I missed writing about cooperation during the month of October which was Co-op month. But I sure thought about Cooperation a great deal during that month. I was in Washington, D.C., for the induction of Lori Capouch into the National Cooperative Hall of Fame. Lori is originally from Park River. She joins Evert Dobrinski from Makoti, James Grahl a native of St. Joseph, Michigan and Vern Dosch, of Bismarck, as the North Dakota cooperators in ranks of those exceptional leaders.
If you look up the National Cooperative Hall of Fame (https://www.heroes.coop) you will see who else is in that impressive group and what an honor it is to achieve that status.
Benjamin Franklin is in the Cooperative Hall of Fame. Franklin established the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by fire, in 1752. It is still in operation today.
Dobrinski served on the board for CoBank, James Grahl as manager of Basin Electric and Dosch as CEO of National Information Solutions Cooperative. Capouch organized the Rural Access Distribution (RAD) Cooperative – the first known rural food distribution co-op in the United States. Please see her lengthy list of other accomplishments at https://www.heroes.coop.
Nominating Lori for the Hall of Fame were electric and telephone cooperatives including Basin Electric. I wish the readers of weekly newspapers and the owners and publishers of those papers could have been at Lori’s induction into the Hall of Fame. It was held in the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Lori’s acceptance speech occurred on the same stage previously occupied by world leaders and U.S. presidents. I wish you readers would see for yourselves what I have long known. Rural North Dakota is not some backwater place occupied by people who couldn’t get a job somewhere else.
North Dakota is home to people who understand the power of human cooperation to make lives better. They understand why marketplace competition frequently fails to serve rural people. As a consequence, these heroes find ways to provide the services for themselves against the scorn of corporations who consistently say it can’t be done, until they are forced to admit the cooperatives have done it.
It is always a David vs. Goliath story. The cooperatives are always David. Investor-owned corporations become Goliath, and like Goliath, began to think they are invincible because they are big.
As you look at the biographies of Capouch, Dobrinski, Grahl, and Dosch, you will see a remarkable paradox. A shepherd boy humility and the surprising confidence of a person who has killed the lion and the bear and is not afraid of the big but clumsy giants.
I doubt many people living in rural North Dakota have much confidence in Elon Musk’s understanding of how to create opportunities for rural people. I doubt they believe the federal government, political parties, or massive corporations do either.
Cooperative heroes operate on a counterintuitive theory of leadership. It is borrowed from the book Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tzu. Tao Teh Ching can be translated “the classic of the way and its virtue”:
“The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware. Next comes one whom they love and praise. Next comes one whom they fear. Next comes one whom they despise and defy. When you are lacking in faith, others will be unfaithful to you. The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words. When his task is accomplished and things have been completed, all the people say, we ourselves have achieved it!”
Rural people expect self-effacing leadership. It is indeed virtuous.
Bill Patrie is a retired planner and economic developer having worked in regional and statewide positions. He is the author of “Creating Co-op Fever” printed by USDA as a service bulletin, and “100 Stories of Hope” a book about his interviews with 100 people in poverty.
