Inspired by the global Municipalist movement, and specifically by the North American Symbiosis Revolution project, Cooperation Plano is an attempt to put Plano, Texas on the Municipalist map.
The nature of the Municipalist project is that in each community, members of the community will practice face to face direct democracy and also engage materially in the practice of cooperative economics, and then also confederate their projects with other municipalities, and eventually, to form a global (but non-hierarchical) network of human communities.
While the basic principles remain the same wherever Municipalism is practiced, it is also important that Municipalist practice be genuine to each community that is engaged. So, for Plano, Texas, we will practice neighborhood assemblies and cooperative business in our own way, specific to our unique history and demographics, and also with the unique style and aesthetic that we bring to it.
Considering our community then, we are a city of approximately 300,000 people, on the whole quite affluent, and that relative to many places in the world would seem to be doing quite well. This puts Plano in the position of being able to handily address the acute distress experienced by some of our own community members and also to take a lead, globally, and to be able to demonstrate to the region and to the world a new kind of city of excellence. Namely, and excellence that looks not just inward, and measures not just by conventional metrics of economic success, but that looks outward to the global context and considers what true excellence means in the context of a troubling global context.
