Sharing Power with Park Slope Food Coop
Sharing Power is a podcast and performance series about distributed leadership and consent-based processes. The podcast, co-hosted by Flux Creative Partners Lori Elizabeth Parquet, Corinna Schulenburg, and Jason Tseng, invites other creators and organizers who are practicing distributed leadership/consent-based processes to discuss how they’re doing it.
Our first-ever Sharing Power episode was with two members of the iconic Park Slope Food Coop, Joseph Holtz and Imani Q’ryn:
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Apple Podcast
“But the membership doesn’t know that the power is in their hands and it’s hard, you know, since that’s not how it is in society…So to me, the co-op is a magnificent experiment, and it’s teaching leadership and our place in the world.”
-Imani Q’ryn“There was a criticism that our society was a society where the desire for individual success exceeded all other considerations. In other words, community success. No, that was not really on the table. But people like myself and many other people rejected that. And we thought having community success was important. And we thought the way to do that was cooperation.”
-Joseph Holtz
The Park Slope Food Coop is a member-owned and operated food store– an alternative to commercial profit-oriented business. As members, we contribute our labor: working together builds trust through cooperation and teamwork and enables us to keep prices as low as possible within the context of our values and principles. Only members may shop, and we share responsibilities and benefits equally. We strive to be a responsible and ethical employer and neighbor. We are a buying agent for our members and not a selling agent for any industry. We are a part of and support the cooperative movement. We offer a diversity of products with an emphasis on organic, minimally processed and healthful foods. We seek to avoid products that depend on the exploitation of others. We support non-toxic, sustainable agriculture.
THE GUESTS
Joseph Holtz (he/him) was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. In 1973, at age 22, Joe and about ten other Brooklynites co-founded the Park Slope Food Coop (PSFC). Joe has been actively involved in the PSFC ever since. In 1975 Joe was hired as the PSFC’s first paid staff with the title General Coordinator. In the mid 1990’s he was named the Coop’s first General Manager and now coordinates, with a team of four other General Coordinators, a paid staff of 85 and the required work of 15,400 active member/owners. This year the PSFC projects an annual sales volume of over 53 million dollars generated wholly by its member-owners.
Imani Q’ryn (EE-MAH-NEE KUH-WREN) (she/her) was born in Washington DC, lived in LA, moved to NY in her early 20’s. She’s friendly, open and an outside of the box thinker which makes the Park Slope Food Coop a perfect Fit. First jobs in non-traditional fields for women at that time. She was a steel worker, a teamster and worked on the first subway line being built in DC. At that same time she was helping to organize the first National Lesbian and Gay March on Washington. (1979) Met many interesting people from NY and decided to move there. After a while in NY started working in Real Estate where she met her first voice teacher and started learning to sing Opera. She sang for 20 years all the while keeping her RE license. As a struggling artist she realized that she could not afford to get sick so she had better take care of her health. She is very interested in health and alternative healing. She became a vegan and decided to only eat organic. She joined the co-op soon after needing the affordability that it provided. A year or so into her membership she attended her first general meeting and was so shocked and surprised by the form of governance that she got involved and she has never stopped attending and it’s 20 years later. She’s is currently on the Board and a member of the Chair Committee.
THE CO-HOSTS
Lori Elizabeth Parquet, co-host, (she/her), is a Flux Creative Partner and actor, director, and playwright from New Orleans, Louisiana with a B.A. in Theatre Arts from Cornell University. Her New York City stage credits include Macbeth, Dispatches From (A)mended America (Off-Broadway, Epic Theatre Ensemble), The Providence of Neighboring Bodies (Dutch Kills Theater/Ars Nova), The Honeycomb Trilogy: Sovereign (Gideon Productions), Medea (Phoenix Theatre Ensemble), Dog Act, Ajax in Iraq, Honey Fist, Operating Systems (Flux Theatre Ensemble), and Republic, Baal, Murder In the Cathedral (JACK/Hoi Polloi). She made her international debut performing in Pillars of Society at Teater Ibsen in Skien, Norway. She also performed in The Providence of Neighboring Bodies at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2018. In 2019 she was nominated for and won the New York Innovative Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Lead Role for her performance in Operating Systems. As a director, Lori has directed Topdog/Underdog at Princeton Summer Theater and assistant directed The Public Theater’s most recent Shakespeare in the Park productions of As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. She was alsoas an acting coach on Disney’s Hercules, a Public Works production. Lori just served as Associate Director of New York City Center’s Encores: Off-center production of Maria Irene Fornes’ Promenade and has directed many readings and workshops with Public Works, Flux Theatre Ensemble, The Brooklyn Generator, and other theatre companies across New York City. As a playwright, Lori was selected as one of six featured playwrights for Season Five of The Fire This Time Festival, which produced a reading of her full-length play In Communion, and her short plays have been produced through Flux Theatre Ensemble, New York Madness, and other NYC indie theatres and festivals.
Corinna Schulenburg, co-host, (she-her), is a Flux Creative Partner. She is a trans artist and activist committed to ensemble practice and social justice.As a playwright, her work with Flux includes Riding the Bull, Rue, Other Bodies, The Lesser Seductions of History, Jacob’s House, DEINDE, Honey Fist, Salvage,The Sea Concerto, and Operating Systems. With Flux, she directed Ajax in Iraq (NYITA nomination), A Midsummer Nights Dream, and the Food:Souls Goldsboro and Volleygirls. As an actor with Flux, she has played Sam in Metra: A Climate Revolution Play with Songs; Max in World Builders, Dr. X in Hearts Like Fists, Ezekiel in 8 Little Antichrists (NYITA nomination), and the Professor in Rue.
Jason Tseng, co-host, (they/them) is a queer, non-binary Chinese-American playwright based in New York City, originally hailing from the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Their plays have been presented and developed by Flux Theatre Ensemble, Judson Arts, Mission to dit(Mars), Theatre COTE, Inkubator Arts, Second Generation, Downtown Urban Arts Festival, and LA Queer New Works Festival. They are a Creative Partner of Flux Theatre Ensemble, a member of The Civilians’s 2019/2020 R&D Group, a member of Mission to dit(Mars)’s Propulsion Lab, and their plays have been honored as Semi-finalists for the New American Voices Playwrights Festiva, Bay Area Playwrights Festivall and the Eugene O’Neil National Playwrights Conference. Jason’s full-length plays include Rizing (World Premiere, Flux Theatre Ensemble), Like Father, Same Same, Ghost Money, Fear and Wonder, and The Other Side. Find more at jasontseng.com.
