Our Mission
Converge Collaborative is committed to helping create and usher in labor structures grounded in the cultural knowledge systems of people of the global majority. The collaborative co-op structure we are building offers a model for ways of working, creating, and living informed by our ancestors’ histories and cultures of collectivity, which colonization has tried to destroy. This ancestral framework bolsters our vision of radical apprenticeship which holds that work and labor are sites of creativity, learning, and imagination to be nurtured in loving support. We see our co-op as part of the web of solidarity economies created by bodies of culture who are often harmed by our current social, financial, and economic systems.
Our Values
We believe that work is a part of a communal process of sharing labor: for supporting each other, for teaching each other, and for distributing the fruits of our labor with equity. We engage work as a site where we make small changes that support our exit from inherited, harmful labor conditions. The following values guide and ground this work:
CAPITOXISM
Acknowledge the overwhelming and nefarious force of post-feudal, late-hyper-capitalism that defines our individual and collective existences. While reverence for property, profit and unchecked resource hoarding creates perverse value-scales at odds with planet earth (home) and our psychological and physical well-being, it also leaves us unable to imagine a future of work void of exploitation. As individuals, we are unable to extricate ourselves from these larger systems, but can, as communities and collectives, consciously model our own practices against recreating or reinforcing this harmful paradigm.
FUTURMAGILYTICAL
Harness interpersonal and “market-based” experiences, technical perspectives and critical analyses to imagine and build towards the future. Keep striving for conditions better than those of the past while honoring and learning from those who have engaged in these realms.
RADICLEAR KINDNESS
Create thoughtful, collaborative and flexible proposals and plans. Dedicate time to ensure your intentions and visions are understood while trusting others to think through and build atop. Avoid assumptions and orders by making time to create clarity. Instead of romanticizing the all-consuming culture of overwork that drives burn-out, model self-compassion and care.
SOLIDARINTENTIONAL
Recognize and move beyond the authoritarian systems of traditional work structures. Commit to learn, apply and proliferate methods that both nurture health and safety in community and strengthen interpersonal bonds. Intentionally and thoughtfully construct solidarity within and between the many concentric and overlapping circles where we may individually and collectively make an impact.
SKEPTISYSTEM
In addition to the underlying and purposely invisible “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (bell hooks), remain alert against its manifestations in day-to-day approaches and processes, which gain legitimacy through comforting traditions and precedence.
