Crossposted at Waxing America
Update: History of the Mifflin Street Community Co-op
A few years ago I attended a fund raiser for the Mifflin Street Co-op, and spent several hundred dollars on a few shares of stock signed by some revolutionary named Delgado and an old banner from The War At Home.
From 1966 until 1969 I shopped at the White Front Grocery at the corner of Mifflin and Basset. That winter of 68-69, when word came that the Caruso family was going to close the business, a dozen of us decided it was time to form a food cooperative.
The rest is history. And the history was not always pretty,
but the Co-op served as a barometer measuring the status of the Madison left for many years. From the first Mifflin Street Block Party in 1969, which was not sponsored or organized by the Co-op, to the welfare demonstrations, to the struggles against dangerous drugs, it reflected the concerns of the neighborhood.
The fights over carrying soft drinks, tobacco, meats, non organic food products, processed food and anything digestible or indigestible seemed to never end. In fact, at some point, there was at least one member of the Mifflin Street Co-op who opposed the sale of every consumable food product offered to the public in the past thirty years. Cleaning products, dog and cat foods, and, of course, beer were included in the frays.
The end of the Co-op does not trouble me. There are other platforms and more important battles to wage. That the Mifflin Street Co-op was a vehicle to unleash in those struggles is not insignificant. But the energy to fight for justice, safe food, and neighborhood strength can be waged in other forums.
The Co-op will survive in principle. There is its offspring, the Willy Street Co-op, and such deserving individual successes like Golden Produce. The real lore of the co-op was co-op workers like Bob Golden driving to Chicago to purchase fresh produce with a few hundred dollars. He usually came back with the intended lettuce and grapes (if there was no boycott that month) as well as the spinach, peaches and ginger. But the real adventure would be the items not on his shopping list, fruits and vegetables that most members had never seen, let alone tasted.
You probably noticed that the link to the Co-op website works but there is not much there. If you go to the history of the Mifflin Street Co-op you will find nothing but a notice that it is under construction. A significant partial history used to be available in a PDF but it has disappeared. How appropriate.
I still have my membership card.
Paul Soglin