COACT Education Foundation (CEF) and Minnesota COACT
Membership in MN COACT and CEF starts at $5.00 per year. Membership in MN COACT a 501[c]4 is not deductible. Member ship in CEF a 501[c]3 are tax deductible.
The Citizens Organized Acting Together (COACT) Education Foundation (CEF) is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to public education, training, and research on social and economic justice issues affecting Minnesota individuals and communities. Since its inception in 1991, CEF has worked with lower income people and under-represented populations (people of color, women, rural and inner city residents, etc.) in key public policy debates.
Working closely with its parent organization, Minnesota COACT, a 501(c)(4), CEF places a high value on providing community education, skills training, and research opportunities targeted to COACT leaders, members, representatives and members of other organizations, and the general public. We provide in-depth analyses on important issues confronting Minnesota and the rest of the United States, and inform the general public about important social and economic trends.
Minnesota COACT is the oldest active grassroots, direct action citizen organization in the state whose farm organizing was born out of the struggle for farm families to receive fair commodity prices and equitable treatment from lenders. Beginning as a neighborhood organization in Duluth’s West End in 1975 to stop red-lining and a freeway from coming through, COACT reached out to rural Minnesota in the early 1980s to fight for the survival of farm families.
Stopping farm foreclosures during the farm crisis of the ‘80s by winning a state moratorium law is counted as one of our greatest victories because farmers to this day have the right to third party mediation. This means a lender must work with the farmer to find ways of saving the farm rather than initiating foreclosure. This law, however, will be put to the test during the current crisis when loan payments are due and farmers aren’t being paid cost-of-production prices for their milk and other commodities. Sustainable commodity prices through our Minimum Pricing Bill was the other part of our 80s farm crisis legislative effort which fell short of passing. As a result of our Family Farm Campaign over the years, COACT claims a current farmer membership of 3,500.
In addition to the Moratorium Law and Minimum Pricing Bill, COACT’s farm organizing history is recounted by the following victories and actions:
Þ 1981: COACT convenes meeting in Little Falls of family farmers from throughout the state who are experiencing the same kind of loan denials and other injustices by FmHA because it wasn’t following its own mandate as lender of last resort. This inaugurates COACT as a farm activist organization.
Þ January 1984: COACT sponsors National Family Farm Crisis Conference; Jim Hightower, Texas Commissioner of Agriculture, gives keynote address.
Þ August 1984: 100 COACT farmers and other members confront the First Bank of Paynesville in central Minnesota to protest the unwarranted calling in of the Kohnen family’s dairy farm operating loan.
Þ Winter 1984-85: COACT becomes one of the lead organizations of the Groundswell Movement that culminates with 17,000 farmers rallying on the state capitol steps that February to protest foreclosures. Groundswell points to COACT’ s First Bank action as the example for farmers to follow; and COACT canvassers raises $20,000 for Groundswell by door-knocking in west central and southwestern Minnesota.
Þ Late 1980s: COACT organizes “milk giveaways” at food shelves in St. Cloud and South Minneapolis where dairy farmers give milk away to dramatize the low prices they’re paid for their milk.
Þ November 1988: COACT farmers and other members gather at the dairy research barn at the University of Minnesota to demand the termination of synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) at taxpayer expense and in violation of the land grant mandate.
Þ 1992: COACT farmers organize Minnesota drive as part of the “Dump the National Dairy Board Campaign”.
Þ 1993: COACT farmers provide leadership in passing a state minimum milk pricing law which was later sued by the processors.
Þ 1994: COACT gets a state labeling and certification law for rBGH-free dairy products.
Þ 1996: COACT wins legislation creating the Minnesota Dairy Producers Board.
Þ 1995-99: COACT works with other organizations in an “agriculture working group” to save Minnesota’s Anti-Corporate Farm Law from being weakened by factory feedlot interests, to save the right of local control in feedlot permitting, and to get state legislation to control feedlot emissions of toxic hydrogen sulfide.
Þ 2000: COACT revives Minnesota Safe Food Link, a coalition of environmental and consumer groups, to stop meat irradiation; and, as the lead organization, organizes 2 Twin Cities rallies and news conferences and opposition at the Sauk Rapids City Council hearing Nov. 27 against Huisken Meats request for $2.9 million in public bonds for building a meat processing plant. FDA conducts focus group in the Twin Cities in July due to the controversy raised by Safe Food Link over meat irradiation. Resulted in consumers wanting labeling.
Þ 2000-2001: Minnesota Dairy Producers Board (facilitated by COACT phone canvass) informs state’s dairy farmers on the unfair distribution of high volume premiums to favored large-scale operators. Processors retaliate by eliminating the Board’s funding and statute language.
Þ Winter & Spring 2000-2001: Milk Power movement emerges from volume premium campaign. COACT works with Milk Power dairy farmers to get a bill introduced in the state legislature which would allow farmers their right to vote in a referendum to opt out of the federal milk marketing order for a state marketing order administered by a milk price control board.
Þ Winter & Spring 2000-2001: COACT and the Minnesota Senior Federation join forces to get a bill introduced in the state legislature to extend the Medicaid discount of 15-20% on prescription drug prices to non-Medicaid recipients who have no coverage and can’t afford their prescribed drugs. It passes the Senate and has yet to be heard in the House.
Þ May and June 2000. COACT revived Minnesota Safe Food Link, a coalition of environmental and consumer groups, to stop the test marketing of Huisken Meats’ irradiated hamburger patties at major supermarket chains. (Safe Food Link was originally organized by COACT in the early ‘90s to stop rBGH milk and succeeded in getting labeling.) COACT organized the aforementioned rallies and news conferences and an informational forum at Hamline University during last summer, and the opposition to Huisken’ s bonding request in November.
