As I’ve said before, the punk-rock community was rooted in an anarchist structure. Punk wasn’t about The State or corporate whores (or smashing windows or throwing bombs), it was people with common values and needs banding together as a community.You don’t need to be an elected official to be involved in politics. Politics is basically organizing with people toward shared goals. In the era of personal blogging, reality TV, and tweeting, it’s one thing to sit behind a computer screen writing and reading about politics, and another to get out there and do things in your community.This is why I am such a staunch supporter of the co-op: It’s a voluntary, private, and democratically operated group that works inside the free-market system. And I’m more than delighted that the United States Senate is looking at promoting co-operative structures as part of the solution to the health-care crisis.In fact, in a column earlier this year on health-care co-ops, I wrote: “If there is to be a state program, it should concentrate on fostering more local cooperative health-care efforts… In the course of promoting cooperative structures, perhaps we’ll actually meet the real needs of people.” Obviously the Senators are reading Seattle Weekly online!Some people confuse co-ops with the totalitarian Marxism implemented in the 20th Century. We must remember that co-ops are private entities that operate in the free market. For example, if you drink milk, you’re probably buying from a co-op like Darigold, a group of dairy farmers who’ve come together in a sellers cooperative. Perhaps you prefer Organic Valley dairy products. This is another co-op, and in our free market system, these two businesses are competitors. Dairy farmers have banded together to form structures that benefit them. And the premise is simple: There’s power in numbers.Let’s apply this concept to the health co-op. If a thousand households pay $100 a month into a co-op, that’s $100,000 per month into the structure. With rural health clinics in Washington State struggling to survive, a steady stream of membership dollars could stabilize the financial problems of these clinics.Group Health is a co-op started in Seattle in 1947 “as a community coalition dedicated to making quality health care available and affordable”. Group Health is one of a few of its kind in our nation. Today it’s a major health care provider in our state that’s owned by its members – everyday consumers. The health-plan members / consumers for this non-profit medical venture elect an eleven-member board who govern the co-op. The board themselves are health-plan members. It’s a health care structure run from the bottom up to benefit the almost 600,000 people who choose to participate.Healthcare in the United States has become complex. And the co-op is only part of any potential solution towards affordable care. My point is the local or regional co-op puts the power in the hands of the “little guy”. If pot smokers in California can take on the status quo with cannabis co-op’s, I don’t think it would be too hard for everyone else to have a functioning health care system that meets the needs of people.