By Ben Joravsky
The Hyde Park Cooperative Society, a cooperatively owned grocery store at 55th and Lake Park, has announced its intention to spend roughly $2.4 million opening a second store at 47th Street. Mingay thinks it’s an imprudent and wasteful decision devised by a tyrannical board that’s violating its democratic tenets. “We have a great tradition of bringing democracy to Eastern Europe,” says Mingay. “If it’s good enough for Poland, it should be good enough for the co-op.”
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Part of the reason emotions are rising is that the co-op is so venerated–it’s served the Hyde Park community for over 60 years with the guiding principles of good nutrition and citizen participation. The co-op’s traditionally been run by a board of well-known local activists; former alderman Leon Despres, one of the few who dared to defy the first Mayor Daley, remains the board’s legal adviser. For $10 co-op members are eligible for a yearly rebate based on how much they purchase. “You just don’t shop at the co-op,” says Mingay, “you get involved.”
That rumor stirred grocer Billy Gerstein into action; since the early 1950s his family has operated Mr. G’s Finer Foods, a popular grocery store on 53rd, and he was interested in opening a larger market on the 47th Street site. “This is a hard time to have a small business,” says Gerstein. “I’m at 10,000 feet; Jewel won’t build unless it’s 50,000. Your typical Omni’s closer to 100,000. All that extra space means more room to sell your high-profit items, like meat, produce, deli, bakery. I can’t be competitive if I don’t expand, and I can’t expand because I don’t have any room.”
In January Mingay went on the attack, calling politicians, reporters, professors, and other co-op members. “According to the co-op bylaws, if 100 members ask for a special meeting the board has to grant them one,” says Mingay. “I devised a form letter and had 100 people sign it. Well, Dick Fisk contacted me and said 29 letters weren’t valid, and I didn’t have the 100 I needed to get a meeting. It was clear to me the board wanted to impose its decision on membership no matter what. They weren’t following their own democratic principles of due process. I guess Despres learned something from the machine.”
“He had people sign [the letters] who weren’t even members,” says Will. “He wants us to take him seriously, and he doesn’t even follow the bylaws. Besides, you can’t run a $23 million business where key decisions are going to be made by an amorphous body of 18,000. We’re really democratic, but one problem with democratic rule is if you do it to the nth degree you could be arguing about democratic principles while your business goes down the drain.”
