Mourning our Co+op - and Dreaming of a New One

Requiescat in pace, Mountain View Market Co+op (1975-2020). We’ll miss you!

Often we’re fighting various internal and external battles. Battles to be slender or build muscle or be more mindful in everyday life; battles to avoid letting the worst of our “culture” (fast food, television, greed, racism, hyperpartisanship) poison us in one way or another. Efforts to be a healthier person help us become a healthier community.

In several such battles, I leaned on the Co+Op, where I could conveniently buy local, healthy food from friendly people. I often bicycled there; and if I drove, I didn’t waste much gas. We also saved bucks by buying in bulk – ordering non-perishable items in large quantities.

The Co+Op, along with the Farmers Market and Toucan, helped me maintain a healthy lifestyle. We buy the Solbergs’ local honey. Frequently my breakfast is local raw milk on local granola with local strawberries, plus Co+Op blueberries.

We lunch on salads and vegetables, mixing what we grow with what our great local farmers grow – often adding tasty Co+Op to-go items. Local honey is not only beautiful and tasty, but can help folks who live here deal with allergies. Everything’s fresher and tastier; I can ask local growers about pesticide use; and we haven’t wasted a bunch of precious energy moving food from farm to city and thence to here. Too, my few dollars go into the local economy, not to an endless chain of distant middlefolks. 

I’ll also miss the great soups, and running into old friends, including state legislators conferring, or hunched over their laptops.

The Co+Op was special, and not just for its convenience and healthy food. The Co+Op was owned and overseen by us, its members. Major decisions got made by the community, not by distant and faceless corporate executives. Not all of those local decisions were prudent, unfortunately; but what killed the Co+Op was that otherwise good and thoughtful people found it more convenient to buy their groceries from the big box stores.

Cooperatives adhere to these basic rules: voluntary and open membership; democratic member control, with each member having one vote; autonomy and independence; concern for community; and education, training and information.

A corporation’s basic rule is to maximize shareholder profit. We’re under huge pressure to get all our food, drink, and medicine from a few huge international corporations that don’t give a damn about us and have proven quite ready to gyp us when possible and poison us for an extra penny on each $10 bill. They have economic power and flood our airwaves with powerful advertising. If locally grown or made items don’t help the bottom line, you won’t find it at the chain. At the Co+op, you could ask questions and even order “off the menu.” Co+Op workers worked for US.

I like local. Coffee’s at Milagro or Beck’s, not Starbucks. I buy books from Coas, baked goods and breakfasts at Nessa’s, and huevos rancheros at Nopalito, or Habañero’s. For hardware, I look first at Hayden’s.

One Co+op member said, “This is the best store there ever was. I'm grateful I could be a part of it. I'm fortunate my parents cared about this place and bought their kids lifetime memberships when I was five. This place has helped define who I am."

Maybe RIP is the wrong phrase. “Vivat Phoenix?” Many of us are determined that a newer, slimmer Co+Op will emerge from the ashes of 2020.

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 29 November 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG’s website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will be available on demand on KRWG’s site. ]

[I’m obviously mourning the Co+Op; and offering condolences to the folks who knew and loved the place a lot longer than I, and who made it what it was. (I was still here when it was founded, but doubt I was particularly thoughtful about my food in those days.)  My wife and I joined even before we returned here to live. (Well, I returned. She had visited here with me, and delighted to move here.) I do hope that we can start something like it in the foreseeable future. A simpler place, with more emphasis on bulk-buying, but at least with a cafe again and a meeting-room folks can use for community meetings, readings, book clubs, and what-not. Unfortunately, I’m no businessman.]