MASSEY
I set out to write this piece with a very rosy picture of The Community Store s
history in Astoria. Specifically, I was looking into the time around the formation of The
Committee to End Amorphousness and the events following. It didn’t take much digging
to realize that what I’d thought to be a model of amicable problem solving was some
thing very different.
First thoughts when confronted with this kind of surprise were, "There goes my
article,” and “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what in the hell have I got myself in the middle
of?” Conflict is fine, but revisiting one twenty years old was neither attractive nor of any
value. But I wasn’t ready to toss out the whole project. The issue of conflict and the
widely varying recollections of the long-time members I interviewed got me to thinking
about how co-ops work.
The name cooperative is both instructive and misleading. When a cooperative
venture is working well — cooperating — it is often the result of skillful conflict Co-ops
are by their nature places of conflict. They are businesses and they are institutions with
a social and educational purpose. The twofold nature of co-ops attracts two camps of
persons, sometimes (uncharitably) called the bean counters and the bleeding hearts.
While most members partake of both qualities, we tend to see one camp’s perspective
as more fundamental. Co-ops get their energy from the tension between these two
poles, like a battery. The two sides need each other.
When the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers opened the first cooperative
store in 1844 they had conflicts. It was the early industrial revolution, and conflict was
in the air. Four years later would see working people fighting soldiers at barricades
in city streets across Europe. In Rochdale working people opened a store, a store
whose purpose was to confront economic injustice and whose style of governance
has endured for 160 years.
Conflict is good for co-ops. It’s meant to happen. But it has to happen in a
particular way for it to carry the institution forward and not sink it into a morass. In the
old samurai movie Roshomon (sometimes spelled Rashomon) each person retells the
same event giving widely varied interpretations, but the difference is that people s
motives are the good of the institution. At least that’s the intention. When I heard
long-time Community Store members remember the events of twenty years ago in
their different ways, I heard a common theme of wishing the best for the store and the
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community. Twenty years later it doesn’t matter who was “right.” What matters is how
we see the conflict and how we do conflict.
Conflict is skillful when it’s about ideas and not about persons. Ideas are our
shared capital during meetings. We do it this way to find solutions, maybe even a
measure of truth. Anybody who returns again and again to a cherished opinion is
hogging the meeting’s capital. This is greed. Anybody indulging in a display of moral
indignation to further their point is stealing that capital. Occasionally a stinker with
no intention to listen or to treat others with respect will find their way onto a co-op
committee. A member committee I served on once had a man come who proposed
the co-op give him $5,000 to make a study with a very noble objective. When the co
op’s management heard the objective they agreed it was a good idea and put the idea
into practice on the spot. Instead of being pleased, the man stood at the next member
meeting and denounced co-op management for its "back door tactics.” This is an
extreme example, but self seeking isn’t always about just material gain. When
members understand the working of the cooperative process they will respond
confidently to this kind of behavior.
Back in 1844 at the cooperative on Toad Lane, those members were up against
huge odds. They came through in large part from their consistently honest dealing. This
is harder to do than it is to say But it’s so much worse to spin wheels and get nowhere.
Bran Massey lives in Astoria. He served on the Board of the NW Cooperative
Federation and worked in co-op governance for ten years. He has been involved in
co-ops for his whole adult life, longer than he cares to admit.
This article is inspired by the Community Store’s co-op expansion resulting
from the relocation of Safeway from downtown Astoria. The bylaws of the Astoria
Cooperative define its purpose as, “serve the lower Columbia River community with
fairly priced, wholesale foods and other goods in an ecologically sustainable, socially
responsible, and economically appropriate manner.” Co-op members and community
residents are being asked to comment on the proposed expansion. Contact the co-op
at 1389 Duane Street, Astoha 97103, ore-mailbalstrom@pacifier.com.
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