The O (political group)

The O., short for "the Organization", also known as the C.O. or Cooperative Organization, was a Maoist or Marxist-Leninist political group which grew out of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul food cooperative movement in the 1970s.

In the early 1970s, anti-war activists in Minneapolis and St Paul had founded more than two dozen natural food co-operatives, which were owned and operated entirely by volunteer members. Former co-op members Craig Cox and David Gutnick describes the growth of co-ops as attempt to enact ideals of mutual aid, and other principles held by members of the hippie counter-culture and the anti-war movement.

Political differences arose between those who were influenced by the ideas of the counter-culture and anarchism, and more orthodox communists. The second group argued that the co-operatives should sell processed food products, white sugar, and canned goods. They argued that selling cheaper goods would make co-ops more accessible to the working class, and would allow them to better deliver a message of revolution to those they felt were most in need of it. Other co-op members argued that part of furthering their ideals was selling better-quality food than was typically sold in grocery stores at the time.

By the mid-70s, some of the communists had formed a group known as the Cooperative Organization, or C.O. The group had developed through secretive study groups. They argued that the "middle-class hippies" pushing for organic food in co-op stores did not understand the plight of the working class, and that the co-op community was too disorganized and dominated by middle-class elites to lead the sustained struggle against racism, capitalism, and imperialism that the C.O. felt was necessary. The group had members in many of the co-ops around town, and their membership was strongest at the People's Warehouse (a distributor which serviced many of the cooperatively-run businesses around town) and at the Beanery.

In late 1975, the C.O. took over the People's Warehouse. Firstly the C.O. attempted to negotiate control at a board meeting. When this failed they walked into the financial offices at the Warehouse and grabbed the checkbook and financial records. Other co-op members attempted to negotiate with the C.O. and were met with violence. Co-op member Phill Baker, who was part of the board meeting, described C.O. members attacking them with iron bars and ripping the phones from the walls. The next morning the C.O. announced, "The People's Warehouse now belongs to the people!"

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